Long gone are the days when humanity could without a modicum of consideration for the future gobble up natural resources as though they are going out of style.
Capitalism ushered in an era of mass consumption unprecedented in human history, and while disposable items sure are convenient, they are with few exceptions — such as perhaps personal hygiene or medical products — frankly an appalling blight upon the planet.
Last Wednesday, Aug. 1 marked Earth Overshoot Day. Although familiar with the more commonly known Earth Day, I admittedly had never before heard about Earth Overshoot Day, which according to the organization’s website “marks the date when humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services in a given year exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year.”
“Just as a bank statement tracks income against expenditures, Global Footprint Network measures a population’s demand for and ecosystems’ supply of resources and services.”
Although many of us would point to and deflect all of the blame on developing countries with deplorable industrial as well as waste management track records, the simple fact remains citizens of these nations consume a mere fraction of the amount of resources that people in the West — from Australia to Canada — do. Besides, regardless of where we live, we all bear a shared responsibility to minimize the amount of resources we consume.
While capitalism fosters innovation and drives ingenuity and technological advancements arguably like no other system we’ve come up with, it is also largely founded upon the completely erroneous and unsustainable assumption that a finite system with limited resources can support unlimited growth in perpetuity.
Meanwhile, many people tend to worry — arguably rightly so, to be fair — about the growing debt load today’s governments are going to leave on the shoulders of future generations.
But while governments might be operating on borrowed funds, our children’s future will be, some might argue already is, lived on borrowed time.
Perhaps we should be at least equally as worried, if not more so, about the state of the natural world our children and grandchildren will inherit, which at this rate — with oceans filling up with plastic while global heat waves cause havoc — is not looking as optimistic as possible, to put it politely.
Visit overshootday.org for more information as well as suggestions on reducing our impact.
While I unreservedly believe the universe somewhere in the vast infinite expanse of space has other planets similar to Earth, odds are that even if we manage to find another needle in the galactic haystack that we’ll never in the foreseeable future reach this new horizon.
There is no backup.
The Earth is all we’ve got.
So we should be duly treating the planet as a precious oasis as opposed to an exploitable product to profit from and dispose of.
