Stephen Hawking, leading physicist and cosmologist, states that it is time for humans to seriously consider going to live in space. The reason is that earth is a fragile planet unable to withstand continued human abuse for more than 1,000 years.

This may seem to be a long time away but it surely highlights the unsustainability of our obsession with ‘disposable’ consumerism and our failure to seriously control pollution.

Of course, not everyone agrees that humans will eventually be obliged to abandon earth. Such talk is considered as sheer scaremongering by those who believe that technology will provide an answer to the challenges facing humanity.

Environmentalists too disagree with Hawking; for them, unless humans radically change their wasteful habits, the day of reckoning will come much sooner.

Ever since the early 1970s, environmentalists have been harping on the need to properly manage earth’s finite resources. The term ‘sustainable development’ was coined to emphasise that market forces ignore negative externalities and focuson just short-term considerations. Thissituation is even more critical given society’s ‘here-and-now’ culture. People feelalienated when confronted by relatively complex issues having little immediate impact on their lifestyle.

In the hope of inducing corrective action, environmentalists are often tempted to present a very depressing future. Their dilemma is how to ensure that their message cuts through the communication clutter, without their being accused of crying wolf. One solution seems to be to promote such issues in an attractive and innovative manner to capture, at least for a brief period of time, the attention of the media and public opinion. This is the case with Earth’s Overshoot Day (also known as Ecological Debt Day).

Originally devised by the New Economics Foundation (a UK-based think tank), it is essentially an attempt to build upon the broadly accepted conviction among the public as to the need for proper financial management. The fiscal deficit and national debt are to be controlled not to place undue burdens on future generations. Similarly, there is a need for good environmental management not to excessively degrade earth’s ecosystems to the detriment of our children.

Earth Overshoot Day represents that moment in a specific year by when humanity would have consumed more natural resources and created more waste than our biosphere can replace and safely absorb over the 12 months. Bio-capacity, the amount of resources the planet regenerates annually, is considered as nature’s ‘supply’, with ‘demand’ by humans consisting of the amount of such resources consumed.

The formula is calculated annually by the Global Footprint Network, a California-based environmental research organisation. Like many other composite indices (competitiveness, happiness and so on) having a single well-definedparameter (in this case a specific date) is neat. In reality, the underlying assumptions and methodology used (such as putting in the same pot data relating to greenhouse gas emissions, rainforest destruction and maize yields)is questionable.

So, at best, the Overshoot Day is a guesstimate that highlights the unsustainability of present human demand.

This ecological ‘deficit’ started as from the early 1970s. What is really worrying is that the situation is getting worse at an alarming rate.

At the start of this millennium, Overshoot Day fell in early October; this year it was on August 19.

There are four key factors that impact on the ecological deficit: population, production technology, consumption and nature’s bio-capacity. Larger populations mean finite resources must be divided among more people. While world population, economies and resource demands generally keep growing, the earth’s resources remain the same.

We can no longer deify market forces

It is estimated that it takes about 18 months for the biosphere to compensate for a year’s worth of human consumption and waste. The UK uses the equivalentof three-and-a-half times the natural resources it has while Japan uses seven times more. Eighty-six per cent of the world’s population lives in countries where the demands made on nature - the nation’s ‘ecological footprint’ - outstrip the supply of that country’s resources.

Such overshoot will inevitably lead to degradation and increases the risk that ecosystems collapse. The impact of overshoot is apparent in water shortages, desertification, soil erosion, reduced productivity of agricultural land, deforestation, species extinction, fisheries downfall and global climate change.

There are good reasons for having an Earth Overshoot Day. Public opinion needs to be increasingly mobilised to create pressure on the political class to start addressing environmental issues in earnest. Policymakers have to realise that in-built technological obsolescence and fashion have created a ‘throwaway’ society that pays too high a price for consumer extravagance. Waste recycling provides a limited solution.

Just imagine the impact on ecological systems if the rest of the world adopts the same wasteful consumption as us in the West. New thinking is required which does not link the prosperity and well-being of economies with their never-ending growth.

We can no longer deify market forces and hope they will lead to the preservation of a biosphere fit for human civilisation. Unless dramatic changes in human behaviour are made, within 20 years the global supply of oil, fresh water, food and many minerals will come under severe pressure.

Our leaders have an important role to play but, ultimately, the buck stops with each one of us. Are we ready to change our consumption patterns to reduce or re-use resources?

fms18@onvol.net

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