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Cody Nelson
St. Paul

A year's worth of Earth's resources are almost gone, and it's only July

A wildfire burns in California
"Fires are raging in the Western United States. ... Residents in Cape Town have had to slash water consumption in half since 2015. These are consequences of busting the ecological budget of our one and only planet," says Global Footprint Network's CEO.
David McNew | Getty file

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Humankind is about to use up a year's worth of resources.

The 2018 "ecological overshoot" day is Wednesday, Aug. 1, according to the Global Footprint Network, the earliest date in history that earth's population has used more resources than Earth can renew in a year.

"In other words, humanity is currently using nature 1.7 times faster than our planet's ecosystems can regenerate. This is akin to using 1.7 Earths," the organization says.

The Global Footprint Network calculates overshoot day by combining recent science with United Nations data — 15,000 annual data points for every country.

The organization looks at how many natural resources people consume and how much waste they generate. Think of picking an apple from a tree as resource consumption, and waste-generation as driving a car that emits climate-warming greenhouse gases via its exhaust.

Then, those calculations go up against how much the planet can give (how many apples it can grow) and how much waste it can absorb (how much greenhouse gas it can absorb).

Humans began using more natural resources and emitting more waste than the planet could handle in the 1970s.

As world population has increased since then, the amount of waste generated and resources used has grown steadily. The overshoot day has been around Aug. 1 since 2010, according to the to the Global Footprint Network.

There are vast consequences for the planet's increasing consumption and waste, from dangerous heat and weather events under climate change to water shortages to hunger from an unequal distribution of nutrition.

The Global Footprint Network lists four major ways that countries and individuals can mitigate their impacts: reduce driving, carbon emissions, waste less food and eat low-footprint foods (plants, not animals); and have one fewer child.

While these aren't novel ideas for conserving the planet, Global Footprint Network CEO Mathis Wackernagel said overuse of the earth is more urgent than ever:

"But fires are raging in the Western United States. On the other side of the world, residents in Cape Town have had to slash water consumption in half since 2015. These are consequences of busting the ecological budget of our one and only planet."