Environment: how much the world’s population abuses our planet’s resources?
Last year (2016), our planet’s resources were officially used up by 8th August, but in 2017 the situation has got even worse as we reached the dreaded Overshoot Day (2nd August) six days early; activities such as fishing, deforestation, water consumption, the extraction of minerals and fossil fuels, cattle breeding and agriculture, have led to the resources generated by the Earth in a whole year being used up in just under half that time.
In order to get a clearer picture of this concept, we might refer to the organisation Global Footprint Network which explains that human beings are abusing their host environment as if they had access to over one and a half planet Earths (1.7 Earths to be precise). The main problem is definitely a result of high CO2 emissions: at the present time in fact, they are so high that even if we managed to reduce them by half we would reach Overshoot Day a mere 89 days later (early November).
If we take a more detailed look at the problem, we can observe that food production constitutes one of the main factors responsible for the emission of greenhouse gases: on a scale of 1 to 10, 2.4 of these emissions derives from the agricultural sector. According to the Barilla Foundation, this situation does not only depend on farmers, but also on food waste and domestic waste (the former resulting in 24.5 million tonnes of CO2, the latter 14.3).
These staggering numbers help us to grasp how and how much the world’s population abuses our planet’s resources, as they ignore (in many cases completely) the consequences both for the environment and for future generations. Unfortunately however, there won’t be a future if we continue as we are and it is for this reason that organizations all over the world are trying to find solutions to eliminate (or at least reduce) this problem.
Among the practicable strategies are measures such as halving food waste, the drastic elimination of excess calories in the food sector and a reduction in animal protein consumption. Simply by adopting these simple steps, we could already reduce our carbon footprint by 22 percentage points, thereby postponing Overshoot Day by approximately 42 days. In order to succeed in this however, we need mutual effort, dedication and conviction.
Translated by Joanne Beckwith
