Earth Overshoot Day Came Early This Year. That's a Bad Thing. (popsci.com) 341
An anonymous reader shares a report: Earth's resources are limited. We only have so much water and food, let alone oil and gold. But humans are using more than Earth has to offer, and have been since 1970. In 2018, it's predicted we will use the equivalent of 1.7 Earths worth of resources -- which is, oh, almost a whole Earth more than we have. And the date at which we've consumed more than one Earth in a given year is called... Earth Overshoot Day.
In the 1960s, our consumption was almost perfectly synched to the Earth's resources, with humanity consuming one year's worth of Earth's resources in one year. But by 1971, that number slid backward, and has been sliding ever since. This year, 2018, saw the earliest Earth Overshoot Day yet: one Earth's worth of resources gobbled up by Aug. 1. (Last year, it happened on Aug. 2.) This doesn't mean that we've run out of clean water or timber today, and will have to live on scraps until New Year; it's that by exceeding the Earth's resources in August, we're bankrupting our future by consuming materials that are better off preserved for days to come.
In the 1960s, our consumption was almost perfectly synched to the Earth's resources, with humanity consuming one year's worth of Earth's resources in one year. But by 1971, that number slid backward, and has been sliding ever since. This year, 2018, saw the earliest Earth Overshoot Day yet: one Earth's worth of resources gobbled up by Aug. 1. (Last year, it happened on Aug. 2.) This doesn't mean that we've run out of clean water or timber today, and will have to live on scraps until New Year; it's that by exceeding the Earth's resources in August, we're bankrupting our future by consuming materials that are better off preserved for days to come.
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There's a link that is to the right of the title, is that the one you're looking for?
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That one leads to some "Update to privacy policy and how we use cookies." without any apparent means to continue. Both with and without javascript on, and no element of the page is blocked.
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Interesting, it leads straight to the article without a cookie warning for me.
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This is one of those non-story stories, like that stupid "doomsday clock at midnight" things. Just some stupid number crunching, nothing to see here.
Earth is a recycling planet. It will never not be a recycling planet. One guy once did a calculation for the biomass of all the dinosaurs, times the millions of years the dinosaurs have ever existed, times the water usage of a typical large reptile we see today, divided by all the water on earth. He determined that dinosaurs drank and pissed out all the water on earth 14 times during a 250 million year reign on earth. Yet look! We still have water.
Earth will never run out of resources. Why? Supply and demand. We will always make more when more is in demand. That's free market economics for you. Today, we have more wood than we consume. If that changes, it will be profitable to plant trees and grow more wood. There are trees that take 100 years to come to market. Those trees are worth planting, even if the farmer doesnt realize his crop. Why? Because the tree at 10 years old is worth more than the tree at 0 years old.
If we need more water than all the rain on earth, we will desalinate. Too expensive? We will innovate. Same thing goes for just about every natural resource. If you think there are things we can't innovate around and will perish without, I present to you the miracle of intelligence, the ingenuity of our species, and the enduring spirit of mankind. We don't need to worry and save. If it gets to a point that rarity will cause a shortage, prices will adjust and we will slow down our consumption when the market tells us to. The market will also signal that it is time for new entrants, or innovation to make more, make alternatives, or improve efficiency. That's what R&D is for. Why don't we build more coal plants? Because solar is getting cheap, and democratizing energy production. That's what the market does.
Tell these bozos to buzz the fuck off.
Re:link (Score:4, Insightful)
We will always make more when more is in demand.
Yes, because land area, and area suitable for growing trees, is infinite -- and everything else wrong with your poorly-reasoned argument, that started with the phrase, "Just some stupid number crunching", that you apparently did yourself.
Re:link (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with TFA is that is conflating many unrelated issues into one made up number.
Are we cutting down too many trees? Yes. We shouldn't cut them down faster than they regrow.
Are we mining too much coal? Yes, but there is NO sustainable level, since no new coal is being made.
Are we using too much iron ore? No, not really. Dig deep enough, and there is an essentially infinite source of iron, and most other metals.
So are stories like this helpful in "raising awareness"? NO, they are not. Stupid alarmism with no specific practical steps just make people roll their eyes, and leads to empathy fatigue.
Also, I have a hard time believing that people in Luxembourg are really as horrible as they claim. I have been there, and there are plenty of thriving forests, efficient vehicles, and recycling bins by every home. If Luxembourg is the "worst of the worst", then I think there is something seriously wrong with their methodology.
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Yes, because land area, and area suitable for growing trees, is infinite.
And, of course, it's impossible to increase the productivity of arable land, or to reclaim land and make it arable.
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I'm going to presume perfect technology to claim/reclaim non-arable land.
I'm going to assume we move all major population centers off the arable land most now sit on.
With these, and similar assumptions, is arable land infinite or finite?
With our current ad-hoc and fairly ineffective management of resources and use of productive land, we've reached limits. We can, with better management, innovation and the glorious hand of the free-market find ways to increase these limits. Maybe even considerably.
Before we
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But even trees need an environment to grow in, and good ecology is a web that evolved over hundreds of millions of years, and was destroyed beyond repair within decades. Remove the wild land, lose the wild animals and plants. Trees don't grow in a vacuum. Fish the last fish, trap the last fur, kill the last bear for sport, or cut down the last wild tree and there will be no more wild things, ever. How are the trees doing on Easter Island or in Ireland?
I don't believe it is the human mass at large that is de
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Africa alone has enough arable land to feed the whole world at the moment in a perfect scenario. Sure, if we have enough fertilizer (we'll get to that), if we have enough clean water (we'll get to that), a stable climate (we'll get to that), and no pollution (we'll get to that) we could support a much larger population.
Fertilizer - this isn't just magically created- a lot of the ingredients in good fertilizer can't just be upped to support more people. Over harvesting seaweed, or fishmeal or bones, or go
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Until the solution is large numbers of humans dying off. Yeah the Earth itself will balance, but there are more ways than one to decrease demand.
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Until the solution is large numbers of humans dying off. Yeah the Earth itself will balance, but there are more ways than one to decrease demand.
Just like there are more ways to increase supply. If we approach global warming, food production, or any other doomsday issue as a challenge to be solved then we will solve it. If we wring our hands and say oh no the only option is millions die then we won't. Populations in many countries are falling without calamities like mass starvation. Get the third world some birth control and the issue is all but solved in a generation.
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I bet Thanos sponsored the study :-)
Re:link (Score:5, Funny)
Huh?
If the reservoirs of drinking water are going down and there's no rain then we have a problem. Period.
It's not a "non-story story" when things like that happen.
If we need more water than all the rain on earth, we will desalinate. Too expensive? We will innovate.
Yep, we'll just push a few buttons and it'll all happen overnight.
Trump's golf courses are important enough that we should spend a few trillion tax dollars to build an artificial water supply for the country.
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Just some stupid number crunching, nothing to see here.
Performing some analysis of our footprint on the planet by "crunching numbers" is better than having no idea or perspective of where we're at at all, don't you think?
It's better to have a plan and be prepared than to have no plan at all, even if the plan is not perfect and based on incomplete information.
Silly little monkeys (Score:3)
I think the point that you are missing is that, rather than wait for everything to correct itself, perhaps we should be aware of the system we live in and proactively try to avoid painting ourselves into a corner in the first place. Because, accidentally causing a biosphere collaps
Re:link (Score:4, Interesting)
You have wonderfully highlighted the difference between serious scientific measurement, where the method is provided and error in measurements is quantified, and pure blathering, which is what you are doing.
See, if you looked into this at all, which is what this wonderful technology called the internet allows with minimal effort, you'd see that there is real data backing the Earth Overshoot Day estimate. In fact, their data is covered by a creative commons license so you can go over it with a fine-toothed comb and make constructive criticisms or contribute improvements.
But you didn't do that. Instead, you just called it "Pure Propaganda" without bothering to back up your statement. Your statements, sir, are much closer to propaganda.
To be fair, the most accessible parts of their material are dumbed down for a general audience, and I don't like that a bit of digging finds Schneider Electric as a prominent sponsor of the project's data source, but the message is completely fair: Mankind is running up against resource limits.
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Which will actually fix the problem. Call us back when people are starving for reasons other than poor distribution of resources, most of which are caused by political upheavals.
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You need a citation that there are no dinosaurs? You must not get out much. And why is slashdot now filled with anti-science dumbasses modding me down?
A meteor struck the earth, clouded out the sun. Plants and other animals disappeared, and dinosaurs died from not having those resources. A meteor did not hit each dinosaur on the head directly. Instead of a meteor we now have humans destroying all the resources. We are heading for another mass extinction. https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
What a gigantic lie (Score:4, Insightful)
What are we really using more of that the Earth produces?
The one thing MAY be oil, but we have hundreds of years worth (thanks to technical advancements) even if we were not converting to solar at a rapid clip.
Speaking of technical advancements, we can easily produce food for the estimated 10 billion or so that is the steady state for the Earth's population - as long as we don't listen to anti-GMO activist luddites.
Even if were were using "1.7 Earths" worth of any one resource, we could simply switch to mining them off-planet eventually as needed.
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, which this seems to have none of.
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Here's the understatement of the year from the article:
Basically this "news" is that an environmental lobbying group wanted to declare that people use too many resources in their opinion.
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Basically this "comment" is that an denialist wants to stick their head in the sand for a few more years.
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And this "comment" is that a doomsayer/Gaia worshiper claims that "THIS time we have it right!"... If you go by the doomsayer predictions of the last 40 years, we are 100% out of oil, most of us are dead, we cannot feed ourselves, we are either dying from the next ice age or boiling from runaway thermal, half our cities are underwater, and nuclear war has caused us all to die.
But this time, it's different, right?
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I got some numbers for you to chew on.
2015-2017 are the hottest years on record on Earth. Citation: https://public.wmo.int/en/medi... [wmo.int]
2018 is looking to be #4, but we can't actually say that without actually going through the whole year obviously; but last April was the third warmest on record: https://climate.nasa.gov/news/... [nasa.gov]
The higher temperatures are affecting all crops, but their effects are most pronounced under Middle East and African Desert countries currently, but their effects should be closely ex
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This is a common denier tactic - exaggerate all the arguments made by the scientific community, the peer reviewed science. Then claim that it was all proven wrong.
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But Malthus!
"There's not enough resources and we're all going to die!!!eleventy!!" has been wrong for 120 years and counting. Oddly enough, it's never overpopulation in predominately White nations that people seems to fret about. Just a coincidence, I'm sure.
The only real challenge for 10B on Earth (as first-world nations) is power generation, as only solar and fusion can scale to that level, and fusion will always be "just 20 years away". Still, if there's too much NIMBYism, we can just build the solar
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Claiming that Malthus "has been wrong for 120 years" shows you have no idea what you are talking about (for one thing I believe you want to say "220 years" since "An Essay on the Principle of Population" was written in 1798).
Malthus was describing the actual state of affairs of the world in which he lived, and which included all of human history up to that time, and remained correct for the next 140 years everywhere, and then was still correct for another 15 years for most of the world.
Agricultural producti
Re:What a gigantic lie (Score:4, Insightful)
we can easily produce food for the estimated 10 billion or so that is the steady state for the Earth's population - as long as we don't listen to anti-GMO activist luddites. ...
There is no point in converting the earth into a desert and then planting "desert proof" GMO food there
The planet easily can harbour 30, perhaps 50 billion people, and we only need sustainable agriculture and fishing to feed them. But no worries, population will probably plateau around 9 - 10 billion and then drop and stabilize around perhaps 6 billion.
For all that we don't need GMO ... we only have to stop greed.
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The planet easily can harbour 30, perhaps 50 billion people
{Citation needed}
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{Citation needed} ...
Internet. I suggest google
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Greed is a defining characteristic of our species. It's what drove us out of the trees, it's what spurred us forward technologically. Greed is why we plant crops, far more than we could ever eat, or that our family could consume. Greed is what what drives us to make sure the water is clean and the wastes are properly organized. It's why you can sit on a computer/phone somewhere and imply that greed is the problem.
Greed isn't the problem. Indeed, it could be said to the only good thing about our speci
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Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, which this seems to have none of.
No it does not. Evidence is evidence!
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We are also using groundwater faster than nature can replace it. Wells are running dry, so we've been digging them deeper and deeper.
Saying that technological advancements will fix the problem places the burden on our children and grandchildren to solve it. That's an astonishingly selfish thing to do.
Water is water (Score:3, Insightful)
"Using up groundwater" is meaningless long term, since in the end it can easily be piped inland from the oceans. Once you have enough solar power why not desalination plants all along the coast? Or are you worried about dropping the sea level HA HA HA.
If water overuse were actually a problem anywhere in a first world country it would cost 10x what it does today and laws would be frowned upon. Until ANYONE acts like there is actually a problem there is obviously not a real problem, just made up scenarios f
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If it were so easy, everyone would be doing it!
False [fortune.com].
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Capetown [wikipedia.org], Brisbane [wikipedia.org]....
Running low on water sucks. But it isn't over-use that causes the worst problems, but a sudden reduction in supply.
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I never understood when people say things like "mining off-planet". How can you mine something on another planet and ship it back to Earth? What makes you think this is possible (sci-fi doesn't count)?
Oh, it's POSSIBLE.. It's just not cost effective both in materials obtained vrs used and human lives lost..
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We can't currently safely deorbit the ISS which weighs about 400 tonnes, best plan is to drop it onto the ocean and hope it doesn't break anything. So how do you get 25 times that weight to earth in a usable form wi
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LOL.. Did you read my whole post?
I said it's POSSIBLE, just not cost effective.
We went to the moon in the 70's and hauled home just over 800 lbs of the lunar surface. Other probes have returned lessor amounts.
Was that a cost effective way to get 800 lbs of the materials we find in moon rocks? Not on your life.
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When you're dealing with materials, "cost effectiveness" is usually directly equatable to "How much material I get" and for space mining, as far as
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We brought back materials from the moon in the 70's did we not? It was just a bunch of rocks, but we did go get them and bring them back.
We've also brought back small amounts of material from a comet's tail.
So we've done this kind of thing. Not very efficiently, but we've done it.
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We went to the moon and picked up rocks and brought it back. That is, in fact, a small-scale mining operation and is absolute proof that it's possible.
I'm pretty sure you're mentally adding the stipulation that it's economical because we're getting useful amounts of useful material instead of a tiny amount of random material.
Even so, I'd like to ask why you think this is impossible to ever do? Imagine setting up a machine on the moon -- we have done that lots, even sent machines to Mars that lasted years.
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very small scale strip mine, but yep, they did.
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A very small mine, about the size of the materials harvested.
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Surface mining is still mining.
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No, but that's only because it's not cost effective to do so... it is definitely entirely in the realm of what is technologically feasible today.
But hey, if you have a few billion dollars laying around to throw at the problem and don't mind losing money for longer than you are likely to still be alive, barring some technological breakthrough that makes it vastly cheaper, then by all means... knock yourself out.
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It's "possible" because its not dependent on discovering new laws of physics. It's a matter of engineering.
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By your logic, the moon landing should have never been attempted since there was no proof of it being done before.
"If landing on the moon is possible, then why haven't we done it before?"
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You did not say that.... you did, however, convey a sarcastic tone that implied incredulity that such a thing is actually technologically possible today.
As many others have already stated, it is entirely technologically possible... just not economically viable right now.
Much like returning to the moon in the first place.
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I know exactly what he was talking about... but there is precisely zero basis to think that setting up off-world permanent mining facilities is not technologically possible today. It has only not been done because it is not economically viable, not because it isn't possible.
If you know of some mitigating reason why you think that setting up permanent mining operations on another body such as the moon, mars, or on an asteroid, is actually outside of current technological capability, please share it with t
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It's just as technogically possible as converting lead to gold by pulling out 3 protons from each atom using fission... doesn't mean it's practical.
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Already been answered. Not cost effective at this point in time.
What could possibly make you think it literally isn't possible to mine another celestial body?
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You're seem to be a monumental [ idiot | troll ], just not sure which.
As was already pointed out, we already have mined small quantities of material on the Moon and shipped it back to Earth. Even if you're not bright enough to see that it is possible, that should convince you. The open questions have nothing to do with possibility, and everything to do with cost effectiveness, which partly depends on the actual make up of the various local bodies. For example, if we found an asteroid made essentially of pur
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Getting back to Earth isn't the problem. It's the slowing down part. I hear the dinosaurs were pretty good at the first part (they waited long enough).
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Luckily we've also got the slowing down part pretty well figure out, too.
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Recently, the Forest Service reported total forestation as 766,000,000 acres (3,100,000 km2) in 2012.[1][2][3] The majority of deforestation took place prior to 1910 with the Forest Service reporting the minimum forestation as 721,000,000 acres (2,920,000 km2) around 1920.[4] The forest resources of the United States have remained relatively constant through the 20th century.[3]
What's likely to happen as this continues: (Score:5, Interesting)
There will be an extinction-level event -- in the form of WARS. Wars have very often been waged over resources. Over time, as there are more and more humans alive at the same time (see above: "people aren't going to do anything any different tomorrow.."; they'll keep breeding), available resources dwindle, and effects from global warming puts more environmental stress on all life, countries with a standing military won't just sit still and wait to starve to death or die of dehydration, they'll attack their neighbors to secure their resources. When will this happen? Could start tomorrow, could be anytime within the next, say, 50 to 100 years. But it'll happen unless something else happens to stop it.
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Re:What's likely to happen as this continues: (Score:5, Informative)
The thing is, people aren't breeding. Or more precisely, we are doing a lot less breeding than we used to.
The developed world, except for the US, is below replacement rate. Replacement rate is about 2.1 children per woman (1 to replace the woman, 1 to replace the man, 0.1 to replace the people who die before having children or are infertile). The US is at about 2.3. Much of Europe is at 1.8-2.0. Populations in these countries are only stable or climbing due to immigration from the developing world.
In the developing world, birth rate is plummeting as women get better education and access to birth control. It's still above replacement rate, but it's way down from what it used to be and is still trending downward.
"Number of humans on the planet" is not yet a solved problem, but it's in the process of getting solved.
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I'd would have thought seeing how China's one child policy lifted them out of poverty in record time might have slowed the breeding. But nope, people keep making more at an incredible rate.
'Couple problems with this.
First, the Chinese had a whole lot of "unofficial" babies that weren't reported to the government. So they didn't really go one child for everyone....and the program was ended a while ago. Also, the thing that "lifted China out of poverty" was industrialization, not a low birth rate. If you want to see what a low birth rate does to an economy, take a look at Japan. They're starting to have some pretty big problems.
Second, global birth rate is falling. Developed nations other
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Developing nations are dropping as women there receive better education and greater access to birth control.
I would also add industrialization and better quality of life, as you no longer need a dozen kids to work your farm or care for you when you're old...
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First, the Chinese had a whole lot of "unofficial" babies that weren't reported to the government. So they didn't really go one child for everyone.
How the funk should that work? No one sees the belly? You don't bring the kid into kindergarden? It does not go to school? It has no healthcare? It is never sick? It has no passport or ID card?
Yes. If you had a second child, you had to pay large fines or the child would not get their hukou (official ID) - and thus not qualify for ANY Government programs or support. If you had a 3rd child, the fines were even higher. So many of the rich had several legal children - and many of the poor had one legal. and several illegal children.
I learned all this whilst living in China, and marrying into a Chinese family. Her parents were hoping we could give them a second grandchild since - as a foreigner -
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But what about air pollution? (Score:3)
This article set my BS detector on fire and they don't seem to care about all of that smoke.
Screw the next generation (Score:5, Funny)
What did they ever do for us?
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What did they ever do for us?
And there you have it. Homo Sapiens does not deserve to survive. Not ethically, and certainly not because of their "intelligence".
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What did they ever do for us?
We could eat them.
Why (Score:2)
Everything you need to know about this calculation is summed up in the infographic. To maximize the time until Earth Overshoot day, we should all live like people in Cuba, Columbia, Jamaica, and Vietnam.
Jokes about the US population voting to live more like Jamaicans aside, resource shortages are irrelevant in an economically free society [juliansimon.com] because free people solve issues faster than they become serious, leading to ever-cheaper resources. Even of limited ones and "low hanging fruit", thanks to substitution
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Not always [wikipedia.org].
But I'm just being pedantic... you're of course almost certainly right about what was meant.
At the link, there is a breakdown by country (Score:3)
The "overshoot day" calculation is rather fuzzy, but the general idea is to determine the date at which each country uses up a year's worth of the planet's resources. According to the breakdown by country, the countries that do the best job of living within their ecological means are Vietnam (Dec 21), Jamaica (Dec 13), Cuba (Nov 19) and Colombia (Nov 17). Feel like moving to any of those paradises?
The US and Canada both poop out, resource-wise in mid-March, while Australia and most Scandinavian countries hold out until late March to early April. The rest of Europe goes resource-negative in May (May 2 for Germany, which has plowed most of its national budget into running on renewables). And what is it that makes little Luxembourg go negative on Feb 19?
Re: At the link, there is a breakdown by country (Score:2)
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Fuzzy?? It's completely undefined! What did US run out of in March? Food? No, there's plenty more. Water? Land? Lithium salts? The article mentions electricity, but since the Earth produces approximately zero usable electricity, that's just silly.
Not to say the concept is completely silly -- We've always known that humans use engineering to shore up where mother earth falls short; that's not news. But if you're gonna put numbers and dates to those things, you need to define what exactly you're measuring.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone call Thanos (Score:2)
Unix Timestamp (Score:2)
Or maybe there is a bug in their calculations which directly equates the Unix timestamp to world resource consumption!
(negative values prior to 1970, positive values after... bad joke, i'll see myself out)
Thanos To The Rescue! (Score:3)
We just have to kill 1/2 the population of the Earth.
That should fix it!
I blame modern sanitation (Score:3)
So many idiots (Score:2)
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Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
I don't understand. How can we possibly use more than the Earth can provide? Where's the extra coming from? Mars?
More than sustainable. For example if there are a million fish in the ocean, you could technically harvest all 1 million of them in a single year but then you wouldn't have any the next year. This makes sense for renewable resources like fish and even water tables but not sure how this relates to gold or oil. Both are fixed quanities. In the case of gold, very little of it is really consumed. In the case of oil, once it is gone, it is gone. In both gold and oil, there isn't a sustainable level that we can extract either resource. We can keep extracting as little or as much as we want and there will still be a day when there is no more. For stuff like fish, this is a very real number as if we continue to extract fish faster than they can repopulate then we are creating a disaster.
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Not entirely true... it will just take several million more years to reform back into oil.
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If you don't like fish, then lets look at trees. Also lets look at a smaller population than 1 million. Lets say we
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You're under the assumption that fish don't reproduce. I've got some news for you.
If we consumed *all* the fish in the ocean in one year, as the GP stated, which fish in said ocean would be left to reproduce?
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How is that different to natural selection?
There's some randomness thrown in there but those that have adapted best to the current environment stand the highest chances of surviving and reproducing.
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It's not different. That's the problem - if we were more self-regulating our extinction won't be the final solution.
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I don't understand. How can we possibly use more than the Earth can provide? Where's the extra coming from? Mars?
There's buffers/reserves, eg. reservoirs of water.
Their water level can go down if we use more than the rainfall can replenish in a year.
Same for forests, etc. We can easily cut more trees than can regrow in a year.
It's not difficult.
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Borrowing from the future, going into debt. Essentially more people go hungry, we cut down more forests, use more non-renewable resources, and so forth.
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Using that logic though -- the earth is what... 4.x billion years old (Okay, some of the resources we're overusing have first started appearing much later on, say 250m years ago) ... and has only been in 'overshoot' mode for ~50? I think we've got some time to figure things out.
Conservation is great, but bullshit like this is not the way to encourage it.
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Actually, your carbon impact and resource impact has much much more to do with where you live, where you work, and where your energy comes from.
If you live and work within 1-2 miles and rarely drive or fly long distances (high speed rail has minimal impact), and live in an efficient city like Seattle which has 98.5 percent green energy (same holds for Vancouver BC or Nelson BC or, surprisingly, even Calgary AB or much of Texas), you have very very little resource impact on the world.
If your electric car uses solar panels on your home and at work, and the battery helps load balance the grid so it has a higher level of renewables, your impact is very small.
If you're a millenial, you may not own a suburban house or have a lawn or even a fireplace and you may not own a car and tend to walk, bike, or use transit. If you eat low on the food chain, especially if you eat mussels and clams and shellfish grown in mixed kelp or seagrass beds, you're actually carbon negative on food.
If you use native shrubberies and water that would have gone to waste to water them, especially using no fertilizers or composting your food waste, then your impact is very small. If you reuse things, use less packaging (or use it to replace other purchases, such as cardboard instead of pizza trays), and recycle what can be recycled after, then you have very little impact.
On average, a modern city dwelling Millenial on the coasts (except the South, but including Texas) has about 1/10th the impact that the average American does.
That's science. Use the online calculators to see where you use things.
Plus I bet the Prius you drive only emits smug ... not unlike your post.