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Date alarming, this Wednesday, August 1st is the "day of overtaking". From today, humanity has consumed all the resources that nature can renew in one year. As a result, she will now live on "credit" for five months, according to the NGO Global Footprint Network.
What is the day of overtaking? August 1st is "the date on which we will have used more trees, water, fertile soil, and fish than what the Earth can provide in a year to feed us, house and move us and emit more carbon than oceans and forests can absorb, "says Valérie Gramond of WWF, a partner of the Global Footprint Network. According to WWF, today humanity would need the equivalent of 1.7 Earth to support itself.
How is it calculated? As recalled Les Échos Global Footprint Network uses two tools to calculate the date of "overtaking day". First of all the ecological borrowing, "which measures on the surface the need for natural resources necessary for an individual". This calculated area is then reported to the second tool, the area of the earth's biocapacity, "where we measure what it is capable of producing in renewable resources and what it can absorb as waste from their consumption" .
Why Does It Happen Farther and Earlier? The August 1st date is the earliest ever since the launch of the "day of overtaking" in the early 1970s. the date chosen was December 29th. In 2017, the day of the overtaking occurred on August 3.
According to WWF's Valérie Gramond, the movement "has accelerated because of overconsumption and waste". "It undermines the ability of the planet to regenerate", for example by drawing from fish stocks, she adds, recalling that in the world, about a third of food ends up in the trash.
France among the bad students. The "day of overtaking" French also arrives always earlier. While in 1961, he only fell on September 30, he intervened this year from May 5. For the first time, WWF decided on this occasion to communicate separately for France to "send a strong signal to a key political moment where several laws and decisions are expected in the areas of food, mobility, energy , biodiversity or the fight against imported deforestation. "
According to the NGO, if humanity lived like the French, of which two thirds of the ecological borrowing are related to food, travel and energy for housing, it would thus today "need the equivalent of 2.9 Earth planets to provide for its needs."
However, the situation differs greatly according to the country, the world average lying at the level of 1.7 lands. "We have different responsibilities: small countries with few people, such as Qatar and Luxembourg, have an extremely strong ecological footprint," says Pierre Cannet of WWF. If the whole of humanity lived like them, the "day of the overtaking" would intervene as from 9 and 19 February. Conversely, in a country like Vietnam, the date chosen is December 21.
How to reverse the trend?
"We must go from alarm to action," said Pierre Cannet, who is worried about the recovery of global CO2 emissions in 2017 after three years of stabilization. On the website of the "day of overcoming" are presented various solutions to reverse the trend: to review the way cities are thought, develop and focus on green energy, fight against food waste and over-consumption of meat, limit expansion demographic. Everyone can calculate their ecological footprint at http://www.footprintcalculator.org/. [1966511]
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