A life on credit

The Global Footprint Network (GFN), an international research organization, has been calculating the day since 1970. At the time, the EOD occurred just 3 days before the end of the year, while this year it represents 132 days.

The day is calculated based on the “demand-offer” formulation. In other words, EOD is equivalent to dividing the global biocapacity (the amount of natural resources) by the global ecological footprint (our consumption of these natural resources) and multiplying by 365.

It is not surprising that the only cause of this event is the way of life of humanity. According to the GFN, some countries have a much greater negative impact than others. Scientists estimate that to support the lifestyle of our population, we need 1.6 planet Earths.

You may be wondering what it means to live on credit. To put it simply, this means that from August 22 to December 31, we consume resources that will not have time to regenerate, including clean water, soil, clean air...

It seems that every year the date is reached earlier and earlier, moving from ⁵ October 1990 to ⁸ August 2010 to August 22 of this year.

However, this year an unexpected event occurred that set the EOD back. Indeed, with Covid-19, the date of July 29, 2019 was pushed back to almost a month later. As the pandemic worsened, several industries had to close, leading to a significant reduction in the carbon footprint (by 14.5% from 2019) and the footprint of forest products (by 8.4%). from 2019).

Some people tend to think that their action is useless and that nothing will change. On the contrary, every action, no matter how small, is useful and important. For example, join the Move The Date movement created by Overshootday to research or even propose ideas to change things.

It is important to keep in mind that everyone has a choice to make that can have a significant impact on our environment and our planet. Choosing solid and organic products, going to work, choosing sustainable packaging...