Environment

Earth's resources depleted for 2016

As of Monday, Aug. 8, humanity will have already used up more resources than the Earth can regenerate this year, according to the Global Footprint Network.

The network, a WWF partner, declared Aug. 8, 2016 as this year's Earth Overshoot Day, which is five days earlier than last year and the earliest Overshoot day yet.

As the global population grows and consumption rises, we are emitting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than our oceans and forests can absorb, and we are depleting fisheries and harvesting forests more quickly than they can reproduce and regrow. To sustain our global consumption at this level would take 1.6 Earths.

When the first Earth Overshoot Day was calculated in 1987, it fell on Dec. 19. In 2000, the Earth's renewable resources for the year were used up by late September. An ecological overshoot is possible only for a limited time before ecosystems begin to degrade and risk collapse.