Globally, humans are using resources much faster than Planet Earth can replace them and the situation is much worse in Australia. Earth Overshoot Day is the day on which the Earth’s resources for that year have been expended and after that day we are eating into our children’s future.
Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) advises Earth Overshoot Day occurs this year on 1 August. Every day after 1 August – for a full five months out of twelve, the world will be in overshoot, living off the Earth’s capital rather than the interest.
The following quotes are attributed to SPA ³Ô¹ÏÍøÕ¾ President Peter Strachan.
“Globally, humans are using resources much faster than Planet Earth can replace them and the situation is much worse in Australia.
“Last year, EOD was on 2 August, not much of a change but one going in the wrong direction,” says Mr Strachan. “We have to help move it back towards late December where it was in 1970 when EOD was first calculated.
To date, all our efforts to live more sustainably have been negated by the increasing numbers of people.
“Slowing the birth rate by every second family having one child fewer and everyone delaying parenthood by two years, would be an easy and effective way to reduce humanity’s demands on nature and push EOD back later in the year, as long as we also reduce resource consumption.
“It would mean global population would peak much earlier than current projections and would fall back to 7 billion in 2100; still too many but at least EOD would be mid-September not early August.
“How do we help achieve this? We must support women’s and girl’s reproductive health with trusted, affordable, and easy to use contraceptives. More than 200 million women of reproductive age do not have consistent access to effective family planning, resulting in far too many unintended pregnancies.
“Australia, with its own EOD at 5 April this year, sets an appalling example for the world. If everyone lived as Australians, we would need 3.8 Earths.
“In Australia we also need to ensure universal access to good reproductive health care, as well as over-consumption. Every person added to Australia’s population – through birth or migration – has a disproportionately large impact on the Earth.
“It is imperative that our own population peaks soon and then slowly declines. We are over 27 million now. We must peak before 30 million. Our fertility rate of 1.6 is below replacement, which means we can still have considerable immigration, but not nearly as much as lately.
“We must get net overseas migration down to around 70,000 annually if we are to stay below 30 million. This and reducing average consumption will mean our EOD can start heading back towards the end of the year where it belongs.”
