September 26, 2009

Today’s the Day We Overdraw Our Accounts

"You say there's nothing left?" Punch, 1917. Courtesy Project Gutenberg.

Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.


Thanks to Deborah Byrd blogging at EarthSky for the heads-up that today is Earth Overshoot Day. The day when we overdraw our ecological bank account.

This year it falls on 25 September. Starting today, we’re utilizing resources at a rate faster than what the planet can regenerate in a calendar year.

Which means for the next 97 days, we’re using up our capital investment. You know, the air, waters, oceans, forests, species, topsoil that keep us alive. The problem’s called ecological overshoot.

We first went into overshoot in 1986, according to the Global Footprint Network. Before then we consumed resources and produced carbon dioxide at a rate consistent with what the planet could produce and reabsorb in a year. By 1996 we were using 15 percent more resources in a year than the planet could supply. Earth Overshoot Day fell in November that year.

Now we’re now stripping resources 40 percent faster than the planet can produce them.

‘Course a thrifty Homo sapiens would batten down the hatches, tighten the belt, and shift to extreme emergency savings mode. Unless he or she didn’t really feel overdrawn? Like everything was still super affordable and super expendable and super infinite?
 

Take the next step: Help us fight for the truth.

Investigative journalism, like the story you just read, takes time to do. Months of research. Weeks of writing, editing, and fact checking—and putting together the photography, art, video, and audio that tell the stories in a new way, illuminating new perspectives and voices.

We can afford to take that time because we don’t report to an oligarch or corporation with a special agenda. We report to you, and for you. That’s why we unabashedly pursue the truth and relentlessly shine a light into the darkness.

In this month’s Summer Membership Drive, we’ve got to raise $200,000 to support more crucial investigations. This is a pivotal moment in our nation, with democracy on the line, and we can only do this work because readers like you step up. Every donation, of any amount, makes a difference here. We cannot do this work without you.

So, we’re asking: Will you support independent journalism that demands those in power answer for their actions?

Take the next step: Help us fight for the truth.

Investigative journalism, like the story you just read, takes time to do. Months of research. Weeks of writing, editing, and fact checking—and putting together the photography, art, video, and audio that tell the stories in a new way, illuminating new perspectives and voices

We can afford to take that time because we don’t report to an oligarch or corporation with a special agenda. We report to you, and for you. That’s why we unabashedly pursue the truth and relentlessly shine a light into the darkness.

In this month’s Summer Membership Drive, we’ve got to raise $200,000 to support more crucial investigations. This is a pivotal moment in our nation, with democracy on the line, and we can only do this work because readers like you step up. Every donation, of any amount, makes a difference here. We cannot do this work without you.

So, we’re asking: Will you support independent journalism that demands those in power answer for their actions?

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

INDEPENDENT. BECAUSE OF YOU.

Mother Jones has no billionaires calling the shots—just readers like you making fearless reporting possible

Donate