Earth depletes natural resources and reaches Overshoot Day 

International study reveals that humanity exhausted the 2021 natural budget in less than seven months.
3 minute(s) of reading

Earth Overshoot Day (Earth Overshoot Day) arrived earlier than expected and the world exhausted, this Thursday (29), all the natural resources that the planet is capable of renewing over a period of one year.

In other words, in 2021, Earth exhausted its energy budget in less than seven months and will have to operate until the end of December with an ecological deficit.

This is one of the worst rates recorded since the world went into environmental overload at the beginning of the 1970s. calculation was made by GFN (Global Footprint Network), an international research organization. 

On the one hand, the entity analyzed the planet's biocapacity, which would be the amount of ecological resources that the Earth can generate in a given year. On the other hand, the world's energy demands were assessed. With this information, the institution measured how many days the biocapacity would be sufficient to meet the planet's energy demand. 

Getting worse and worse

According to the institution, Overshoot Day has arrived earlier and earlier as the years go by. In 1970, the world's resources were exhausted on December 29th. In 2000, the deficit was reached in October and, in 2010, at the end of August.

Read too: Despite advances to reduce pollutants, the G-20 target is far from being achieved.

Among the factors that most contributed to the negative result in 2021 are the increase of 6.6% in carbon emissions compared to last year and the reduction of 0.5% in global forest biocapacity. 

Renewable energy

For Markus Vlasits, coordinator of the Storage GT at ABSOLAR (Brazilian Photovoltaic Solar Energy Association), the data presented by the international research institute are extremely worrying.

“The study shows, very clearly, that we need to change our lifestyle and question the way we eat, the waste we produce and the way we move. We need to act more intelligently and with less impact on the environment”, he emphasized. 

According to the coordinator, Brazil itself is one of the countries that urgently needs to review its environmental policy. “The current water crisis shows the need for greater diversification of the Brazilian energy matrix”, he highlighted.

Read too: Water crisis could be a catalyst for approval of PL 5829.

“It is unacceptable for a country with so many natural resources to have more than 30% of its electrical generation from fossil sources. This is completely unacceptable, because we know that the solution is to increase our renewable matrix – mainly solar – which is the source that can be scaled as quickly as possible”, he highlighted.

  

Picture of Henrique Hein
Henry Hein
He worked at Correio Popular and Rádio Trianon. He has experience in podcast production, radio programs, interviews and reporting. Has been following the solar sector since 2020.

2 Responses

  1. Excellent article Henrique, I have a sanctuary that is pure cerrado, all the farms around it have deforested to plant crops, I have resisted, as there is no longer a place in my region that is completely untouchable by human hands. I will not sell it and will preserve it for posterity. May Brazil start planting instead of just deforesting.

  2. But there is a lot of cascade designed to scare and generate highly anxious, even neurotic, people. But, it's not by chance, no. It is a behavioral conditioning process known, after Pavlov's pioneering studies, as “Dog Training”.

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