Earth Overshoot Day—a marker of when the world's 7.6 billion people will "use more from nature than our planet can renew in the entire year"—will fall on Aug. 1, the earliest date yet since we first went into ecological debt in the 1970s.
"In other words, humanity is currently using nature 1.7 times faster than our planet's ecosystems can regenerate—or 'using 1.7 Earths,'" said the Global Footprint Network in a press release.
The international research organization uses Ecological Footprint accounting to calculate the date each year. Last year's Earth Overshoot Day fell a day later on Aug. 2.
"As we mark Earth Overshoot Day, today may seem no different from yesterday—you still have the same food in your refrigerator," Global Footprint Network CEO Mathis Wackernagel said in the press release. "But fires are raging in the Western United States and in Cape Town, South Africa, residents have had to slash water consumption in half since 2015. These are consequences of busting the ecological budget of our one and only planet."
So what will happen after Aug. 1? In the remaining five months of 2018, human beings will draw on Earth's precious and limited reserves of fresh water, land, fisheries and forests, making it harder for these ecosystems to regenerate their resources.
"Our economies are running a Ponzi scheme with our planet. We are using the Earth's future resources to operate in the present and digging ourselves deeper into ecological debt," Wackernagel said.
Compared to the 1960s, humankind only spent three-quarters of Earth's annual resource allotment. However, by the 1970s, economic and population growth has driven Earth into this annual downward trend.
Carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels has become the fastest-growing part of the Ecological Footprint, the Global Footprint Network warned. CO2 is also being released at a rate much faster than it can be absorbed.
Thus, a significant reduction of carbon emissions is "an essential step" to avoid ecological overshoot and to also mitigate the harmful impacts of climate change, the research organization stated.
"It's time to leverage our creativity and ingenuity to create a prosperous future free of fossil fuels and planetary destruction," Wackernagel said.
The Global Footprint Network has listed the four following solution areas to address ecological overshoot:
- Cities: If we reduce driving by 50 percent around the world and replace one-third of car miles with public transportation and the rest by walking and biking, we can #MoveTheDate of Overshoot Day back 12 days.
- Energy: Reducing the carbon component of humanity's Ecological Footprint by 50 percent would #MoveTheDate 93 days.
- Food: If everyone in the world cut food waste in half, reduced the Footprint intensity of their diets, and consumed world-average calories, we would #MoveTheDate 38 days.
- Population: If every other family in the world had one less child, we would move Overshoot Day 30 days by 2050.
Global Carbon Emissions on the Rise Again Due to Coal Comeback https://t.co/VvMGqjv5Ky @BeyondCoal @dirtyenergy— EcoWatch (@EcoWatch)1529010015.0
- We'll Soon Be Using More Than Earth Can Provide ›
- Coronavirus Delays 2020 Earth Overshoot Day by Three Weeks - EcoWatch ›
"Now that we are spending more time at home, we are noticing the large number of delivery vans and lorries driving through cities," said Netherlands environment minister Stientje van Veldhoven, announcing plans to ban all but zero-emission deliveries in 14 cities.
"The agreements we are setting down will ensure that it will be a matter of course that within a few years, supermarket shelves will be stocked, waste will be collected, and packages will arrive on time, yet without any exhaust fumes and CO2 emissions," she added.
She expects 30 cities to announce zero emission urban logistics by this summer. City councils must give four years' notice before imposing bans as part of government plans for emission-free road traffic by 2050. The city bans aim to save 1 megaton of CO2 each year by 2030.
Help to Change
To encourage transport organizations to go carbon-free, the government is offering grants of more than US$5,900 to help businesses buy or lease electric vehicles. There will be additional measures to help small businesses make the change.
The Netherlands claims it is the first country in the world to give its cities the freedom to implement zero-emission zones. Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht already have "milieuzones" where some types of vehicles are banned.
Tilburg, one of the first wave of cities imposing the Dutch ban, will not allow fossil-fuelled vehicles on streets within its outer ring road and plans to roll out a network of city-wide electric vehicle charging stations before the ban comes into effect in 2025.
"Such initiatives are imperative to improve air quality. The transport of the future must be emission-free, sustainable, and clean," said Tilburg city alderman Oscar Dusschooten.
Europe Takes Action
Research by Renault shows that many other European cities are heading in the same direction as the Netherlands, starting with Low Emission Zones of which Germany's "Umweltzone" were pioneers. More than 100 communes in Italy have introduced "Zonas a traffico limitato."
Madrid's "zona de baja emisión" bans diesel vehicles built before 2006 and petrol vehicles from before 2000 from central areas of the city. Barcelona has similar restrictions and the law will require all towns of more than 50,000 inhabitants to follow suit.
Perhaps the most stringent restrictions apply in London's Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ), which charges trucks and large vehicles up to US$137 a day to enter the central area if they do not comply with Euro 6 emissions standards. From October, the ULEZ is being expanded.
Cities are responsible for around 75% of CO2 emissions from global final energy use, according to the green thinktank REN21 - and much of these come from transport. Globally, transport accounts for 24% of world CO2 emissions.
The Rise of Online Shopping
Part of the reason for traffic in urban areas is the increase in delivery vehicles, as online shopping continues to grow. Retailer ecommerce sales are expected to pass $5billion in 2022, according to eMarketer.
The World Economic Forum's report The Future of the Last-Mile Ecosystem, published in January 2020, estimates that e-commerce will increase the number of delivery vehicles on the roads of the world's 100 largest cities by 36% by 2030.
If all those vehicles burn fossil fuels, the report says emissions will increase by 32%. But switching to all-electric delivery vehicles would cut emissions by 30% from current levels as well as reducing costs by 25%, the report says.
Other solutions explored in the report include introducing goods trams to handle deliveries alongside their passenger-carrying counterparts and increased use of parcel lockers to reduce the number of doorstep deliveries.
Reposted with permission from the World Economic Forum.