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Earth Overshoot Day is the day when—according to estimates—the total combined consumption of all human activity on Earth in a year overtakes the planet's ability to generate those resources for that year.
How is it measured ? "It's quite simple," says Dr. Mathis Wackernagel of the think tank Global Footprint Network. "We look at all the resource demands of humanity that compete for space, like food, fiber, timber, et cetera, then we look at how much area is needed to provide those services and how much productive surface is available."
Here's his bottom line metaphor. Earth Overshoot Day is like the day you spend more than your salary for a year, only you are all humans and your salary is Earth's biocapacity. Ideally, Overshoot Day would come after December 31. It wasn't too far off in 1970, when it occurred on December 23. But Overshoot Day creep has kicked in ever since. August 13 is the earliest yet—four days ahead of last year's previous record.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/08/150813-earth-overshoot-day-earlier/
(Score: 3, Informative) by bradley13 on Friday August 14 2015, @10:31PM
You make two points that would seem to be false. At least, assuming you are in the US, as most Soylentils seem to be, but really anywhere:
"welfare recipients...don't tend to have large numbers of offspring"
It is well-known that number of children is inversely related to income. For example, in the US, see this chart [statista.com]
"welfare recipients...don't fight to the death over table scraps"
"Table scraps" is obviously figurative. The rate of violent crime (both as perpetrator and as victim) is inversely proportional to income. It's currently hard to find a simple link to this, because it's now PC to talk about "income inequality". But if you dig into the FBI stats, it's clear enough.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @10:46PM
>"It is well-known that number of children is inversely related to income."
Apparently, we need to pay welfare recipients a lot more if we want to reduce their birth rate.
Actually, it is probably that welfare payouts increase with number of children, encouraging welfare recipients to have more children. It may be true that the increase in welfare pay is less than the increased cost to care for the new child, but many people are not very good at accounting.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by TrumpetPower! on Friday August 14 2015, @10:50PM
You and Ethanol-Fueled are both making the laughably idiotic assumption that the most significant recipients of societal largesse are those receiving food stamps -- which was my whole point about the third yacht and what-not.
Sure. Birth rates are higher amongst those who receive food stamps. But those who get the real welfare? You know? Like bank bailout welfare?
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @11:39PM
I agree, corporate welfare needs to go. and not just corporate welfare in the form of direct funds. Corporate welfare in the form of overreaching IP laws and other anti-competitive laws (ie: taxicab monopolies, laws that limit competition in cable and broadband) that aren't designed to promote the progress or serve a public good but are only intended to serve corporate interests at public expense.
However perhaps part of the reason that people with more children tend to make less is because educated people spent their younger years studying, working, or building their own businesses while those that spent their younger years partying, drinking, smoking, drugs, also spent their time (precariously) doing things that caused them to have children without thinking. You reap what you sow. Then the government is supposed to bail them out encouraging them to screw off even more ...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kurenai.tsubasa on Saturday August 15 2015, @04:47AM
I'd like to point out that this precludes the conscientious party animal woman who is in control of her own body… of which I cannot find many examples of over here in flyover country. Party animals, yes. Party animals who take advantage of the menagerie of resources to get the pill for free? No so many.
To that extent, your point stands!
I don't get it. It's this puritan narrative. We have the technology! Yet, so many say, “Shun the technology! Every sperm is sacred!” One could very well party, drink, smoke, do “drugs” (alcohol isn't a drug?) and get on the pill.
I was going to post a comment earlier, when I was more sober, about the perverse incentives of the USA welfare system. They base it all on when you had your last kid and how many kids you have. Thus, one needs to have kids at least once every 2–3 years as I understand it to get welfare benefits. There are women who actually game this system, with their own bodies! My former boyfriend's mother did it, and her daughter did it as well!
Here's what I truly don't understand about the puritan narrative. Every month I shed an egg without the pill. Can't help it. Just happens. If every incomplete set of DNA is sacred, then wouldn't the pill be a boon?! Logic and reality: it escapes the puritans.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2015, @10:53AM
If they were logic and reality based from the start, they would be religious anyway...