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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, 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.