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posted by janrinok on Friday August 14 2015, @09:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the living-on-borrowed-time dept.

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/


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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @10:50PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @10:50PM (#223044)

    The whole point is that the rich elite who meet in secret are worried because they cant control the human race at the size that it now is, so they need to make a reason for the human race to kill itself off a bit in order to make things more manageable.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2015, @12:05AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2015, @12:05AM (#223074)

    in order to make things more manageable.

    Television is doing a good job of keeping people dumb and manageable. Its a slow process, but it definitely works. Indoctrinate and victimize viewers with propaganda slowly that they wouldn't realize what is being done to them.

    The few still not indoctrinated by television are attacked by (hollywood) movies so dumb and worthless, they make a smart person cry.

    Internet and books still allow a person to get education and get smart, so they are controlling it all they can. Internet certainly did crap on their plans for world domination and set them back years or even decades.

    • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday August 15 2015, @12:03PM

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Saturday August 15 2015, @12:03PM (#223238) Journal

      Internet certainly did crap on their plans for world domination and set them back years or even decades.

      Did it? Now they know intimate details about orders of magnitude more people. Information is power, and they have much more of it now than they did. And through mobile phones and soon the Internet of Things they'll be able to, theoretically, activate a kill switch for everything in your life. Your fridge shuts off. Your car shuts down. Et cetera.

      The way I see it, the outcome of that stand-off pivots on the geeks. What will they do? Will they cooperate with the Masters of the Universe, or defect?

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.