From August 1st, humanity draws on the Earth’s natural resources

“Earth Overshoot Day”, the symbolic date on which humanity has consumed all the natural resources that the planet is capable of producing in 1 year, falls in 2024, on Thursday, August 1.

This year, in 2024, this Overshoot Day falls on Thursday, August 1st. Neither better nor worse than in previous years. Because, with the exception of 2020 with the lockdowns that allowed us to preserve our resources a little more, over the last eight years, Overshoot Day always falls at roughly the same time, around the end of July-beginning of August.

So theoretically we have five months left before the end of 2024 in the red, to draw on the Earth’s natural resources. For comparison, in 1970, this day fell on December 29, it was perfect. But the deterioration then took place gradually. It should be noted that this August 1 is the common date for the entire world. However, if all humans consumed like the French, the overshoot day would fall three months earlier, on May 7.

The American NGO Global Footprint Network created this concept and calculates our ecological footprint every year. It takes into account on one side CO2 emissions, meat production, agricultural areas, and electricity production. And on the other side calculates all the natural resources that the Earth can produce in one year.

However, this calculation has been the subject of several research studies in which scientists demonstrated that the methods for calculating this overshoot day were incomplete, and that sometimes we were adding apples and oranges. The designers of the overshoot day recognize this, and over the years, they have refined and improved their calculation methods. If the overshoot day is not exactly well placed on the calendar, it is above all a very good communication tool, something simple to understand and which can raise awareness.

The French authorities have therefore decided to relay this message, via Ademe. The French Agency for Ecological Transition explains that “This August 1st is an opportunity to recall the planetary limits, especially since the counter does not start from zero every January 1st, these tensions accumulating year after year.”

Ademe therefore invites everyone to limit their use of natural resources, for example, by being reasonable this summer in their consumption of water and energy, by avoiding waste or by giving a second life to objects.