Overshoot Day 2024 – Italy

Today in Italy we “celebrate” this sad day: it’s the Overshoot Day 2024. But what does this date mean?

Why is Overshoot Day important?

Why do we consider this day so important to mark it on the calendar? It is a warning bell, a warning that invites us to reflect on the fact that we are burning resources faster than the Earth can regenerate them. The main reasons for this situation are attributable to our lifestyle: how much we consume, how we produce, how many we are, and how much nature is able to produce.

Earth Overshoot Day is the opportunity for our Planet to say: “Attention, you are wasting too much, and too quickly!” This expiration date indeed signals the end of the stocks available to various countries for the current year and indicates the moment when we go into debt with the Earth. We are therefore using natural resources sooner than expected, at the expense of our Planet.

What is Earth Overshoot Day?

It is an imaginary line that, once crossed, marks the moment when we humans begin to use more natural resources than our Planet can renew in a year. This line is drawn by dividing the Earth’s biocapacity (what our planet can provide in a year) by humanity’s demand for such resources, and multiplying the result by 365 (the number of days in a year).

By comparing the human demand for natural resources with the Earth’s capacity to regenerate them in the same period, a date is obtained. This date is not always fixed but tends to shift over the years, always sadly backward. In the early years of measurement, the early ’70s, Earth Overshoot Day indeed fell in December. In just over fifty years, this date has dangerously shortened. In 2023, the year of the last measurement, we exhausted the world’s resources on August 2.

This continuous regression must make us reflect on our unsustainable behavior. Our ecological footprint is growing, and our Planet cannot keep up. Globally, every year we accumulate a debt towards the Earth, consuming more than it can regenerate. This overexploitation has numerous impacts, such as the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which contributes to climate change.

From the ’70s to today

The first revelations about the consumption of Earth’s resources date back to the early ’70s. However, it is thanks to Andrew Simms that we began to talk about Earth Overshoot Day, starting in 2006. Simms was indeed the architect behind the launch of the first Earth Overshoot Day campaign, which, from the following year, also involved the WWF. The initial calculations saw Earth Overshoot Day, the day when the whole World would be in debt to the Planet, fall on December 25, 1971.

Almost every country has its own Overshoot Day each year, which varies depending on the country’s behavior. Those who exploit natural resources the most, as calculated by Unicusano, is Qatar, which on February 11 finished its annual stocks, while Kyrgyzstan is the “most responsible” on the list, given that its Overshoot Day is expected on December 30, 2024. However, there are also some countries, such as India, which do not reach the limit within the calendar year, and therefore do not have an Overshoot Day. For Italy, this sad recurrence falls this year on May 19.

What solutions can we adopt?

Highlighting this sad celebration can inspire a virtuous change and raise awareness of our planet’s limited resources. Some adopted behaviors can really make a difference. To do this, it is important to know your starting point. A good idea might be to calculate your digital CO2 emissions. If you then want to compensate, at least in part, for the CO2 emissions produced, you can also consider the idea of adopting a tree or planting a tree.