Sustainability

graph showing increasingly early dates for Earth OVershoot DayOver more than 50 years of tracking, humanity’s consumption of resources increasingly exceeds the planet’s ability to regenerate.

Resource usage exceeds planetary capacity for year

Yesterday — Aug. 1 — marked “Earth Overshoot Day,” the point in the calendar when humanity’s demand for ecological resources surpasses what the planet can regenerate within the year, and UWindsor sustainability officer Nadia Harduar is pointing to efforts to address this imbalance.

“If we want to push Earth Overshoot Day closer to Dec. 31 or even later, we’ll all have to contribute to the effort,” Harduar says.