World Overshoot Day 2006
Urban Ecology News. 2006.10.9
World Overshoot Day is getting earlier every year.
World Overshoot Day for a given year represents the extent that human consumption of natural resources (energy, food, materials) exceeds renewable supply of such resources. It is the day that resource consumption so far that year exceeds renewable resource supply for the whole year. The remaining part of the year represents overshoot.
As human consumption of natural resources increases, World Overshoot Day creeps earlier on the calendar. Overshoot Day 1987 was 19 December. Overshoot Day 2006 is 9 October.
Although not all the Earth's bio-capacity is diverted to human consumption (some natural resources are left for use by non-human species), we reach beyond biocapacity by extracting non-renewable resources such as minerals and fossil fuels, and by extracting renewable resources such as wood beyond the capacity for replenishment.