
It comes around sooner and sooner every year: Earth Overshoot Day, previously known as Ecological Debt Day. It’s the day on which we’ve used up more natural resources (through deforestation, emitting more CO2 than forests can store, and overfishing) than the Earth can regenerate. It was September 8th in 2008; last year it was August 13th, this year it's August 8th. What will it be next year?
At the rate we’re going, we would currently need 1.6 Earths. Shame we only have one.
So what can each and every one of us do? Walk or cycle short distances, if possible. Reduce waste. Recycle. Switch off the lights when leaving a room. All these things are great, but there’s another powerful tool each and every one of us can use at least three times a day:
Leave animals off your plate.
It’s no secret anymore that animal agriculture is immensely wasteful and harmful to the environment. It’s responsible for nearly 15% of all global greenhouse gas emissions, that’s more than the entire global transportation sector, so all cars, plains, trains, and boats combined.
The livestock sector is the cause of at least 90% of rainforest destruction in the Amazon region, the so-called ‘lungs of the planet’.
Eat fish instead? Please don’t. According to a UN report, over 90% of fish stocks are exploited or even depleted, and could be gone within the next three decades.
If you need help going vegan, try our free 30 Day Vegan programme.
If you’re vegan already, take to Facebook/Twitter/Instagram with the official Overshoot Day hashtag #pledgefortheplanet and show people how wonderful – and wonderfully easy – the vegan lifestyle is.
Let’s make sure that in the future, there will be no such thing anymore as Earth Overshoot Day!