Insatiable humans plunge Earth into‘ecological debt’

Humans have used up the natural resources the world can supply in a year in less than eight months, campaigners have warned.

The world has now reached “earth overshoot day”, the point in the year when humans have exhausted supplies such as land, trees and fish and outstripped the planet’s annual capacity to absorb waste products including carbon dioxide.

The problem is worsening, with the planet sliding into “ecological debt” earlier and earlier, so that the day on which the world has used up all the natural resources available for the year has shifted from early October in 2000 to August 19 in 2014.