Newsletter BOX: WildWire: It's Overshoot Day: We've used up Earth's natural resources for the year

Today is Earth Overshoot Day—the day our resource demands exceed nature’s capacity for the year.

Earth Overshoot Day: We Are Overstepping Nature’s Limits

Released: August 20, 2013

Overshoot Day reminds us that we are using natural resources faster than the Earth can replenish them. © NASA

Today is Earth Overshoot Day—the day our demands on the planet's natural resources exceed its capacity. Every year, WWF’s partner the Global Footprint Network calculates the date by which our resource consumption for a given year exceeds the planet’s ability to replenish. In the first eight months of 2013, we have exhausted the natural resources that should last all year. We are now dipping into resources that we cannot afford to use.

By 2050, the global population is expected to reach 9 billion—increasing pressure not only on Earth’s natural resources, like water, timber and salmon, but also on many of the world’s most environmentally sensitive regions. We all depend on a healthy planet to sustain life.

Overshoot Day is a bold indication that now is the time to fight harder to create a world where we all live within our ecological limits.

Find out more about Overshoot Day and what you can do to help balance our ecological checkbook.

Learn More and Make a Difference:

* Read how WWF's Chief Scientist believes we can put the planet on a sustainable trajectory

* Get involved: How you can help bring our demands back in balance with a finite planet

* Read “Do All The Good You Can,” a joint op-ed in Forbes and Skoll World Forum by Carter Roberts, WWF's President and CEO, and Neville Isdell, Chairman, WWF's Board of Directors

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