
Today is Earth Overshoot Day – (08/22) - Kydlaw
https://www.overshootday.org/newsroom/past-earth-overshoot-days/
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amelius
Good marketing. Reminds me of the time when I was a student and I reached the
end of my money while there was still some month left.

Unfortunately, for a lot of people this end-of-month problem is still a
reality. And until that changes, I'm afraid that the Earth is just at a lower
priority.

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roenxi
This seems a bit arbitrary. All our fossil fuel use is effectively non-
renewable; so we've effectively exceeded the sustainable capacity of the earth
to support us some time on 1 January.

This 'biocapacity' that has been identified isn't going to be a limit as long
as we have cheap energy. The earth can't provide anywhere close to the amount
of food we use; we need artificial fertiliser and machines which is,
practically, non-renewable after accounting for how we source energy for
transport and powering farm equipment.

Synthetic fertiliser alone means I'm not sure I care about 'biocapacity'. See
[https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-population-with-
and...](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-population-with-and-without-
fertilizer)

~~~
donw
Bingo. The Green Revolution massively increased Earth's carrying capacity, but
at the cost of total dependence on artificial fertilizers, pesticides,
herbicides, and machinery, with the alternative being "half of the human
population on Earth starves to death".

Fertilizers we can make without fossil fuels -- the Haber process could likely
use hydrogen sourced via electrolysis. I don't know about limits on phosphate
or potassium (the "PK" in "NPK").

Equipment and farming practices are improving in terms of energy and material
efficiency, and I suspect we'll get to the point where we can run everything
off of electricity in the next decade, but we still need to generate a lot of
that -- which means nuclear, because I don't see renewables getting there any
time soon.

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mindfulhack
I believe the scientists, but I'm not sure this type of 'marketing' is
effective and it could possibly even be damaging, or at least a waste of
effort (which means damaging).

To someone non-sciency in mindset (which is a great deal of the population),
they see this graph, and yet they don't see such hyperbolic, catastrophic,
world-ending stuff happening in their day-to-day reality. It's even too
cartoonishly hyperbolic to be justified by starvation in Africa.

This type of framing of this problem is alarmist, but it can then backfire due
to seeming unrealistic and out of touch with reality, making science's
reputation even worse.

Anyone else agree? I'm not a professional scientist, just a small thought.

Perhaps a different approach is needed entirely? We don't need 'cool' alarming
and sensationalist marketing that grab newspapers' attention more than
anything.

It's not really solving the problem, is it?

~~~
donw
> This type of framing of this problem is alarmist, but it can then backfire
> due to seeming unrealistic and out of touch with reality, making science's
> reputation even worse.

That damage was done long ago. Read the "other side"[1] of the "climate
debate". I am old enough to remember some of those headlines.

Even though I look at climate change as an existential threat to humanity, I
also readily acknowledge that the people beating that drum have mostly done it
to make themselves richer.

Nobody wants to pay a carbon tax when they think it's just driven by massive
corporate interests, and going into the pocket of a bunch of corrupt
politicians.

You might laugh, but I think the off-the-grid homesteaders are on the right
track. There's a _lot_ of focus on sustainable living in that community --
agriculture, home-building technologies, water, energy, food storage, the lot.

That provides fertile ground for small-scale innovation in those spaces.

We also need to stop packing people into massive cities. Low-rise buildings
are, to my knowledge, much more sustainable, both to build and maintain. A
larger number of smaller cities -- bikeable and totally mixed-use -- plus
well-supported outlying rural areas, seems like a much better mix than the
MegaCityOne approach we've been taking.

With improved battery technology, I could see those as being connected with
semi-autonomous electric cars, busses and trains as appropriate.

Although I worry about how sustainable that is, but biofuels (likely alcohol)
are also a carbon-neutral option.

I'm hoping that remote work helps drive this, and coupled with tariffs against
countries that don't have strong environmental protections, will both open up
opportunities for younger people, and help us get our act together from a
sustainability perspective.

[1] [https://www.breitbart.com/environment/2019/09/20/nolte-
clima...](https://www.breitbart.com/environment/2019/09/20/nolte-climate-
experts-are-0-41-with-their-doomsday-predictions/)

------
Kydlaw
3 weeks later compared to 2019. Mostly thanks to COVID-19?

~~~
primis
Probably, this may be the biggest argument for telecommuting. Less driving >
less greenhouse emissions.

There was also a huge hit to the produce and livestock industries as
restaurants closed which may play a part as well

~~~
api
Restaurants are so wasteful. Huge amounts of food is thrown away both in the
kitchen and in the form of uneaten plates. Just going from restaurants to home
probably saves a decent amount of food.

~~~
elric
It's very much not in a restaurant's interest to waste food in the kitchen.
Ingredients are a significant part of their costs, so restaurants worth their
salt (hah) are usually pretty good about this. And this is starting to be
regulated in some places as well.

Portion sizes on the other hand are entirely ridiculous. I often eat out with
a tiny friend (in height and width). They tend to ask for smaller portions,
but it's _insane_ that many restaurants simply refuse to be amenable to that
request. This means either I get fat eating their leftovers, or half a portion
goes in the rubbish. Taking the leftovers home is rarely an option over here.
I get that you probably can't serve half a chicken breast. But there seems to
be no logical reason not to serve fewer fries, potatoes, pasta, whatever when
a paying customer asks for it.

~~~
beervirus
Why isn’t it an option to take leftovers home? I do that all the time.

~~~
lnanek2
It isn't done in Europe. Some OSEA countries think it makes you look poor as
well.

I do it every outing here in the US, though! Our portion sizes are ridiculous.

~~~
tsimionescu
Here in Eastern Europe (Romania) it is definitely an option. I know both
people who do and people who don't like to do it.

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hyko
These kinds of metrics give the environmental movement a bad name. It’s
complete bullshit.

Edited to add: you probably have an intuitive idea of what “overshooting” our
“environmental footprint” means, but I guarantee that your intuition does not
tally with the details of how this number is derived. The huge number involved
principally relies on _the area of forest required to offset human carbon
emissions_ , which is a bizarre choice of land use.

File this one away with the “happiest/sadness/most flatulent” day of the year
formulas. It’s a bunch of numbers multiplied together designed to generate
headlines, not a serious instrument we can use to guide policy decisions.

[https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou...](https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1001700)

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spullara
Been doing pretty well considering we apparently haven't had enough
biocapacity for us to survive for the last 40 years.

~~~
pavlov
It’s more like taking a new payday loan every month, and never fully paying
off the old ones. You may think you’re managing until finally nobody will lend
you and the house of cards comes down.

The lender here is the ecosystem, and the skyrocketing interest rate is the
planet’s temperature and loss of biodiversity, among other warning signs.

~~~
lmilcin
Better analogy would be getting inheritance and using it up at a growing pace
while congratulating yourself for doing good job by getting the growing under
control a little bit while the inheritance is still drying up very quickly.

Our children and grandchildren won't have the luxury of inheritance and are
going to pay for our carelessness.

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ksdale
Does anyone have a link to the methodology they use to calculate the
biocapacity of the Earth? It sounds very interesting.

~~~
pickledish
Poked around their site a little and found this, seems to answer your
question?

[https://www.overshootday.org/content/uploads/2020/06/Earth-O...](https://www.overshootday.org/content/uploads/2020/06/Earth-
Overshoot-Day-2020-Calculation-Research-Report.pdf)

~~~
ksdale
Great, thank you!

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ultrablack
If prices on raw materials and food go up, then yes. Otherwise, technology
keeps up with the restraints. Malthus is still dead.

