It's Earth Overshoot Day
It's time to change from a culture of hyper-consumption
Today is Earth Overshoot Day in New Zealand. As of tomorrow, New Zealand will be in planetary overshoot for 2025. Overshoot means we will be consuming more resources and energy than our planet can provide, and creating more pollution than our planet can absorb, in a year.
Do you want to be part of the culture of hyper-consumption that risks killing billions of humans and ending innumerable other lives on Earth within our lifetimes?
Or do you want to be part of a culture of regeneration of life on Earth?
We only have one planet to call home. Even though it seems vast, if everyone lived like we do here, we would need three planets to sustain us.
Our culture of consumption means that we are already overshooting 6 of the 9 planetary boundaries, including climate change, biodiversity integrity, plastic pollution, and freshwater use. Overshooting these boundaries means that rapid ecological collapse has already begun. A report by the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries warns that this planetary insolvency risks reducing global GDP by up to 50% between 2070 and 2090.
More importantly, the report warns that we are currently on a path to a 3 °C temperature rise by 2050, which could result in more than 4 billion deaths, significant sociopolitical fragmentation worldwide, failure of states (with resulting rapid, enduring, and significant loss of capital), and extinction events.
It is clear that we need to focus on returning to within all planetary boundaries, which means preventing not only greenhouse gas emissions but also plastic and other forms of pollution, habitat and biodiversity loss, and wasteful freshwater use.
Some technological solutions are effective at addressing overshoot of one planetary boundary, but may worsen overshoot of another, so we need to find pathways that simultaneously address all planetary boundaries.
For example, we are told that by electrifying everything in our homes, we will save money and reduce emissions. While we must take rapid action on emissions, such technologies require resource extraction that negatively impacts habitat and biodiversity loss, as well as freshwater use. Such impacts are often overlooked as they occur elsewhere, but this is a flawed mindset, as we are all part of one planetary system.
Such technological solutions also foster a continued culture of consumption and business as usual, in which we swap out one technology for another to make us feel that we are doing our bit for the planet, while keeping up our hyper-consumption lifestyles. As power becomes increasingly expensive in New Zealand, the savings will only go to the richest members of society who can afford such technologies, further increasing inequality.
We believe that the only viable way to address overshoot is to change from a culture of wasteful hyper-consumption to one of sufficiency. This is how we can all save money, lives, and life itself on planet Earth. Any solution being sold to you that doesn’t involve reducing consumption and a holistic planetary approach is effectively greenwashing.
We must start by refusing to support businesses that rely on the hyper-consumption of fossil fuels, fast fashion, wasteful shipping, and plastic junk. We must buy locally, supporting businesses and organisations in our communities.
We must stop buying crap.
If you want help to find ways to change to a more positive culture that fosters life and regeneration within Earth’s planetary boundaries, join us at GoZero. Check out GoZero’s Challenges to find ways to tackle overshoot and earn points that will unlock donations to projects that restore nature.
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