Too many people consuming too many resources and generating too much waste: that’s why humanity keeps pushing deeper into ecological overshoot. On Earth Overshoot Day, let’s not forget the P factor.
Every year on Earth Overshoot Day, a table like the one below makes the rounds, showing the number of Earths needed to be ecologically sustainable if all the people in the world had the same ecological footprint (EF) as the average citizens of various countries. This is computed by fixing the world population at the current value and varying the per capita ecological footprint. From Table 1, we see that if people around the world lived as in India, we would only need 0.72 Earths to be sustainable, while if people on average lived as in Norway, we would need 3.4 Earths. The message is clear: high consumption levels drive ecological unsustainability. But high per capita consumption is only half the story.
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