Ecological Debt Day
Earth Overshoot Day

You may not know it but today is Ecological Debt Day - the date on which the world starts officially living beyond its means.

Ecological Debt Day has on average, each year fallen on an earlier date than the previous year.

Ecological Debt Day is conveyed using economic imagery of monetary debt as a means of reaching the general public rather than just the scientific community.

Ecological Debt Day is founded upon two scientific measures; humanity's Ecological Footprint and the Earth's biocapacity.

Every year since then, NEF has calculated the calendar date of Ecological Debt Day for each subsequent year using the above formula.

The authors of Ecological Debt Day argue that this fact constitutes a notorious trend in human society, in which humanity is falling deep into ecological debt.

When viewed through an economic perspective, Ecological Debt Day/Earth Overshoot Day represents the day in which humanity enters deficit spending, scientifically termed "overshoot".

To elicit discussion on the topic of natural resource consumption, the New Economics Foundation (NEF) marked Ecological Debt Day on that calendar year.

Humanity's Ecological Footprint for the specific calendar year is an important component of both calculating Ecological Debt for that year and for the general idea behind Ecological Debt Day.

Ecological Debt Day draws on the fact that due to these resources being finite, humanity's recent trend of consuming more resources than the Earth can produce each year constitutes a negative, unsustainable trend, termed overshoot.

Ecological Debt Day, also known as "Earth Overshoot Day", is the calendar date each year in which the total resources consumed by humanity will exceed the capacity for the Earth to generate those resources that year.

Also known as Ecological Debt Day, Earth Overshoot Day is the day in a year by which humanity has consumed as many of Earth's ecological services as nature can provide in a whole year.