Earth Overshoot Day In a Simple Example

Photo by NOAA on Unsplash

August 22 was a day of Earth Overshoot Day 2020. The day means that humans exhausted ecological resources in a year. I will give a simple example. An imprecise example, but hopefully easy to understand.

Imagine you own a chicken farm. There are 30 chickens on your farm. Every chicken will lay an egg once a month. It means that your chicken farm has a circle to recover in a month. If you want to sustain your farm, you should only eat one chicken a day. If you do that, you can maintain the amount of chicken for a long time. Unfortunately, you consume 30 chickens in 20 days. That makes you not sustain with your farm anymore.

My story about a chicken farm is a representation of earth overshoot day. Human exhaust ecological resources for a year in eight-month (January 1 — August 22). Humans consume ecological resources in 8 months where the resources can recover in a year. Humans over consume and over hunts. The impact may not for us now, but it will be very impactful for our next generation. (yg)