In Austria, Earth Overshoot Day fell as early as 7th April. High meat consumption and extensive air travel have a major impact on resource use. From 1st August, humanity is consuming more resources than the Earth can renew in a year. In other words, we're living as if we had 1.7 Earths at our disposal. This is reported by the organisation Germanwatch, citing calculations by the Global Footprint Network, based in the USA and Switzerland. The so-called Earth Overshoot Day thus falls one day earlier than last year.
Earth overshoot includes consumption of fish, farmland and timber, as well as the Earth's capacity to absorb waste and emissions. Aircraft are particularly harmful to the climate. In addition to CO2 emissions, they cause roughly three times the greenhouse effect compared to the same amount of CO2 produced at ground level, Germanwatch points out.
Rail travel as a more sustainable alternative
One reason for this is contrails. By contrast, rail travel offers a more sustainable alternative, being up to 28 times more climate-friendly than intra-European flights. A very small proportion of the world's population is responsible for this major driver of the climate crisis through their flying habits, explained Jacob Rohm from Germanwatch.
On the occasion of Earth Overshoot Day, the environmental organisation WWF Austria called for a halt to the enormous consumption of resources and the restoration of damaged nature. "The insatiable hunger for resources not only leads to the destruction of our natural world — we're also plundering the future of generations to come. We need to start treating our planet sustainably, once and for all," said Joschka Brangs, biodiversity spokesperson for WWF Austria…
Read the full article at kurier.at.
Find everything about Earth Overshoot Day at overshoot.footprintnetwork.org
