Earth Overshoot day, what is the worst case scenario?

http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/earth_overshoot_day/

Various other news websites mentioning the day are getting earlier each year

Due to morbid curiosity, what happens at the ultimate limit when the overshoot day of a year have proceed to the point that it occurs at the beginning (1 January) of every year?

 

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well... first thing required is belief that their calculations are relevant to reality. Took their little test. 3.7 earths. Okey dokey...

So I went back and changed one thing on the test. My driving milage. Changed it from the 15-30 mpg to over 40 mpg. Effect on footprint? 0.1. OK So Gas Milage isnt the real issue in footprints. And that is ignoring there is a huge difference between 15 mpg and 30 mpg or over 40 mpg.

Changed one more thing. Changed beef to never from once or twice per week. Effect on footprint? 0.1. Again.

Soo I changed another thing. I now frequent the farmers market all the time but munch potato chips. Effect? Same as above. Still need 3.7 earths to support my lifestyle. So WtF?

So I moved out of my single dwelling home into a duplex/multifamily home. Dammit... Still 3.7.

OK Now I am going extreme... Shut the damn electricity off, I am going to rough it. Theres a creek down the hill I can bucket water out of. What happens? 3.5 earths to accommodate my (reduced) lifestyle.

So now I wonder... Whats the point of going after power companies if having it vs discarding it gives such little impact.... Hey wait!! If I dont have power I wont need to replace old utilities! So I changed a couple settings there. Never read again. No fridge, no tv, no more spider solitare. OMG! reduced it another 0.1. But I am STILL at 3.5 earths?!

Point being the whole quiz is bullshit which leads me to believe their whole premise of Earth Overshoot is/should be put out to pasture. Should be room now that I've quit eating beef...

 

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You have overlooked the presumptions of the small and subsidiary "personal quiz" part of the site. They are as follows:

So what you learned by taking the quiz is that individual Americans making personal adjustments can have only a small effect - that in America we have to go after the power companies, etc, on a larger scale than personal sacrifice.

 

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Me, I'd go and live with Bigfoot.

 

So what was your footprint?

Footprint Calculator
How much land area does it take to support your lifestyle? Take this quiz to find out your Ecological Footprint, discover your biggest areas of resource consumption, and learn what you can do to tread more lightly on the earth.

Problem is, the footprint isnt representative of my lifestyle and I am not responsible (or am involuntarily responsible) for lifestyles I do not live. Plenty of pacifists feel the same way about their taxes going to build more tanks/guns/fighter jets. If I go to jail for not paying taxes, will the Footprint Calculator reflect that or am I still responsible? Hey Wait!! Plenty of americans are so poor they havent been paying taxes to fund this infrastructure. Wheres the checkbox for that in the calculation?

The Footprint calculator is dubious on its reflection of reality which means its entire premise of Earth Overshoot is suspect.

 

Bring some matches. Bigfoot doesnt appear to have discovered fire.

 

But he does have a VERY big footprint.

 

LOL... I just did a bigfoot profile (one bigfoot). All natural food, no meat, dairy, less than 200 miles, no processed, Eco home, no car, no airplanes, no electricity, no paper/electronics, and just for fun I recycled 100% of paper/plastic.

2. 8 earths. 71% services.

So I changed it to wood, no water and 3 people. Discovered there is No zero setting for electricity even if you choose no power, lowest I could get it was $4 per month for both power and gas/heat.

2.8 earths. 71% on services.

 

I own a ranch and sell them.

 

You continue to draw exactly the opposite conclusion that a comprehension of the basis of the calculation would indicate: that the important matters are of individual responsibility and effect.

Your personal footprint is an entertaining (or not) sidelight, but not relevant to the central concept - it's main value is to demonstrate that the seriously effective responses are political and at a fairly large scale.

 

If the goal is to show that nothing you can do will help, it does that admirably. Not sure that's a good conclusion though.

 

Untrue. Its conclusion (regarding my footprint) is allegedly based on "if Everyone Lived As You Do".

or it could be another example of Confirmation Bias on the part of the developer(s) of the idea/model.

 

It shows that the solutions - if any - are going to be political and imposed on governments and corporations, not individual and imposed on one's back yard. That's a fact.

It also highlights the bs factor in the common CP response genre: "Al Gore flies in jet planes", "I don't see you giving up your car", etc.

Every individual living in the US or Australia, affecting only their own personal circumstances - not, say, their community's business use of electricity from the local coal plant. And so forth.

The personal footprint section is a sidelight, and not set up well. The main focus of the site is elsewhere.

 

Says you. However the Global Footprint Network presents the footprint as MY individual impact and does not reflect the reality at all. And they have at least in the past represented this to millions of people:

• More than a million people around the world use the tool to calculate their own footprint each year.
• GFN’s Ten-Ten campaign is engaging national governments to establish the Ecological Footprint as a prominent, globally accepted metric as ubiquitous as the GDP.

And Keep in mind I asked you where their checkbox was for the people who are so poor they dont pay taxes in the USA (my choice for footprint)? They recognise the poor cannot buy themselves out of a given situation:

“Ecological overshoot affects us all, but disproportionately the poor, who cannot buy themselves out of the problem by getting resources from elsewhere.

http://www.skollfoundation.org/entrepreneur/susan-burns-and-mathis-wackernagel/

So its a Political tool and suspect in its presentation being as it is not represented as such.

 

In what way does it fail to reflect the reality of your footprint, as a citizen and resident?

Or are you disavowing your impact as a citizen and resident, matters beyond your individual control, and allowing only consideration of matters you can directly change by individual effort?

Why, yes. For a political situation.

 

Addressed in #5 and in the previous post ->

And Keep in mind I asked you where their checkbox was for the people who are so poor they dont pay taxes in the USA (my choice for footprint)? They recognise the poor cannot buy themselves out of a given situation:

“Ecological overshoot affects us all, but disproportionately the poor, who cannot buy themselves out of the problem by getting resources from elsewhere.

Additionally, What makes you think their alleged impact of mine is accurate? As shown with my bigfoot impact parody, it doesnt matter what you really do for their impact issue, supposedly based on "If EVERYONE lived like you do". You cannot get around the implication that their own calculations are not based on If EVERYONE lived like you do.

Then why is it in this forum and not politics?

 

The minor and sideline calculations you chose to obsess over. Sure. They say so themselves, as I pointed out above. But that's trivial.

Who knows? Maybe because it involves a technical issue, and contains no obvious implications or preferences regarding ideology etc. - any of the several reality based political approaches extant are on the table. There's no real political side or argument involved.

It does have political implications in the US, granted, but that's kind of circumstantial - reality denial only becomes a political issue by deliberate and reversible effort.

 

Yes because misrepresenting millions of personal footprints in an effort to regulate peoples lives is trivial when it meets your political objective.

 

I don't think it's fair to assume all those millions of people are that easily confused.

But I agree the disclaimers and caveats on that site are not obvious enough for some - larger fonts, maybe some exclamation points, accusations and slanders, pick up a few style pointers from Watt's Up With That or what's her name in Australia, stuff of proven effectiveness, should be employed. No sense in just preaching to the reality-based choir.

 

No, it's not. Calculate, for example, the amount of carbon emitted by private vehicles here in the US, and the amount of carbon generated to provide homes with power.