The
Earth Overshoot Day, the day when humans’ annual demand on natural resources
exceeds what our planet can regenerate or reproduce in one year, fell on 2
August this year. Yes, we had managed to use a year’s worth of resources injust seven months. This means we have used and consumed more trees, fish and water than can be regenerated over the entire year and emitted more carbon than what the forests and oceans are able to absorb.
The Global Footprint Network calculates each year’s
Overshoot Day and according to the calculations, we’re using the resources of
1.7 planets every year. The equation has four main factors: how much we
consume; how efficiently products are made; how many of us there are; and how
much nature’s ecosystem is able to produce. The Overshoot Day and how many earths we need differ among
countries as the pictures below show.
When
will we ever wake up and acknowledge that global warming is real? When will we
realise that our greed, insatiable appetite and unthinking ways are putting constraints on the
environment? We are using more ecological resources than nature can possibly regenerate
and this is putting the Earth on an unsustainable trajectory. We are demanding
more from the Earth than it can produce. You can track what impact your own
actions have on the world’s natural resources here.
I
was at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel prayer room just last Saturday. As my usual
practice, I went to the bathroom first before performing part of ablutions at
the bathroom (the bathroom tap dispenses water automatically so I could control
how much water I should use and not get my clothes wet as I’d be prone to do if
performing ablutions at the prayer room. Of course I still had to wash my feet
in the prayer room) before heading to the prayer room. There were two ladies
who were there ahead of me and they took so long to perform ablutions that I had
finished two sunat prayers and started on my Zuhor prayers before they were
done with their ablutions. The taps were on full blast and I couldn’t help
wondering at the gallons of water wasted and how they managed to keep their
clothes dry. Was it necessary to waste so much water (and mind you, that was no isolated event)? In Mecca and Medinah,
pilgrims are able to perform ablutions using only a small bottle of water so
why do we use so much water here? Similarly, why do we use so much water to
wash our cars and porch? Have we forgotten the drought days of El Niño
when it got so bad that we had to live days where the tap water was switched
off and only had hours to refill our containers and pails when the tap water
was switched back on? It’s alarming how short our memories are!
It’s
time we start changing our unsustainable ways of living. Educate
our children and teach even our pets not to waste resources (I wince whenever I see
video clips of cats playing with tap water). We are already living
in deficit as it is. The world’s resource bank has gone into overdraft!
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