ON August 1 this year, the world will mark what is known as "Overshoot Day," the point in the year at which we have used up the entire year's worth of biocapacity, or the resources that the planet can regenerate in a year. The date on which we have overdrawn our natural resources account has been steadily becoming earlier each year since the 1970s; the only times in recent history when we've been able to extend the date, and even then only by a modest amount, was during the financial crisis of 2008-2009, and during the Covid-19 pandemic for one year, in 2020. Last year, it was on August 2.
It should be noted that the measure of "resource overshoot" is not universally embraced, although those who argue that it is nothing more than "a nice publicity stunt" (the Breakthrough Institute), more often than not, have some kind of anti-conservation agenda. As an indicator for the basis of specific actions, overshoot may not be sufficiently detailed; for what it's worth, that's my impression of it. However, as a fact-based concept to illustrate broad trends and ideas, it works very well.
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