What if the earth was a fast-loan company?

But what if this wasn’t an opportunity, but a must? What if we really had to live with what the planet gives us on a yearly level?

The Earth Overshoot Day represents the calendar date of the year by which humanity’s resource consumption for the year exceeds the Earth’s capacity to regenerate those resources that year. It’s the date after which we start living of debt to the Earth. The debt has started to accumulate from 1970. Since then, the overshoot day has systematically moved earlier in the calendar year: From end of December in 1970 to end of July in 2021. The main causes for the overshoot include liquidating stocks of ecological resources and accumulating waste, primarily carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

But the earth is forgiving. For 50 years it has kept on loaning us more from its capital. The inevitable question is, at which point have we consumed too much capital for the bank to force a shut down? Sure, we are already paying interests as for instance extreme weather events, resource depletion and loss of biodiversity. Although dramatic, these interests have not been enough to stop the loaning.

Indeed, the earth is acting like a solid bank, giving out 100-year mortgages. It is still confident that we will come to our senses eventually. If instead, the earth was operating like a fast-loan company, the humanity would have ruined its credit information decades ago. The earth would have already sent out a hostile loan collector to take out whatever it can and denied us of any future loan from any similar operator.

What would “losing our credit info” mean in practice? If we do a very harsh simplification, it could for example mean an obligatory earth hour starting from the overshoot day and lasting until the end of the year. Our bank would say: Money’s up, lights out, let’s see if you do more wisely next year.

The fact that we still have an opportunity to celebrate the earth hour is a privilege. By thinking our consumption and way of life more regularly let’s hope we keep it that way and change the course of the overshoot day. The earth hour acts as a perfect reminder of the value of the earth.