Thursday 1 August this year marked ‘Earth Overshoot Day’ – the moment when humanity had supposedly used all of its natural resources for the year, and has started to consume those ‘belonging’ to future generations.
This is a dubious calculation at best. To come up with the date, which changes each year, you divide the planet’s biocapacity (how many resources the Earth can generate each year) by humanity’s so-called ecological footprint.
Regardless of how accurate it is, Earth Overshoot Day allows various green groups to promote their favoured solution to this supposed cataclysm. If you look at the Earth Overshoot Day website, you will see that this mostly involves advocating for a smaller global population. Or, in the words of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, ‘investing in smaller families’.
Sadly, green campaigns like the risible Earth Overshoot Day seem to be getting precisely what they have wished for. Last year, a report by Eurostat warned of the serious demographic crisis facing Europe. According to estimates, the European population will shrink by six per cent, or by 27.3million people, by 2100. At such a date, the report states, those over the age of 80 will be a similar percentage of the population as those under 20.
The United States is also facing population decline. The US Census Bureau estimates that the country’s population will peak at 370million people in 2080, before dropping to 366million in 2100. In fact, the world over, all evidence suggests that we ought to be far more worried about depopulation than overpopulation.
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