Our world enters ecological debt… overnight.
London, UK
It has taken humanity less than nine months to blow its ecological budget for the year, according to data from leading independent UK think-tank nef (the new economics foundation) and Global Footprint Network, a California-based environmental research organization.
Ecological Debt Day comes a full month earlier than last year, reflecting not only greater consumption of resources on a global scale, despite the recession, but also improvements in data collection giving a more detailed analysis than ever before. The new research, for example, indicates that the world has less grazing land available than previously estimated.
(Thanks to Jacques Lange in South Africa — sorry, link is now broken).