{ Earth Overshoot Day would be on April 23 if we all lived like me – using this calculator }
“Earth Overshoot Day marks the date when humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services in a given year exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year.” *
Today is Earth Overshoot Day 2017. This day always gets to me. It’s a sad reminder of how we take, make and dispose of so much in life that our planet can’t keep up with the pace we’ve set.
I’m no saint. While I’ve switched to a mainly plant based diet, only shop eco fashion, and try to buy as locally produced and package free food as possible. I travel. A lot. Which means my carbon footprint is huge! Granted it would be bigger if I also still ate meat, and cared less about packaging, but our planet would nevertheless be doomed if we all lived the way I do. In fact, according to this calculator, we would need 3,3 planets and the Earth Overshoot Day would be on April 23, which is so much worse than the current state. I’m mortified by this result. What does your result look like?
{ Flying is my biggest sin }
It is definitely all the flying that I do that’s killing my planet. Obviously just staying home would be better for the environment, but I still want to see and experience the world, and I still want to be part of the big things in the lives of my friends and family back in Denmark, so what’s the best way to do that? I already talked about it when we got back from the US; that I needed to look into how to offset my carbon footprint, but in between settling back in and even more travelling I haven’t gotten around to it. Now is definitely the time. Since Global Footprint Network doesn’t offer an opportunity to offset flying, I’ve been looking into different offsetting programs and so far, the best I’ve found is ClimateCare (to be honest – I found it to be quite a jungle, so if you have any thoughts/knowledge you’d like to share, please do so in the comments! I’d love to learn more) I’ve used this calculator, to figure out how much I ‘owe’ the planet for my flights this year.
Critics of the carbon offsetting program worry that this is a ‘get out of jail free card’, a way to keep flying guilt free. And in a way, I guess it is. This is my solution for now, but I can’t live with the fact that we would need 3,3 planets if everyone were to live like I do, so I will definitely be looking to fly less in the future. I will also be going back to this list to understand how I can shrink my footprint in other areas.
* Quote from here
