Climate-related disasters are costing us dearly
The US had a record-setting 2017 for climate-related disasters, racking up more than $305 billion in costs from hurricanes and wildfires. While weather events like these have always occurred, and while the costs alone are eye-popping, there’s a scarier truth underlying them that we can’t continue to ignore.
The impact of these disasters is growing in part due to the depletion of the ecosystems we rely on to maintain the delicate balance that supports life on our planet. We’ve been borrowing against our ecosystems for a very long time, and we’re now seeing the results of that unpaid debt.
Overshooting Earth’s resources more and more each year
You may have heard of Earth Overshoot Day, the day each calendar year when we begin using more natural resources than the Earth can sustain. It’s calculated by dividing the amount of natural resources (re)generated by Earth in one year (the world’s biocapacity) by humanity’s consumption of that year’s resources (the global ecological footprint) and multiplying by 365.
When the Earth generates more than is consumed, we have a surplus. When we consume more than is generated, we go into debt. And it’s a particular type of debt: ecological debt, signifying a level of resource consumption and waste (including carbon) discharge that exceeds the sustainable natural production and assimilative capacity of an area.
By August 2, 2017 we’d already consumed all of the resources Earth could provide last year. The days remaining in 2017 became ecological debt, with the costs to be paid by future generations.
Unfortunately, this accumulation of debt has been occurring since at least 1971, when Earth Overshoot Day (at that time called Ecological Debt Day) was first reported. If you add up all our days of ecological debt, we’re currently consuming resources that shouldn’t be consumed for another 4,163 days, or 11.4 years.
That bears repeating—in the last 47 years, we have consumed an additional 11.4 Earth-years’ worth of natural resources and are currently consuming resources belonging to 2029.
Converting natural capital to financial capital
Some may find it easier to convert this natural capital into terms used for financial capital—dollars. One way to do this is to equate an “Earth year” to the total annual value of Earth’s ecosystem services. Dr. Robert Costanza and his colleagues calculated one possible value for this in their 1997 Nature article—US$33 trillion per year in 1997 dollars, or nearly $47 trillion in today’s dollars.
If you set this $47 trillion equal to an Earth year, you’ll find the hefty price tag for our years of accumulated over-consumption: a truly astounding $535 trillion. And this is the minimum estimate: the authors acknowledge that the figure they developed could be low and that it does not account for other value contributed by Earth’s natural resources, such as biodiversity.
A few ideas for how we can pay down this debt
So what can we do? When in debt, people usually start by paying off liabilities with the highest interest rates. Of all the forms of capital—financial, social, material, spiritual, cultural—I’d argue our natural capital currently has the highest interest rate.
At a minimum, we should fight to keep Earth Overshoot Day from moving earlier August 2 starting this year, to prevent the acceleration of debt accumulation. Even to do that we’d need drastic and rapid reductions to global emissions of carbon and consumption of other resources. A carbon tax could achieve this, or we could start to entertain more thought-provoking suggestions, such as a Federal Reserve-financed US government buyout of American oil and gas companies, which could do so more rapidly.
This would slow or maintain the existing rate of debt accumulation, whereas to actually reduce the debt, we need to get the principal down, meaning we’ll also need to start pulling carbon from the atmosphere and consuming fewer natural resources. There may be signs of hope here, with growing interest in regenerative agriculture, a carbon capture plant going online near Zurich in June 2017 and the opening of a negative emissions plant in Iceland later in the year.
What the climate-related disaster numbers illustrate is the deeper threat: an urgent need to address the deep systemic problems that brought us here. Simply seeking to adjust the current system at the margins by seeking greater efficiencies or making modest changes to existing practices will be inadequate in the face of these long-running trends.
True sustainability will require finding a different path altogether that genuinely allows us to live within the bounded limits of the planet. Otherwise, as with my student loans, the accumulated interest will continue to be capitalized, further compounding the problem. Ultimately, the ecological debt is one on which we as a civilization simply cannot afford to default.
Table: Earth Overshoot Days since 1971 with Associated Ecological Debt
| Year | Overshoot Day | Total Overshoot Days | Total Overshoot Time (portion of year) |
Debt Incurred |
| 1971 | 12/21/1971 | 10 | 0.03 | $1,287,671,232,877 |
| 1972 | 12/10/1972 | 21 | 0.06 | $2,696,721,311,475 |
| 1973 | 11/27/1973 | 34 | 0.09 | $4,378,082,191,781 |
| 1974 | 11/28/1974 | 33 | 0.09 | $4,249,315,068,493 |
| 1975 | 12/1/1975 | 30 | 0.08 | $3,863,013,698,630 |
| 1976 | 11/17/1976 | 44 | 0.12 | $5,650,273,224,044 |
| 1977 | 11/12/1977 | 49 | 0.13 | $6,309,589,041,096 |
| 1978 | 11/8/1978 | 53 | 0.15 | $6,824,657,534,247 |
| 1979 | 10/30/1979 | 62 | 0.17 | $7,983,561,643,836 |
| 1980 | 11/4/1980 | 57 | 0.16 | $7,319,672,131,148 |
| 1981 | 11/12/1981 | 49 | 0.13 | $6,309,589,041,096 |
| 1982 | 11/16/1982 | 45 | 0.12 | $5,794,520,547,945 |
| 1983 | 11/15/1983 | 46 | 0.13 | $5,923,287,671,233 |
| 1984 | 11/8/1984 | 53 | 0.14 | $6,806,010,928,962 |
| 1985 | 11/5/1985 | 56 | 0.15 | $7,210,958,904,110 |
| 1986 | 10/31/1986 | 61 | 0.17 | $7,854,794,520,548 |
| 1987 | 10/24/1987 | 68 | 0.19 | $8,756,164,383,562 |
| 1988 | 10/16/1988 | 76 | 0.21 | $9,759,562,841,530 |
| 1989 | 10/13/1989 | 79 | 0.22 | $10,172,602,739,726 |
| 1990 | 10/13/1990 | 79 | 0.22 | $10,172,602,739,726 |
| 1991 | 10/11/1991 | 81 | 0.22 | $10,430,136,986,301 |
| 1992 | 10/13/1992 | 79 | 0.22 | $10,144,808,743,169 |
| 1993 | 10/13/1993 | 79 | 0.22 | $10,172,602,739,726 |
| 1994 | 10/11/1994 | 81 | 0.22 | $10,430,136,986,301 |
| 1995 | 10/5/1995 | 87 | 0.24 | $11,202,739,726,027 |
| 1996 | 10/2/1996 | 90 | 0.25 | $11,557,377,049,180 |
| 1997 | 9/30/1997 | 92 | 0.25 | $11,846,575,342,466 |
| 1998 | 10/1/1998 | 91 | 0.25 | $11,717,808,219,178 |
| 1999 | 9/30/1999 | 92 | 0.25 | $11,846,575,342,466 |
| 2000 | 9/23/2000 | 99 | 0.27 | $12,713,114,754,098 |
| 2001 | 9/23/2001 | 99 | 0.27 | $12,747,945,205,480 |
| 2002 | 9/19/2002 | 103 | 0.28 | $13,263,013,698,630 |
| 2003 | 9/10/2003 | 112 | 0.31 | $14,421,917,808,219 |
| 2004 | 9/2/2004 | 120 | 0.33 | $15,409,836,065,574 |
| 2005 | 8/26/2005 | 127 | 0.35 | $16,353,424,657,534 |
| 2006 | 8/21/2006 | 132 | 0.36 | $16,997,260,273,973 |
| 2007 | 8/15/2007 | 138 | 0.38 | $17,769,863,013,699 |
| 2008 | 8/16/2008 | 137 | 0.37 | $17,592,896,174,863 |
| 2009 | 8/20/2009 | 133 | 0.36 | $17,126,027,397,260 |
| 2010 | 8/9/2010 | 144 | 0.39 | $18,542,465,753,425 |
| 2011 | 8/5/2011 | 148 | 0.41 | $19,057,534,246,575 |
| 2012 | 8/6/2012 | 147 | 0.40 | $18,877,049,180,328 |
| 2013 | 8/5/2013 | 148 | 0.41 | $19,057,534,246,575 |
| 2014 | 8/4/2014 | 149 | 0.41 | $19,186,301,369,863 |
| 2015 | 8/4/2015 | 149 | 0.41 | $19,186,301,369,863 |
| 2016 | 8/3/2016 | 150 | 0.41 | $19,262,295,081,967 |
| 2017 | 8/2/2017 | 151 | 0.41 | $19,390,710,382,514 |
| TOTAL | 4,163 | 11.4 | $535,626,903,211,318 | |
| Source: http://www.overshootday.org/newsroom/past-earth-overshoot-days/ | ||||
| Overshoot days calculated using the 2017 edition of the National Footprint Accounts | ||||
| The overshoot day announced at the time are often incorrect, as in the future, we have a better capacity for more accurate calculations. | ||||