We ate a planet, now what?

Approximate reading time: 2 minutes 24 seconds

On the second of August, earthlings B. celebrate Earth’s Excess Capacity Day or Environmental Debt Day. On that sad day, we were exhausted Fees (speaking in Cuban) of the natural resources available on our planet for an entire year. What’s worse is that it’s 2023 Fees it lasted less than its predecessor; While the previous one lasted less than the previous one, and so on repeatedly. This means that humanity has already consumed in just seven months what Earth has in twelve months of biologically regenerative capacity; So, according to the WWF (WWF, abbreviation in English), on average, we would need 1.75 planets to meet our natural resource demands.

This is nothing new and has been happening for many years; But the Environmental Day of Religion was first officially announced on December 19, 1987, according to the NGO’s calculations. Global Footprint Network (in Spanish, Global Footprints Network) This date is mobile and every time you arrive early. So much so that, according to said data processing, in 1970, it was December 29; In 1996 it was September 30th (advancing three months) and in 2019 it was advanced two more months, to July 26th. In 2020 (in the midst of the pandemic) it was pushed back about a month to August 22nd; But this year the date has been brought forward again by twenty days, so its tendency (unfortunately) is to reduce the time more and more.

The reasons why the planet’s natural resources remain less and less lie in the gluttony of the capitalist economic model that has imposed more than sapiens (Intelligent) crew member of the lovable, polluted, and unique spaceship (as teacher Walter Martinez taught us on his show file). Well, now I recommend reading Carlos Marx. Yes, which few of us would like to call it anymore; But who is always there to accompany us and tell us about it from science “(…) Capitalism tends to destroy the two sources of wealth: nature and human beings (…)”

Of course, we don’t all eat our corresponding piece of land in equal proportions, as part of the inequalities that the dominant paradigm generates as well. While the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Arab Emirates, Denmark and Belgium have already consumed their share of the planet since April; Colombia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Egypt and Iraq still have until November and Ecuador, Nicaragua and Indonesia until December.

In terms of resources, I’ll just point to power, the primary reason for imperial wars Which we suffered from (and which we lack). Primarily, humanity is an avid eater of energy and its consumption has never stopped growing. However, while some countries are extremely energy poor, reporting per capita consumption of less than 3.5 kilowatt-hours (KWh) per day of primary energy (sub-Saharan African countries or Asian countries such as Nepal and Cambodia) and other countries that have very high or very high energy poverty, with per capita energy consumption of 3.5 to 50 kWh per day (Central America and the Caribbean, some South America or Africa); On the other hand, North American countries (United States and Canada), Western Europe, Arab Gulf countries, Russia, Japan and Oceania consume more than 100 kilowatt-hours per capita per day.

This indicator is one of the indicators that best define the inequality resulting from the prevailing capitalist model. Can we speak of scarcity or diminishing energy reserves available to our only habitable planet, as a reason for this disparity? The problem of energy is not a problem of scarcity of resources (so far), but rather a problem of wasteful use and the huge disparity in the global distribution of its consumption, since the richest 20 percent of the world’s population consume 80 percent of all energy resources in the Earth. As a result, while the United States needs 5.1 planets to meet its demands, Yemen is content with only 0.3.

If we had only one world, I ask, where would we get to the other planet we need to satisfy ourselves today? Where are the two, three, four and even five globes that really need some?

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