This year, humanity used up its annual "allotment" of renewable resources on Sept. 27. Dubbed Earth Overshoot Day by the Global Footprint Network (GFN) and its member organization nef (New Economics Foundation), Sept. 27 was the day on paper when humanity began adding to its ecological debt.
The concept is a way of understanding more clearly exactly how quickly the world's renewable resources are being depleted.
Nature, of course, can only produce so much. As a result, every year since 1970, all the people on Earth — now approaching 7 billion — have lived on credit for part of the year.