Despite the economic slowdown due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Germany has now overreached its sustainable biological limits.
Meanwhile, this year's global Earth Overshoot Day is, like last year, projected to be around July 28.
The 2022 date was the earliest ever recorded by US-based environment NGO, Global Footprint Network, which has been calculating global and national ecological impacts for near three decades.
Back in 1970, the Earth's biocapacity — defined as an "ecosystems' capacity to produce biological materials used by people and to absorb waste material generated by humans" — was more than enough to meet annual human demand for resources. But in the half century since, we have steadily outgrown our single planet.
Humanity now needs around 1.7 planets to maintain its lifestyle, while Germany needs three.
The Global South will bear much of the cost — as will future generations suffering through a climate crisis now being fueled by overconsumption.
Countries like Indonesia or Ecuador, for example, do not overshoot until December and are close to living within their means. But they are the target of resource exploitation by richer nations like Germany.
"Germany is the fifth-biggest consumer of raw materials in the world, and is importing up to 99% of minerals and metals from countries in the Global South," said Lara Louisa Siever, senior policy advisor for resource justice at the German development network, INKOTA, in 2022.
In 2023, Qatar was the worst overshoot culprit, using up its renewable resources by February 10.
Germany must shift from logic of endless growth
But Germany, like most developed nations, is still high on the list — France overshoots a day later while Greece, the UK and Japan all exceed their resource budget this month.
"The big problem we have in Germany, that we have in general in the Global North, is that we have not yet understood that resources are finite," said Viola Wohlgemuth, circular economy and toxics campaigner at Greenpeace Germany.
She refers to World Resources Institute data showing that 90% of biodiversity loss is due to "resource exploitation and conversion to products," and that this production also accounts for 50% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Despite this "enormous resource crisis," nations like Germany "have not learned," Wohlgemuth said.
In the past, Germany has been held up "as a paragon of climate virtue," noted Berlin-based climate activist, Tadzio Müller.
"The reason for this myth of Germany as eco champion ironically has nothing to with Germany's industrial policy or its political strategies at a governmental level, but has everything to do with powerful social movements."
He refers to the anti-nuclear movement that rose up in the 1970s and 80s and long pushed for a nuclear energy phase out; the rise of German renewable energy ingenuity in local 'Mittelstand' companies; and more recent successful demands for a fossil fuel exit by young climate protesters.
But the driving principle of endless growth that underpins German economic policy must fundamentally shift if climate change and the "extremely grave problem of biodiversity loss " linked to overconsumption is to be addressed, Müller said.
This extends to the idea of "green growth," or what he calls "electric car capitalism," which is also based on the massive expansion of resource consumption — especially for minerals and rare earths.
Circular economy vital to #MoveTheDate
Germany's federal government is currently debating a new national circular economy strategy in an effort to implement efficiencies that reduce resource use — even if the same growth model is to remain, notes Müller.
For Viola Wohlgemuth, a holistic circular economy is vital to move back the Earth Overshoot date.
"We must change our business models so that products are truly recyclable," she said, referring also to the principles of reduce, reuse and recycle at the heart of the European Green Deal's Circular Economy Action Plan. Wohlgemuth also calls for an absolute limit on resource use in Germany.
Such limits need to encompass energy use. Only one quarter of German gas supplies are used for heating or cooking, according to the Greenpeace campaigner, with much of high-carbon fossil fuel powering unsustainable production.
Germany must rapidly accelerate emission cuts
Greenhouse gas emissions are a direct consequence of over-production and -consumption, and need to be rapidly cut if Germany is to reduce its overshoot, according to Christoph Bals, political director of the non-profit environment organization, Germanwatch.
"CO2 emissions in Germany would have to fall three times as fast as they do now," he said.
Improved access to high-speed, low-emission rail transport and curtailment of air travel are among Germanwatch's suggested means to reduce these emissions.
But without first dealing with overconsumption, Germany will fail to live within its means.
"We look at all the problems in separate ways — climate change or biodiversity loss or food shortage — as if they were occurring independently," noted Global Footprint Network founder and president, Mathis Wackernagel.
"But they're all symptoms of the same underlying theme: that our collective metabolism, the amount of things that humanity uses, has become very big compared to what Earth can renew."
Edited by: Tamsin Walker
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2023-05-04 06:49:38Z
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