Earth Overshoot Day has passed

Dear Sir,

By the time your readers receive this week's paper, the world will have passed its Earth Overshoot Day.

This is the day when it is calculated it has used its annual sustainable resources for that year.

The day this year is August 8^th, earlier than it has even been.

To put it another way, we need 1.6 earths to live sustainably with our present level of consumption.

For the UK, we would need 2.9 earths to do so.

Ways of tackling this include each of us using less non-renewable resources, lowering our populations and increasing our use of renewable resources such as those given to us by our sun.

Your sincerely,

Dr Peter Hirst

Middlewich