GENTLE AS A MAN – when power learns to serve life

Imagine a household spending three quarters more than they earn every year.

So for instance, let's say if my household was earning $100,000 a year, but we're spending $175,000 a year.

That family might appear comfortable for a while, living it up, nice house, holidays, the fridge is full, But underneath the appearance of normality, assets are disappearing and debt is growing with $75,000 every year.

That's exactly the kind of situation humanity finds itself in today.

Last Thursday, it was Earth Overshoot Day.

That's the day when humanity had used as much from nature as nature is able to regenerate during this whole year.

And we reached that point already here at the 30th of July.

So everything we consume from now on up to New Year, adds to our ecological deficit or debt.

More forests cleared than can regrow.

More fish caught than populations can replace.

More carbon released than forests and oceans can absorb.

So we're now using nature 73% faster than Earth can regenerate it.

Here in Australia, the picture is even worse than that.

If everyone on Earth consumed resources the way we Australians do, overshoot day would have arrived already in the middle of March.

We would need almost five planets for everyone on this planet to be able to live like we Australians do.

And of course, we don't have five planets.

So where do all these extra resources come from? Well, you could say they come from the future.

We take them from future forests, from future fisheries, future soils, future water supplies, and importantly, from future generations.

And I haven't even mentioned the CO2, the carbon problem.

People seem to think that we can just wait and then when it gets too bad, we can then reduce emissions and things will get better again.

But that's not how it works.

We can't make it better again.

What we can is we can prevent it from getting even worse.

That's it.

If we stop our emissions, it's like, you know, again, if you compare it to a house, it's like stopping the water after the house has already been flooded.