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Government action needed to reduce our demands on Earth’s resources and sustain life

Judy Scott-Goldman
By Judy Scott-Goldman
31 Jul 2024
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We are running down our natural capital. Each year ends with the Earth having less forest, less biodiversity, less healthy soil and water, fewer fish in the sea, more pollution of our fresh water and more greenhouse gases blanketing the planet, heating it and destabilising the climate.

Earth Overshoot Day is the date when humanity’s demand for the Earth’s resources and services exceeds what the Earth can supply in a given year. 

The Global Footprint Network calculates the date each year by comparing the resource demand of individuals, governments and businesses against Earth’s capacity for biological regeneration. 

This year’s Earth Overshoot Day falls on 1 August 2024, which means that humanity is currently using nature 1.7 times faster than our planet’s ecosystems can regenerate. It is like using 1.7 Earths.

This tells us we are not “living on our income” but running down our natural capital. Each year ends with the Earth having less forest, less biodiversity, less healthy soil and water, fewer fish in the sea, more pollution of our fresh water and more greenhouse gases blanketing the Earth, heating it and destabilising the climate.

By running down our natural capital, we pass on a weakened and less resilient planet to the generations that follow us. In other words, we are making future generations pay for our extravagance.

In 1971, Earth Overshoot Day fell on 25 December. Now, just over half a century later, it lands on 1 August. In those 53 years, the world population has doubled, and consumption has massively increased. The wealthy live in bigger houses, drive bigger cars, fly more and eat twice as much meat as 50 years ago.

Of course, not all individuals and not all countries are consuming the Earth’s resources equally. For instance, if everyone on the planet lived like people in Qatar, Earth Overshoot Day would fall on 11 February, but if everyone on the planet lived like people in Jamaica, Earth Overshoot Day would be on 12 November. 

Dependence on fossil fuels


What about South Africa? Here, Earth Overshoot Day this year fell on 20 June. This is the date on which Earth Overshoot Day would fall if all of humanity consumed like the people of South Africa. The reason for this is partly our high dependence on fossil fuels for energy. 

So how are we to respond to the fact that we are steadily chipping away at Earth’s capacity to support life? Who is responsible for doing something about this? Is it individuals? Of course, we all need to be conscious of our consumption. We can hardly ask that companies lower their carbon and ecological footprint while not challenging our own habits of consumption.

I can choose to eat less meat. I can cycle to work for exercise rather than drive to a gym. I can choose the bananas in the supermarket that are loose over the bananas wrapped in plastic.

But I’d have to be delusional if I thought that my buying loose bananas would solve South Africa’s plastic waste problem. Consumer actions are controlled by decisions made in the wider economy and we will only see change at scale – which is what we urgently need – when the system deeply pivots to put planetary health at the heart of the political economy. 

The key driver of change is the government. Through laws and policies, the government controls what is possible and desirable and tells the private sector what businesses will be supported and which business activities are prohibited. The goods we buy depend on those policies.

So how can the South African government help South Africans reduce their carbon and ecological footprint? The solutions are numerous. Here are two of the key actions:

Lower the carbon intensity of the goods South Africa produces


In South Africa, approximately 85% of the nation’s electricity is generated via coal-fired power stations. So if we as individuals buy South African-made products, we are buying products that have been manufactured using coal-fired power and so have high embedded carbon.

The use of coal contributes to our high greenhouse gas emissions and causes soil, water and air pollution. Some parts of government are promoting a shift to the use of renewable energy. Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, our Electricity and Energy Minister in the new Government of National Unity, has said he will aggressively pursue renewable energy.

However, other parts of government are resisting this and are determined to explore for and exploit oil and gas resources all around our coast. This is irrational and would be catastrophic given the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the damage to our coastline and marine biodiversity that this would entail.

Commit to electrification of transport


There are 61 million people in South Africa moving around each day. Our entire transport system depends on burning huge quantities of greenhouse gas-producing fossil fuels. This vast system can only be changed from the top.

If we are to shift to a renewable energy-based system, we need the government to promote renewable energy and battery storage, invest heavily in the grid to capacitate it to receive that energy, support the rolling out of charging stations, and incentivise our local vehicle industries to supply electric vehicles that match South Africans’ needs and are affordable.

Government can use taxes to reduce the cost of electric cars relative to internal combustion engine cars. Currently, the incentives work in the opposite direction. South Africa levies a 25% import tax on electric vehicles compared to an 18% levy on internal combustion engine vehicles.

If we electrified public and private transport, there would be two major environmental benefits alongside the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions: we would reduce the pollution from internal combustion engines and reduce the damage caused by the extraction, refinement and transport of oil. 

Imagine if all the vehicles in our cities ran on renewable-powered electricity. Apart from reducing South Africa’s greenhouse gas emissions, our cities would be quieter and healthier places to live. Vehicle exhausts contain particulate matter that is linked to respiratory and cardiovascular disease, asthma flare-ups and poor lung health and development in children.

Exhaust fumes contain nitrogen oxide and nitrogen dioxide which cause acid rain and form ground-level ozone which is bad for our lungs, damages vegetation and interferes with photosynthesis.  

South Africa imports billions of litres of crude oil, petrol and diesel. This all has to be brought in in tankers and contributes to the huge impact of shipping on our oceans – from the impact of dirty marine fuel oil which contributes significant amounts of GHG, sulphur and other polluting emissions, to the damage from oil spills and the noise created by tankers.

Oil spills in Algoa Bay contributed to the decline of the African penguins whose numbers continue to slide towards extinction despite the efforts of conservation organisations. Marine mammals use sound to navigate their environment and marine shipping is disrupting marine mammals’ communication and feeding. 

Of course, it is going to take years before we have enough renewable energy to power our transport as well as our homes. Wealthy South Africans need to be weaned off individual car usage through the government providing widespread, frequent and reliable public transport in cities, safe bicycle lanes and cheap electric scooters and bicycles.  

Give priority to pedestrians and non-polluting road users. Imagine how beautiful our cities could be without the congestion and the pollution.

Summing up


The government controls the political economy and is responsible for bringing South Africa’s use of resources and production of waste into line with what one planet can regenerate and absorb.

The Earth Overshoot Day metric shows that we are exhausting the capacity of the planet. Our heavy environmental footprint is creating deadly heatwaves, mass extinction of species, crop failures, worsening droughts, floods and wildfires, destructive hurricanes, sea level rise, and oceans that will be too hot, acidic and oxygen-deficient to support life. 

We cannot pass such a world on to our children. DM

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