The concept of Earth Overshoot Day is a way of calculating humanity's global consumption of resources and visualising the disparity between the planet's biocapacity and humanity's global consumption. According to calculations by the Global Footprint Network, resource consumption and CO² emissions have exceeded the Earth's ability to reproduce since the mid-1970s. Earth Overshoot Day is calculated as the point in time - in relation to the year - at which humanity has used up renewable resources and exceeded the earth's capacity to absorb them. From Earth Overshoot Day onwards, humanity lives - figuratively speaking - on credit until the end of the year. While Earth Overshoot Day fell on 19 December in 1987, renewable resources were already exhausted on 13 August in 2016. The consequences of this overexploitation are greenhouse effects, as forests and oceans can absorb and break down fewer greenhouse gases than are produced. Another indicator is the decline in biodiversity due to the destruction of ecological systems and the increase in non-degradable mountains of waste as well as the contamination of the soil and oceans. This also includes overfishing. The concept of summarising global resource consumption in a picture that is accessible to broad sections of the population is welcomed by environmental protection organisations. Although the long-term trend is undisputed, it is criticised that the basis of assessment is unclear in some cases and that there are major fluctuations in the calculation.