Britain started eating the planet on 15 April

Latest figures from nef reveal Britain’s rising global interdependence as the nation goes into ecological debt on 15 April ie the UK in effect stops relying on its own natural resources to support itself and starts to ‘live off’ the rest of the world.

Photos: Standish woods

At current UK levels of consumption our ‘ecological debt day’ – the day we begin living beyond our environmental means – falls only a third of the way through the year and has crept ever earlier over the last four decades. In 1961 it was 9 July. By 1981 Britain’s ecological debt day was reached almost two months earlier on 14 May. Last year, the average person in the UK went into ecological debt on 16 April.

“On one level there is absolutely nothing wrong with importing goods and services to meet our needs; but our eyes are bigger than our planet. If the whole world understandably wanted to copy our levels of consumption, we would need the resources of more than three planets like Earth. And, we only have one. Our economy and way of life need to make contact with the real world before we eat accidentally eat it whole.”
Andrew Simms, nef’s policy director.

New data from nef and Global Footprint Network member Best Foot Forward shows that, our ecologically wasteful trading system is heading in the wrong direction.

As Greens have been trying to point out for years much of our trade is highly inefficient. Look at these nef examples from last year:

• We imported 586 tonnes of sweet biscuits, waffles and wafers, gingerbread and the like and exported just a little more, 669 tonnes.
• We sent 1,445 tonnes of sugar confectionary (including white chocolate and excluding chewing gum) to Sweden, and brought in 1,632 tonnes from the same country.
• We imported 14,137 tonnes of chocolate covered waffles and wafers (small packs) and exported 15,856 tonnes.

nef also highlighted the growth of palms for oil - for biodiesel for the European market. This is now the main cause of deforestation in Indonesia. Research by Dutch consultancy Delft Hydraulics found that because of deforestation and drainage of peat-lands, every tonne of palm oil created in South-East Asia results in up to 33 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions - 10 times as much as conventional petroleum.

• In 2005, we imported 652,110 tonnes of palm oil into the UK, 389,482 tonnes of which was imported from South-East Asia. Our consumption of palm oil from this region alone causing almost 13 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions – equivalent to 2.5 per cent of emissions from the UK.

At the moment more than 1,000 government delegates are meeting in Bonn to try to break gridlock in international climate change negotiations amid widening public concern and widely evident global warming impacts. This is the first time government climate delegations have met since the U.N. sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued its various reports this year.

Climate change policy-makers must be challenged to develop a strengthened Kyoto regime as
soon as possible that transitions the world to low carbon societies. Current Bonn talks are preparing for a meeting of environment ministers in Bali, Indonesia, in December. It is
essential formal negotiations are launched in Bali to widen and strengthen the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol as soon as possible. Take action here on climate talks. We do not have all this time to waste - climate change threatens now - we need action now. Indeed never have we needed a move to Green economics more than now!

A recent independent scientific audit of the UK's climate change policies predicts that the government will fall well below its target of a 30% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2020 - which means that the country will not reach its 2020 milestone until 2050. It is vital we wake up to the reality or the date we eat the planet will continue to get earlier and the dire impacts of this will grow.