August 13th, 2015 marked the day when humanity's account with nature went into the red and we exhausted the supplies our planet can provide for the year. From now on we will be using up food, land and other resources meant for future generations. This marks the earliest point that this threshold has ever been crossed.

Global Footprint Network, who calculate this annual "Earth Overshoot Day", determine the date by comparing our demands on the natural world for things like construction, manufacturing and absorbing our waste and carbon dioxide, to what can actually be generated and successfully replenished from the available forests, agricultural land and fisheries.

Our over-exploitation of the Earth's resources began in 1970, when full capacity was reached in late December. Today it means that humans use more than 150% of what our planet has to offer every year and Earth Overshoot Day is happening earlier and earlier.

Individual countries contribute in different ways to this figure, depending on their lifestyles. Like the vast majority of the world's population, the UK's demands on nature outstrip what its own resources can cope with, needing three times what we currently have.

And if the rest of the world lived like we do our credit limit would have been reached back in May.

Britian last faced extreme shortages during World War Two and the UK government was forced to implement rationing to control the distribution of scarce resources such as food, fuel and other commodities with strict individual allowances.

Do we now need this kind of thinking to bring us back to living within our means? BBC Earth spoke to Saamah Abdallah, senior researcher at the New Economics Foundation's Centre for Wellbeing - which advocates judging economic success through more meaningful measures like people’s happiness - to find out.

Doing nothing

50 million people homeless and looking for a new home

First of all why should we do anything? Stepping into so-called "ecological debt" means that we start to overuse precious resources. Scientists say this is already leading to deforestation, drought and wildlife extinctions, not to mention the build up of pollutants in the air and sea because the planet's natural mechanisms for dealing with these are simply overwhelmed.

They suggest that this is one of the leading drivers of climate change. Mr Abdallah says continuing as we are could make the costs even more noticeable in the UK.

"At the moment we're probably already starting to pay but it is still very early days. A lot of climate change scientists estimate that flooding is more likely as a result of climate change," he says.

"Half a million people have had to abandon their homes in coastal areas of Bangladesh due to higher sea levels, and that's expected to reach 50 million by 2030, so in the space of 15 years that's 50 million people homeless and looking for a new home."

Rationing

Good lives don't have to cost the earth

So could we enter into some kind of way of sharing the remaining resources?

"Rationing implies somehow limiting yourself, a restriction on autonomy and we know that autonomy is key to well-being, so that doesn't seem to be a sustainable solution," Mr Abdallah says.

But with the serious state of many of the planet's resources, with climate change the most pressing, he would advocate some element of coercion.

"One potential solution is cap and trade [or regulated emissions trading], it has a set amount of carbon you can consume in a year, a bit like a ration, but you can sell or buy your rations so there is some flexibility.

"But what we are doing instead is carbon taxes, and while they are useful it does mean you can just carry on consuming so it doesn't have as much impact on wealthy people. So it would need to be something in between those two extremes.

"I would hope we don't need to do that much in terms of rationing, good lives don't have to cost the Earth."

Not keeping up with the Joneses

With consumption often driven by competitive desires, perhaps one place to focus are lifestyle habits based on comparing ourselves to others.

Mr Abdallah's organisation has conducted studies comparing the average levels of health and well-being, or happiness, of a country with its resource use. Costa Rica comes out top, with similar levels of well-being and life expectancy as the UK, but it uses around half of the resources we do.

"A lot of the resource use in the UK doesn't achieve much," he says.

"If you buy a new mobile phone every year or fill the back of your wardrobe with clothes you only wear once or twice, or buy so much food that you only throw it away, these things aren't contributing to our well-being but they are adding up to high levels of consumption."

Increasing levels of wealth mean the size of your house, car and the quality and frequency of your holidays can also go on increasing. Mr Abdallah suggests this is one area where the UK could easily reduce wasteful consumption, with the wealthiest 10% of people being responsible for almost twice as much carbon dioxide as those that are less well off.

Less advertising

Some countries encourage their citizens to cut consumption with restrictions on advertising directed towards children, like Sweden and Quebec, or even ban it in public spaces, like Grenoble in France and Sao Paulo in Brazil.

"Our desire to consume is fuelled by businesses who want us to buy more and more stuff, and they promote this through advertising," says Mr Abdallah.

"The way that advertising works is that it implies that what we have isn't quite good enough and we should have this particular product instead."

Government incentives

If as a nation we are unlikely to accept something as drastic as rationing, Mr Abdallah says that there are less daunting things that our government could do to encourage people to consume less. Providing alternative transport options and improved public transport, with more opportunities for cycling and walking, all help to reduce consumption.

Another area where he says the UK is particularly lagging behind is in its use of renewable energy.

"The UK is known to have a high potential for renewable energy, particularly in wind power, but there is the potential do a lot more," Mr Abdallah says.

Individual choice

You should think about what really matters to your well-being

So what stops us from grasping the nettle and tackling our own consumption levels and balancing what we want with what we actually need? Mr Abdallah says that polls show the UK population does care about the environment, but our willingness to make changes depends on others doing the same thing.

"When surveys ask: 'would you be willing to do this to reduce the impact on the planet', a lot of people say 'yes but', and one of the 'buts' is 'why should I do it if noone else is doing it?'" he says.

"It's a sense of a collective 'yes, let's all come together and decide to do that'.

"You should think about what really matters to your well-being and not consuming beyond that, we need to do that as individuals, but also as a nation."

To see how our demands on nature have changed during your lifetime try BBC Earth's Your Life on Earth feature.

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