Ecological Overspending

From Stephanie Feldstein, Population and Sustainability Program Director

On Aug. 1, 2024, humanity went into ecological debt for the year. Earth Overshoot Day marks the annual date when our demand on nature’s resources surpasses Earth’s capacity to regenerate them. The Aug. 1 date signifies that humanity is gobbling up nature 1.7 times faster than ecosystems can regenerate, which means for the rest of the year we’re depleting the health of the environment.

The consequences of our excessive, destructive consumption are seen and felt throughout the web of life through deforestation, soil erosion, biodiversity loss, and climate change. No person, plant, or animal is unaffected. But we can still push overshoot to a later date in the calendar, giving Mother Nature more time to heal. Read on to learn more about how the Center for Biological Diversity is fighting for solutions like plant-based policies, ending single-use plastics, and supporting women’s and girls’ reproductive health.

A new analysis by Population Matters found that whale beachings are on the rise in part due to human impacts like noise and plastic pollution in our oceans. Researchers suspect that noise from shipping, military sonar, and energy installations is disrupting pilot whales’ ability to navigate, communicate, and hunt.

New: Blog About Food, Agriculture, and Policy

There are countless obstacles to planet-friendly eating: misleading advertisements, inadequate consumer choice and availability, unforeseen consequences of production, confusing product labeling, and lack of transparency — just to name a few. It can be hard to see how food policy shapes what ends up on our plates, but Rooted in Policy, a new monthly Medium column by Leah Kelly, the Center’s food and agriculture policy specialist, aims to make the complex connections between food, agriculture, and biodiversity more digestible for everyone.

Here’s one thing you can do: Follow Leah on Medium to read new posts and email her to let her know what you’d like her column to cover.

Survey: More U.S. Adults Unlikely to Have Children

According to a new survey by Pew Research Center, 47% of U.S. adults who are younger than 50 and without children say they’re unlikely to ever have kids. That’s an increase of 10 percentage points between 2018 and 2023. Fifty-seven percent of adults under 50 who say they’re unlikely to have kids say a major reason is that they just don’t want to. Women younger than 50 are especially likely to say they just don’t want to have children.

Among adults aged 18 to 49 who don’t have children, other reasons cited include wanting to focus on other things (44%), concerns about the state of the world (38%), can’t/couldn’t afford to raise a child (36%), and concerns about the environment (26%).

Here’s one thing you can do: Watch the Center’s four-part contraception conversation about being childfree by choice.

Wildlife Services Has Way Outstayed Its Welcome

Wildlife Services, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s wildlife-killing program, is responsible for eliminating perceived threats to agriculture, natural resources, and property. This often boils down to killing wild animals whose natural habitats have been developed into pasture for domestic livestock. In 2023 the program killed 375,045 native animals, including 24,603 native beavers, 305 gray wolves, 68,562 coyotes, and 430 black bears.

In a new Medium post, Jennifer Molidor, the Center’s senior food campaigner, outlines how this disastrous program serves the meat industry. “The wildlife destruction inherent in wide-scale meat production is reason enough for the USDA to adopt policies that help curb unsustainable meat consumption,” writes Molidor. “Healthy, wild ecosystems will never require the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of native wild animals … but they do require a reimagining of the American fascination with beef.”

Here’s one thing you can do: Learn more about the Center’s work to help protect animals from Wildlife Services.

The Continuing Problem With U.S. Avocados

A new study shows that leading U.S. avocado importers are still sourcing from illegally deforested land in Mexico despite knowing about the deforestation in their supply chains. The companies — Calavo Growers, Fresh Del Monte Produce, Mission Produce, and West Pak Avocado — have supplied avocados to Albertsons, Costco, Kroger, Target, Trader Joe’s, Walmart, and Whole Foods.

Every day more than 10 football fields’ worth of Mexican forests are cleared for avocado production. If the United States keeps consuming avocados at this rate, by 2050 the land destroyed to grow them will have increased by more than 70%. Most of the avocados sold in the United States come from a single region in Mexico where millions of monarch butterflies migrate to spend the winter. Losing their winter home could lead to extinction.

Here’s one thing you can do: Urge top U.S. grocery chains to adopt an avocado-sourcing policy that protects monarchs and the people and forests of Mexico.

How Coke Killed the Refillable Bottle

Coca-Cola is the world’s biggest plastic producer and polluter, but that wasn’t always the case. Coke started using single-use packaging in the 1950s. Before then 96% of Coke’s glass bottles were returned, refilled, and reused. Coca-Cola knew as far back as the early 1970s that reusable glass bottles were environmentally preferable to single-use glass, plastic, and metal containers. But despite that knowledge, it invested its resources in single-use packaging. At this year’s Olympics, Coke sold an estimated 6.75 million drinks in plastic bottles, even though there was a ban on spectators bringing single-use bottles.

A recent 12-minute documentary by The Story of Stuff Project outlines how Coke killed the refillable bottle, a decision that has fueled the climate and plastic pollution crises. In 2022 alone Coke produced 134 billion plastic bottles, the equivalent to 255,000 per minute.

Here’s one thing you can do: Tell Coke to bring back refillable bottles.

Wildlife Spotlight: Burrowing Owl

Burrowing owls are the only owl species that nests and roosts underground. Formerly widespread in California, burrowing owls in the Golden State have suffered significant habitat loss due to exurban sprawl, conversion of grasslands to agricultural lands, development of large-scale wind and solar energy infrastructure, and the persecution of ground-dwelling squirrels and other mammals whose underground burrows the owls use for nesting and roosting.

Burrowing owls have been eliminated as a breeding species from at least 19 of the 51 California counties where they formerly lived and are close to being wiped out in 10 more. But thanks to a March 2024 petition by the Center and other conservation groups, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife has found that protecting western burrowing owls under the California Endangered Species Act may be warranted. We’ll stay on the case.

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Photo credits: Graphic of Earth via Canva; humpback whale and calf courtesy NOAA; Rooted in Policy graphic courtesy Center for Biological Diversity; hands and flower via Pexels; black bear by Eugene Beckes/Flickr; monarch butterfly by Tierra Curry/Center for Biological Diversity; Coke bottle graphic courtesy Story of Stuff; burrowing owls by James Marvin Phelps/Flickr.

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