Car traffic, energy hunger, beef consumption: Germany's ecological account is already empty.

Mathematically, Germany has already used up enough natural resources for the entire year as of this Saturday. The so-called Earth Overshoot Day falls on May 3rd in Germany this year, according to calculations by the Global Footprint Network . If everyone on Earth consumed as many natural resources and emitted as much CO2 as we do here, the Earth's annual biocapacity would be exhausted within the first third of the year.

The causes of the high resource consumption and emissions in this country include high energy consumption, private car traffic, industrial animal husbandry, and the construction sector, writes the German Federation for the Environment and Nature Conservation (BUND). Among other things, a resource protection law is needed "to stop the waste and pollution of our livelihoods."

"For the planet and for ourselves, we now need a resource turnaround and an effective resource protection law," said BUND chairman Olaf Bandt. This law must be fair and binding. The first priority should be reducing consumption, followed by reuse, and recycling only third.

The organization Oxfam focuses primarily on the role of the rich: The richest tenth of the German population produces as many emissions as the entire poorer half. "Not only excessive consumption, but also the environmentally harmful stock portfolios of the rich illustrate the shocking CO2 inequality in this country," said Jan Kowalzig, climate policy officer at Oxfam. Forty-four percent of the investments of German billionaires are in particularly environmentally harmful sectors such as logistics, chemicals, and cement. "We need a policy that not only curbs the plundering of natural resources overall, but also places greater financial responsibility on the rich and super-rich to contribute to the common good – especially to the protection of natural resources."

"We are living beyond our means, which is increasingly pushing the planet into a triple crisis of global warming, species extinction, and environmental pollution," said Freya Duncker of the environmental foundation WWF. "The damage is affecting all of us." According to the WWF, Germany should end its dependence on coal, oil, and natural gas and become climate-neutral by 2040. It is also necessary to establish a sustainable food system, transform the economic and financial system, and eliminate environmentally harmful subsidies, Duncker said.

The Global Footprint Network calculates Earth Overshoot Day for each country and for the entire planet. It analyzes how many standardized units of area are needed for things like food, wood, the absorption of man-made CO2, and the roads and houses of its inhabitants. In turn, it takes into account the Earth's capacity to build resources and absorb waste and emissions. Similar to estimates of gross domestic product, these data are not entirely precise, the network writes. The result is updated annually, for example, with the most recent data and further refinements. This may result in a slight shift in previous overshoot days and the time series as a whole.

You can calculate your own Earth Overshoot Day using a calculator from the Global Footprint Network. According to the network, last year's global Earth Overshoot Day was August 1st.