Regional variations in freshwater overconsumption

Freshwater—which falls to the earth as precipitation or exists beneath the surface as groundwater—is desperately needed to sustain people, plants and animals. With an ever-increasing human population, water shortages ...

To feed the world, give women equal rights

Around the world, at least a billion people are hungry or need better diets. To feed a global population projected to reach 9.6 billion by 2050, we will need to increase food production by as much as 70 percent, most analysts ...

Learning curve: Tricks to resist temptation

Here's good news for dieters who face food challenges in the break room every day: A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research shows that our resistance gets a boost after we've just been exposed to similar temptations.

Over-consumption

Over-consumption is a situation where resource-use has outpaced the sustainable capacity of the ecosystem. A prolonged pattern of overconsumption leads to inevitable environmental degradation and the eventual loss of resource bases. Generally the discussion of overconsumption parallels that of overpopulation; that is the more people, the more consumption of raw materials to sustain their lives. Currently, the developed nations of the world consume at a rate of 32, while the rest of the developing worlds’ 5.5 billion people consume at a rate closer to 1."

The theory was coined to augment the discussion of overpopulation, which reflects issues of carrying capacity without taking into account per capita consumption, by which developing nations are evaluated to consume more than their land can support. Green parties and the ecology movement often argue that consumption per person, or ecological footprint, is typically lower in poor than in rich nations.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA