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 by Sophie Perez Fernandes, Junior Editor

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According to data from the Global Footprint Network, August 1 is Earth Overshoot Day 2018.

Earth Overshoot Day is an initiative of Global Footprint Network, a non-profit international research organization dedicated to the development and promotion of tools to promote sustainable development. The date of Earth Overshoot Day is calculated by comparing two metrics: the Global Ecological Footprint, humanity’s total yearly consumption, with biocapacity, Earth’s capacity to regenerate renewable natural resources in that year. Both metrics are calculated each year with National Footprint Accounts and using UN statistics and data from additional sources.

As explained in the website, Earth Overshoot Date marks the date when all of humanity have used more from nature than our planet can renew in the entire year. According to the information disclosed last June, humanity will have exhausted on August 1, that is, in just over seven months, its entire nature’s resource budget of 2018. As from that date, the world will live on credit in 2018 – an environmental credit that, according to the data disclosed, is contracted earlier and earlier. Exceeding in 1961, planet Earth registered the first deficit in its environmental budget in the 1970s. Since then, the growing ecological footprint that accompanies the demographic and economic growth of the planet explains that Earth Overshoot Day occurs ever earlier – until the earliest date calculated of August 1 in 2018.
Continue reading “1st August 2018, Earth Overshoot Day” →

by João Alexandre Guimarães, Erasmus student at UMinho

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After the US Election and confirmation of Donald Trump as president, the current President Barack Obama visited Europe and raised an issue … Is Europe alone?

In an interview, the EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, said,

“Trump has, among other things, praised Vladimir Putin, questioned the principle of NATO, and suggested creating a database of Muslims in America.[…] We will need to teach the president-elect what Europe is and how it works,’ he continued, adding that Americans usually had no interest in Europe. […] I think we will waste two years before Mr Trump tours the world he does not know”, via Metro.

In Berlin and after a meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel, current President Barack Obama recalled the priorities of his eight-year term, saying he hoped that his successor, Donald Trump, would not call into question projects such as the transatlantic free trade agreement or commitments to NATO and the Paris climate deal.

‘‘The committement of the United States to Europe is enduring and it is rooted in the values that we share. The values that Angela just mentioned. Our commitment to democracy, our commitment to the rule of law, our commitment to the dignity of all people. In our own countries and around the world our alliance with our NATO partners has been a cornerstone of US foreign policy for nearly 70 years, in good times and bad, and through presidents of both parties, because the United States has a fundamental interest in Europe’s stability and security,” he said, via Euronews.

Mark Leonard told the Social Europe that “this will be a tough agenda to adopt – not least because Europe is facing its own brand of populist nationalism. France’s far-right National Front leader, Marine Le Pen, was among the first to congratulate Trump on his victory, and Trump has said that he would put the UK at the front of the queue after Brexit. But even Europe’s most Trump-like leaders will find it harder to defend their national interest if they try to go it alone. To survive in Trump’s world, they should try to make Europe great again.”