Sounds pretty scary, right? Scary, but true. At the current consumption rate on Earth, humans are depleting resources way faster than they are renewed, and according to The Global Footprint Network (GFN) we will need 1.7 Earths to survive.

But how does the GFN calculate this? Simply put, a country can either have an ecological deficit or ecological reserve resulting in an overall total from the 196 countries in the world. Human consumption is measured by the country’s capacity to renew the resources demanded from its ecosystems.

To give you an idea of what that looks like in the U.S. and Canada, see below:

So which countries are in the ecological deficit dog house? Trinidad and Tobago, Singapore, Belgium, Israel, South Korea, United States, Netherlands, and Japan to name a few. One of the common denominators resulting in these negative ecosystems is oil and natural gas.

On the plus side, there are many countries with very large ecological reserves although rapid population growth and deforestation is a growing concern.

One of the fastest ways for a country to decrease their ecological footprint is by switching to greener energy sources like solar and wind. Many countries, like the United States and Canada are increasing their solar and wind power by subsidizing the resources to the public. This in theory should convert many grids into low consumption ecosystems.

If you’d like to learn more about how solar power and wind mills are decreasing our ecological footprint, please check out Clear Line for more.