From this past Friday, the world has been trading while insolvent with nature.

This year's Earth Overshoot Day fell on July 30 – the point when, on the best available estimates, humanity had used up all the ecological resources the planet can regenerate this year. It's not an exact science, but it is a useful warning light.

Earth Overshoot Day is calculated by the Global Footprint Network using UN and other official datasets to estimate two big numbers: the Earth’s annual “biocapacity” (how much biological resource nature can renew in a year) and humanity’s ecological footprint (our demand for land, food, energy and materials during the same period). Dividing one by the other and converting the result into a calendar date gives Overshoot Day, and the 2026 date suggests we are using nature roughly 1.7 times faster than ecosystems can regenerate.

That is a planetary average, layered with assumptions about land productivity, carbon sinks and consumption patterns. It does not detail precisely how much a particular business contributes to overshoot, but there are some interesting national comparisons: if the whole planet consumed resources at the same rate as here in the UK, overshoot would have fallen on the considerably earlier date of May 22. Qatar has the earliest Overshoot Day, which occurs on February 4.

How Scotland's farms could change to tackle climate change and protect nature

Economists and policymakers increasingly talk about “natural capital”: the stocks of nature that provide services with economic value. That includes forests, soils, rivers, coasts, biodiversity and the climate system – all of which deliver benefits such as clean water, flood protection, pollination, carbon storage and recreation.

Those assets are also core to much of Scotland's economy. Whisky........

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