Free Republic

Most of us know we own too much stuff. We feel the weight and burden of our clutter. We tire of cleaning and managing and organizing. Our toy rooms are messy, our drawers don’t close, and our closets are filled from top to bottom. The evidence of clutter is all around us.Today, increasing data is being collected about our homes, our shopping habits, and our spending. The research is confirming our observation: we own too much stuff. And it is robbing us of life.Here are 21 surprising statistics about our clutter that help us understand how big of a problem...

Humans have used up more of Earth’s resources than it can regenerate within one year as of Aug. 1, 2018, according to the Global Footprint Network. This year's Earth Overshoot Day is the earliest ever. Last year’s Earth Overshoot Day fell on Aug. 2. The date, which was previously known as Ecological Debt Day, has occurred steadily earlier since 1971. That year, the date fell on Dec. 21. “We are using 1.7 Earths,” according to the Global Footprint Network’s website. “We use more ecological resources and services than nature can regenerate through overfishing, overharvesting forests and emitting more carbon dioxide...

As of Tuesday, the Earth's ecological budget for the year has maxed out. For the rest of the year the planet will operate on an ecological deficit. And it's only August. So claims the Global Footprint Network, which calls today "Earth Overshoot Day," its annual estimate of when human consumption exceeds the planet's ability to regenerate its resources for the year. "It's a bit of a gimmick, I admit," said the group's president Mathis Wankernagel,in a phone interview from Switzerland. "It's not that tomorrow I won't be able to eat potatoes anymore." But, he said, it's meant to make a...

Any report on specific changes to U.S. troop levels based in various parts of the world is speculation, because the department still is working with friends and allies around the world on those levels, senior Defense Department officials said at a Pentagon news conference today. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, addressed news reports that final decisions had been made in how to adjust the U.S. military's global "footprint" to better address challenges of the 21st century. DoD began looking at the U.S. global posture almost as...