well before mid-21st century. They state that the costs of resource depletion are becoming more evident. Climate change — a result of greenhouse gases being emitted — is the most obvious result and widespread effects. Other biophysical effects include: deforestation, species loss, soil erosion, or fisheries collapse. Such resource insecurity can lead to economic stress (such as monetary inflation) and conflict (such as civil unrest). Global Footprint Network maintains that ecological footprint accounts document the gap between human demand and regeneration. According to them, demand is now exceeding what the planet renews. They recognize that the accounting can be improved, and more details added, believing that in its current applications to countries the accounts typically underestimate human demand as not all aspects are measured (there are gaps in UN data). They also claim to overestimate biocapacity because it is ambiguous to determine how much of current yields are enabled by reduced future yield (for instance as in the case of overuse of groundwater, or erosion). Mathis Wackernagel, founder and president of the Global Footprint Network, states that soil depletion on crop land could be included in the Ecological Footprint accounts informing EOD, but that would "require data sets that do not exist within the UN data set". Thus, they claim ecological footprint accounts are metrics that merely define minimal conditions for sustainability, and that human impact on the planet is likely higher than the results that their accounts reveal. Criticism In 2017, the ecomodernist Breakthrough Institute dismissed the idea of Earth Overshoot Day by calling it "a nice publicity stunt". According to United Nations data, forests and fisheries are, as a whole, regenerating faster than they are depleted (but admitting that "the surplus might be more a reflection of poor UN fisheries data than healthy fisheries"), while cropland and pasture use is equal to what is available. Hence, EOD does a poor job at measuring water and land mismanagement (e.g., soil erosion) and only highlights the excess of carbon dioxide that humanity releases above what the ecosystem can absorb. In other words, the additional equivalent number of Earths that humanity requires is equivalent to a land area that, if filled with carbon sinks like forests, would balance carbon dioxide emissions. Researchers associated with Global Footprint Network answered these criticisms in a response in the same PLOS journal. More detailed discussions about criticism is available on Global Footprint Network website. See