The Pill Magazine 47

EDITO

Last 29 July we exhausted the earth’s annual resources. But what is Overshoot Day and why should we be so concerned? It is a symbolic date when mankind runs out of the natural resources that the planet can generate in a year. The analysis is carried out by the Global Footprint Network, an international research organisation that monitors mankind’s ecological footprint. To determine this, the planet’s biocapacity is compared with its annual resource requirements. But the only factor in this equation that can change is the second one: the resources remain the same, it is we who waste more of them every year.

In the calendar, this day continues to slowly recede. While in 2020, due to the pandemic, the date was set for 22 August, organisations such as the WWF are concerned to note that the situation is exactly the same as it was two years ago. “Humanity currently uses 74% more resources than the planet’s ecosystems are capable of regenerating.” We can therefore say that we consume 1.7 Earths per year. “From Earth Overshoot Day until the end of the year, mankind operates at a deficit in ecological spending. This expenditure is currently one of the largest since the world entered ecological overshoot in the early 1970s”.

While the solutions for a sustainable future include reducing carbon by 50%, what we eat is also very important. Eighty per cent of global species and habitat extinctions depend on current food systems. A reversal from a growth economy to a welfare economy is needed. As Gianfranco Bologna, honorary chairman of WWF Italy’s Scientific Committee, says: “The accumulated ecological debt is now equal to the earth’s 18-year output. The global ecological deficit is much greater than the economic one and concerns the very basis of our life, because without a healthy and vital nature we do not have the fundamental elements that allow us, first of all, to breathe, drink and eat”.

From now until 31 December 2021, remember that we will be living every single day in deficit, towards a planet that is increasingly scrambling to chase us and provide us with what we need.

What will you find in the pages of The Pill?

Kyrgyzstan

A country we hear very little about in the West because of its geographical remoteness, but also because of its isolation from the main tourist flows. Trip In Your Shoes shows us its primordial beauty and wild authenticity.

The Night

The Sportiva Lavaredo Ultra Trail is an extraordinary 120km night race that embraces the most spectacular places in the Dolomites. At night nature comes to life and the sound of the icy wind covers every human sound. Finally, dawn always comes like an explosion.

South Tyrol at high altitude

Among the many hiking opportunities in South Tyrol, the Ortler High Route, the Fundres High Route and the Dolomites UNESCO Geotrail are among the most interesting. Important pages of mountaineering history have been written in these places and they continue to be ideal locations for outdoor activities.

Go Path

After a forced pause at the end of summer 2020, the Va’ Sentiero expedition resumed its march along the Sentiero Italia, from the Marche to Puglia. On its way it found unexpected encounters, wild nature and small villages stuck in the past.

Alex Honnold

A rainy afternoon in a bar with the world’s best-known climber. Alex Honnold has been able to climb routes of extreme difficulty in free solo, but he is still able to surprise and reinvent himself. For some time now, he has launched himself into the world of podcasts.

Marco Gubert

One of the emerging athletes on the Italian ultra trail scene. He wins and enjoys himself, but running remains a passion which comes after his work as a cook. For him, nothing is impossible: ‘all you have to do is divide it into many small pieces and do it a little at a time’.

Kyrgyzstan

A country we hear very little about in the West because of its geographical remoteness, but also because of its isolation from the main tourist flows. Trip In Your Shoes shows us its primordial beauty and wild authenticity.

Marco Gubert

One of the emerging athletes on the Italian ultra trail scene. He wins and has fun, but running remains a passion that comes after his work as a cook. For him, nothing is impossible: “all you have to do is divide it into many small pieces and realise it a little at a time”.

Michael Piccolruaz

He has just returned from Tokyo where, for the first time, climbing made its debut as an Olympic discipline. Michael Piccolruaz studies geology as well as climbing, because he likes to know what kind of rock he is moving on and to know the environment in which he is immersed.

La vida es movimiento

It all started with an unexpected encounter. Because after months of immobility we were able to set off again, to travel, to change landscapes. Life is made of movement, just as we are made to be nomads in the physical world as well as in the world of thought.

Wild E-Side

Discovering the world of e-bikes in an adventure on the Alta Via del Sale. An evocative route that links Limone Piemonte to the La Terza Refuge, entirely at altitude between 1800 and 2200 metres. 90km to cover in two days with a difference in altitude of up to 3600m.

The discovery of a Middle Earth

A slow walk in the “Terre del Mincio”. A transitional space between two very different realities, culturally and biologically speaking: Lake Garda and its moraine hills, of which the river is an emissary, and the river Po, where it ends its course.

Fast hiking & slow lunch. Nimsdai in Cortina

Ten Nepalese mountaineers have written the latest chapter in a 41-year history of winter Himalayanism. The expedition to K2 was led by Nirmal Purja, Nimsdai, who climbed all 14 of the world’s eight-thousanders in six months and six days with Project Possible 14/7.

Manuel Merillas

One of the most recent additions to the SCARPA trail team. An Achilles tendon injury kept him out of action for three years but he is finally back in the field with a series of record ascents and descents in the Pyrenees, Cantabrian Mountains, Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa.

Matilda Söderlund

She has been a multifaceted sportswoman since she started walking. She climbed her first pitch during a friend’s birthday party in Stockholm and something clicked in her head. The impact is crazy, the memory of that moment still fresh in her mind.