How to organize and prioritize what is urgent? How to address and mitigate the impact of what is emerging? And how to improve and respond to day-to-day life? All this amidst an alternating order and chaos as a backdrop.
It's like too much of a good thing, to put it simply.
Bubbles are discussed in the financial sector, such as those generated by the overvaluation of certain financial assets, attracting the attention and participation of investors, driving prices beyond the actual performance of the underlying asset or the related economy of the company or country in question. When the bubble deflates or bursts, it is said that reality has finally caught up with it. This event occurs unexpectedly with terrible consequences.
Well, it turns out there are also bubbles of reality, those that humanity constructs through its physical and mental structures, its applied science and technology, its ideologies, its cities, its culture, where order, certainty, and security are promised. These also burst, but the consequences are vital.
This time, the reflection will address some of these situations that highlight the cracks in these bubbles of reality.
“There aren’t enough beds for so many people!”
A popular saying often warns that a resource is insufficient to meet demand; this is the situation the world's population faces today in terms of the sufficiency of natural resources to sustain and support its way of life; humanity is heading straight for the abyss.
"Idols with feet of clay" are always vulnerable.
Human beings, with their capacity for transformation and adaptation to circumstances and their environment, remain weak and defenseless. A crisis, a contingency, a natural disaster, a prolonged drought, heavy rains, hurricanes and floods, forest fires, a pandemic, among so many other natural events where uncertainty and chaos prevail, remind us of this with increasing eloquence. However, once the event has passed, we resume our practices, return to our patterns, habits, and beliefs. Even more serious, sometimes our behavior and denial contribute to the next chaotic event.
What is surprising is that many of the risks are caused by their way of life; they have already been studied, alarms have been raised, and warnings have been issued.
Their idols—ideologies and earthly gods—are idols with feet of clay, imposing, but always fallible. Whether based on religion, science, or philosophy, they are acts of faith.
These are existential explanations that human beings seek in order to accept the absurdities of life.
Risks
A list is presented of several global risks that are already partially known; we know what they are, but not when they will occur:
Overcharged by the planet, demand exceeds supply
The ecological footprint and biocapacity are two indicators that measure how quickly we deplete resources and generate waste – especially carbon dioxide – compared to how quickly nature absorbs that waste and generates new resources, respectively.
Both are expressed in global hectares (gha), comparable to the world's average productivity.
There are two very illustrative ways to measure this value exchange relationship: as deficits and surpluses, specific to the country, the region or the world; and based on the need for the number of planet Earths required by generalizing, at a global level, the ecological footprint of a country, that is, applying the same lifestyle pattern to the entire world population.
The world's biocapacity is 12,2 billion gha (global hectares), which, with a population of 8,2 billion, equates to a global biocapacity of 1,48 gha per person. The demand, or ecological footprint, is 21,7 billion gha (2025 data), which is equivalent to 1,8 times the global biocapacity. In other words, the world is in the red; it needs almost another planet Earth. (Earth Overshoot Day 2026)
The list of countries with biocapacity surpluses comprises 32 countries, 7 of which are in the Americas, in descending order: Bolivia with 397%, Paraguay with 269%, Brazil with 237%, Argentina with 75%, Colombia with 64%, Peru with 49%, and Venezuela with 46%. The Congo leads this ranking with 638% biocapacity. (Footprint Network)
The list of deficit countries comprises 94 countries that cannot meet their annual demand for renewable natural resources. The largest deficit is Israel with -1.900%. Eleven countries are from the Americas region, notably Mexico with a -120% deficit and Barbados with -1.400%. China and the United States have deficits of -92% and -350%, respectively. Two cats catching mice! (Ibid.)
On the other hand, if Qatar's lifestyle were generalized to all countries of the world, 10 Earths would be needed to meet this demand; if it were the United States' lifestyle, it would be 5,5, Chile's 2,9, China's 2,5, and the list of 78 countries continues. (Earth Overshoot Day 2026). In other words, not only is the "American Dream" unfeasible, but even a modest life like that of Guatemala is impossible.
-Only thirteen countries have an ecological footprint per person smaller than the world's biocapacity per person and are, from smallest to largest: Bangladesh, Nigeria, Nepal, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Ivory Coast, India, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Jordan, Philippines and Senegal (Ibid).
If you want to know the size of your ecological footprint and, if your consumption were to become widespread globally, how many planet Earths would be needed, access this link here.
Not stress, not crisis, but water bankruptcy
A distinction that denotes irreversible damage, using the general balance sheet concept, is equivalent to saying that water inflows and water savings are less than water outflows, structurally speaking. That is the situation with respect to water in which the world finds itself, according to the report “Global Water Bankruptcy: Living Beyond Our Hydrological Resources in the Post-Crisis Era” (January 26, 2026, UNU-INWEH, Richmond Hill, Canada).
“This report reveals an uncomfortable truth: many regions are living beyond their hydrological means, and many critical water systems are already bankrupt,” said Kaveh Madani, director of the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH) and lead author of the report. Key findings of the report include:
- Around 2200 billion people still lack safely managed drinking water, 3500 billion lack safely managed sanitation, and nearly 4000 billion suffer severe water shortages for at least one month a year.
-A growing number of important rivers no longer reach the sea or their flow decreases below the necessary environmental levels for much of the year.
More than half of the world's great lakes have lost water since the early 1990s, affecting nearly a quarter of the world's population who depend directly on them for their water security.
Wetlands have been destroyed across the continent. In the past five decades, 410 million hectares of wetlands have been lost. The services these ecosystems provide include climate and water regulation, highly efficient carbon sinks, provision of fresh water for human consumption and agricultural activities, and temporary or permanent habitat for a vast array of flora and fauna.
-The depletion of groundwater and the subsidence of the land are widespread and often irreversible phenomena.
Central agricultural areas are depleting their water resources. Seventy percent of global freshwater withdrawals are used for agriculture. Around three billion people and more than half of global food production are located in areas where total water storage is already decreasing or unstable.
-More than half of the world's agricultural land is now moderately or severely degraded, reducing soil moisture retention and pushing arid areas towards desertification.
-In 2022-2023, more than 1.800 billion people were living in drought conditions.
In many watersheds, pollution is caused by untreated or inadequately treated wastewater. Wastewater from agricultural runoff, industrial and mining effluents, and salinization means that an increasing proportion of water is no longer safe or economically viable for consumption, food production, or ecosystems.
This dire situation is overwhelming, and these issues are absent from public opinion and political debate in countries around the world; it's as if they weren't important. Can anyone consider the viability and sustainability of digital transformation or artificial intelligence with such a future?
This reflection will continue in the next installment.
Excellent information that shows that we are part of the environment and not its owners.