Last Thursday, Aug. 13, I woke up with the feeling that I was using too much space. As I was brushing my teeth, I looked down and saw all the bottles and tubes of soap and toothpaste sprawling across the counter top. I thought I was really audacious, or at least inconsiderate, to use up such a square footage for myself. I looked around the bathroom and at the bedroom next door and thought I had no right to use it all. With toothpaste in my mouth, I lamented the extravagance of my physical presence. I didn’t even know it was Earth Overshoot Day.

Each year, the environmental organization Global Footprint Network marks the day when we all finish using up the natural resources the Earth can provide in a year and begin overshooting. That day fell on Oct. 4 in 2000. This year it landed before the start of fall. I’m not the only one who’s being excessive; it’s everybody on the planet. We’d need 1.6 Earths to provide us with food, fuel, and shelter for the year if we continue to outpace the Earth with our gigantic footsteps.

I feel a particular pit in my stomach at this news because I used to dream of living in a hut. That’s right, when most children were imagining their futures in big mansions and fancy cars, I only ever saw myself living in a small hut in the middle of the woods. I imagined I would build it myself, and that I would subsist on nuts and leaves. I never thought this dream was practical (it was too simple, too vague), but these days I see it as impractical in new ways.

First of all, our trees are dying. When I grow up, and if I ever get the chance to live in the woods, I might not be able to. The problem is called deforestation and I won’t stress the point with facts and figures. But I ask each of you to look at your backyard, your neighborhood park, and your rooftop urban garden and appreciate the sanctity and fragility of what you see.

Secondly, I’ve become complacent with the largeness of my habits, preferences, and provisions. There is no way for me to condone my behavior if I think about it critically; I have to resort to ignorance or indolence. It would be so easy to score myself a decently paying job, step into a 9-to-5 pace with my white-collar friends, and eventually buy a house with a nice lawn in the sprawl of a city. I’d be comfortable. If I followed my original dream, I would have to find a place in the forest and teach myself how to build a home and live from scratch. I wouldn’t even have a bathroom or a toilet. Or running water. Or, you know, amenities.

So my dream is impractical. I resent that. But another reason for its impracticality is that I live in a world where we have big modern allowances. I cannot deny my place here nor can I run away from its problems. The solution to our personal excesses is not to ditch the trails of plastic bottles and chemical products we’ve left behind but to turn around and clean them up. This process might take another hundred years, and it might involve renouncing items like fragrant lotion and facial toner (who needs those anyway?), but it begins with two simple feelings. First, horror of the gross injustices we have done to the Earth, and second, love for its future.

That future may or may not contain huts in the woods. It may or may not contain natural resources. But I know I don’t ever want to wake up feeling like I’ve killed the Earth again.