Ecological Footprint accounting, first introduced in the 1990s and continuously developed, continues to be the only metric that compares overall human demand on nature with what our planet can renew--its biocapacity--and distils this into one number: how many Earths we use. Our economy is running a Bernie Madoff-style Ponzi scheme with the planet. We use future resources to run the present, using more than Earth can replenish. Like any such scheme, this works for a limited time, followed by a crash. Avoiding ecological bankruptcy requires rigorous resource accounting--a challenging task, but doable with the right tools.