Humanity's Ecological Footprint: The gap between supply and demand
I imagine that tracing humanity’s average Ecological Footprint would be much like tracking Bigfoot’s trail through the forest. Now, where the size of this cryptid’s foot is debatable, the size of humanity’s Ecological Footprint is not. Each year Global Footprint Network calculates the Ecological Footprint of more than 100 nations and humanity as a whole. An Ecological Footprint is basically the calculation of how many resources nature is able to provide, how much is being used, and who uses what.
The results of this year’s report are quite sobering.
According to figures released this week, we humans now require the resources that it would take one and a half planets to sustainably produce. Humanity is demanding nature’s resources and producing carbon dioxide emissions at a rate 47 percent faster than what nature can regenerate and reabsorb. To continue in this analysis, the data reveals that if everyone lived like the average American, it would require five planets to produce the resources we consume and absorb our CO2 emissions. If everyone lived like the average European, we would require the capacity of 2.5 planets. (For a full list of countries, go here.)
Sobering indeed. Yet, hope for change remains!
Global Footprint Network President Mathis Wackernagel believes that, “these trends show it is in the self-interest of each government to act now to succeed in a resource-constrained world, no matter what happens on the world stage.” He continues to say that, “even as world leaders have acknowledged that an agreement at Copenhagen is out of reach, governments we work with from Ecuador to the United Arab Emirates are seeing the importance of taking bold individual action.”
My bet is that Bigfoot, wherever he may or may not be, is thankful for organizations like Global Footprint Network that will continue researching and working with government and opinion leaders on every continent to make ecological limits central to policy and decision-making.
Read the full National Footprint Accounts for 2009 here.
I find it interesting that Ode would also run the commentary of someone seemingly unaware of the global human footprint... see Who's Afraid of Billions of People on p.20 of the Nov/Dec 2009 issue. Mr. O'Neill's full article can be found at www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/7723 Pointing out that we have adapted to many more billions of people through human ingenuity and technology is all well and good, but what those who think growing populations are not a problem forget is that people can't just live anywhere, that's why more and more people live in cities. There may be a lot of happy well-to-do people living in NYC, but they require most everything brought in. Last time I checked we, as a planet, are not doing so well in terms of fresh water. Technology can help us out, but why should we depend on future ingenuity to always bail us out when we could simply have fewer offspring and give the planet a break?
posted by lseerveld on 11/30/2009 9:47 pm