October 6th was World Ecological Debt Day — the date on which the world officially begins living beyond its means. Renewable resources are used up and we begin eating into natural resources. According to nef, where I got the wonderful word clonetown (meaning the big shops in suburbia that you see everywhere — and it all looks the same), World Ecological Debt Day comes earlier every year. If the entire world lived as those in the UK do, we’d need three planets.
I also stumbled on an ecological footprint quiz. Answer a few questions and it estimates your ecological impact. If everyone lived like me, we’d need 3.2 planets. That’s almost half of what the average person in the US requires, though, so that’s good. I think I win big in the transportation department, since I use public transportation and carpool almost exclusively. Plus I don’t usually travel very far. School is only just over a mile away.
Take the quiz and let me know what you scored in the comments.
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11 October 2007 at 12:08:14
Melinda Weathers
Hi Jason! This probably looks terrible when I paste it in, but here goes. I guess I need more planets than you! And here I thought I was doing pretty well living near work and driving a Fit. I guess our house is probably pretty inefficient. As is our techno-lust. (That should’ve been a question on the quiz — rate your techno-lust.)
One thing I keep meaning to do is look into getting some solar panels and using them for, say, heating the water or something. We don’t have many trees blocking the sun to our house, so it might work out pretty well. We’ll see if I ever get around to it :)
CATEGORY ACRES
FOOD 4.9
MOBILITY 0.7
SHELTER 6.2
GOODS/SERVICES 6.2
TOTAL FOOTPRINT 18
IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 24 ACRES PER PERSON.
WORLDWIDE, THERE EXIST 4.5 BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCTIVE ACRES PER PERSON.
IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 4.1 PLANETS.