Ecological Footprint Quiz

jesus_of_suburbia · Posted: Tue Sep 05, 2006 12:53 pm Post subject: Re: Ecological Footprint Quiz

CATEGORY ACRES
FOOD 5.9
MOBILITY 0.5
SHELTER 2.2
GOODS/SERVICES 1.7
TOTAL FOOTPRINT 10

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 2.3 PLANETS.
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smallpoxgirl · Moderator Joined: Nov 08, 2004 Posts: 5164

I have to say that I think that this thing badly misinterprets the results. We don't need four more earths. We need 5 billion less people. If we don't fix our population problem, then we can all become vegans and live in mud huts without running water, and we'll still destroy the planet. It should ask you how many kids you have and multiply your footprint accordingly.
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WisJim · Posted: Fri Oct 13, 2006 7:38 am Post subject: Re: Ecological Footprint Quiz

Nothing about alternative energy, growing your own food, etc. Way to general to be meaningful.

Loki · Expert Joined: Apr 08, 2006 Posts: 976 Location: Cascadia

Someone earlier made a good point about the EF test not including kids. How should kids be included? Maybe lump them into their parents' EF until they turn 18? Someone who has 10 kids obviously has a larger EF than someone who doesn't have any kids at all, but I've never seen an EF test that takes that into consideration.

smallpoxgirl · Moderator Joined: Nov 08, 2004 Posts: 5164

The_Toecutter · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Jun 18, 2005 Posts: 1727

This quiz had no option for alternative fuel cars, for instance, but the impact of an EV will be about 1/3 that of a comparable ICEV. It had no option as to whether you get your electricity from renewables. It had no option adjusting for HOW the meat you eat is produced. This, aside from the obvious flaws such as not accounting for children.

Interesting how if you enter in the most wasteful habits possible to mimic how the wealthy live, you get roughly 35 planets. And this doesn't account that they have homes more along the lines of 10,000 square feet, instead of 2,500+, or fly even 200 hours a year, let alone 100+. In reality, it's probably double.

edpeak · Heavy Crude Joined: Feb 04, 2005 Posts: 166

Hello...just now jumping into this thread :-)

Can we agree on a few things?

First, can we agree that it's not an either-or between
how many people there are, on the one hand,
and the consumption of resources per person, on the other
hand? It's obviously the product of those two numbers
that gives the total strain/drain on the planet

Secondly, it's not just where you're at, it's also where you're going.

If we apply this second principle to population, the lesson
is, it's not enough to have a lower population level,
you also want to have it be steady-state rather
than exponentially growing or else you'll be (in time)
back to square one with a much larger population.

The subtle point that's usually missed (at least in
most mainstream discussions, perhaps not here) is
what happens when we apply the second principle
to the resources-per-person side of things: we need
to fix not only the present but the 'motion over time' of
resources-per-person.

Then it means we not only need to cut (particularly
in our so called developed world) the resources
per person used, but also, we need to prevent
the direction-in-which-things-move being one
that will exponentially increase the resources-per-person
over time.

That means abandoning the paradigm
of perpetual-growth-forever economics and
replacing with economics that can
have us lead thriving good lives while being a sustainable steady state economy.

Those are my main two points -- someone, I think TheToeCutter
or similar name, made another point, and an excellent one, in the passing, worth highlighting IMO...that we need to stop
using the phrase "Standard of living" interchangeably
with "level of consumption per person" is the way I would
put it, they put it slightly differently implicitly noting it
when they suggested europeans have higher SOL while
consuming (less use a less positive sounding
word than 'consuming'...how about 'using up'? wasting?) less resources than us in the US of A...

So while I'm not at all sure I agree that 7.5 billion
could use as many resources per person as even EU,
it's certainly better than heading towards US levels
of consumption per person (CPP)...and if we differentiate
between SOL and CPP as we should, then we can put
our heads together on the dual tasks
of minimizing CPP on the one hand and maximizing SOL (or quality of life, QOL) on the other hand.

To recap though, we don't need to argue about
population versus CPP, but in the 'first world' CPP is
by far the biggest problem (so much so that if you
take the product CPP times even 2 kids per family,
you'll get a much higher number than the corrsponding
product of two numbers in the third world even though
the latter of the two numbers, there, is significantly larger
despite having decreased)

And we need to do much more than lower CPP (alongside
policies that help lower population and population growth
both here in the in the so called third world or the global
South) namely we need to have a model in which
constant-pressure-to-increase-CPP is a thing of the past,
is no more, is in the dustbin of history, is... you get the idea ;-)

EDpeak

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man -George Bernard Shaw
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gg3 · Posted: Thu Nov 16, 2006 4:30 am Post subject: Re: Ecological Footprint Quiz

Smallpoxgirl's 5 September posting is exactly correct: The number should also be stated in terms of sustainable population at whatever your impact level is.

So for example if your impact level is 2.0, andyou take that as representative of a goal-state per person for the entire world, then we are 50% overpopulated, and we would be sustainable at population level 3.25 billion humans. If your impact level is 10, then we would be sustainable at 650 million humans.

That would be quite an eye-opener. In fact I think I'm going to do something about that.

Re. Loki how to include kids: The conservative hypothesis is that kids will grow up with consumption habits similar to those of their parents. Also all humans, regardless of age, require similar inputs of food and water and square feet for sleeping. Thus I would count children as multipliers of the grownup's impact. For example if you have an impact of 4 and you have 2 kids, then your impact is: impact of 4 per person, x total of 3 people, = total impact of 12. That would also be an eye-opener.

Recognize the fact that anyone who actively campaigns for unrestrained breeding or unrestrained consumption is effectively promoting dieoff, which amounts to gigadeaths (billions of deaths). Thus, they are engaged in the moral equivalent of promoting a genocide that is potentially hundreds to a thousand times larger in numbers than the Nazi holocaust. (Yes, Mr. Pope, this means you!)

Toecutter's point is spot-on about the impact of how the ultra-wealthy live. 35 planets. Hmm. That would leave a sustainable world population of about 150 million humans. Yes, they could all be wealthy and have machines instead of slaves.

Though, Toe, I'll have to disagree with you about using technology to increase the carrying capacity, which is a function of the most-scarce resource rather than an average of some kind.

---

Re. Edpeak:

It's a factor of population multiplied by per-capita consumption. Thus, the higher the population, the lower the resources available per person. And the lower the population, the greater the resources available per person.

As for where we're going, that's easy: toward 10 billion, with a massive dieoff along the way, numbered in gigadeaths (billions of deaths), and dwarfing the megadeaths caused by Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot taken together.

Abandoning the growth economy: Yes, clearly; and this is going to require turning around a dynamic that has existed since the beginning of human societies.

As an example of a practical problem, growth is ultimately what produces profit. The bank lends to the business, the business prospers by selling to an expanding market for its products, and thus repays the bank with interest, and thus capitalism produces an enormous increase in generalized prosperity for everyone (even assuming that labor is not terribly exploited, for example the middle class economy of the USA 1950s - 1960s), as long as capitalist enterprise has access to commensurately growing natural resources to use as raw materials.

What happens when we hit the limits to growth is the pie does not expand and there is no way to earn a profit (bigger slice of static pie) except at the direct one-to-one expense of another's loss. There are exceptions but they tend to prove the rule (for example, in a collapse scenario where the lawful order breaks down, prostitution will become a new growth industry).

This bugs my libertarian side because the logical outcome is the requirement for a degree of socialism, and I see no way around that.

Standard of Living: Try this: instead of integrating all growth as a single figure, establish a threshold for a materially sufficient SOL and then when individuals hit that level, take them out of the calculations. The result being that the only way to show increase in SOL after that point, is to improve SOL for those who are below the threshold for material sufficiency. Thus the wasteful stuff ceases to be reflected in the mean average as an "improvement" in SOL.

The methodology I favor is to establish a standard for material suffiency and then calculate sustainable population at that level, and then have the Western nations crank down their consumption levels (or improve efficiency) while the regions with highest birth rates (e.g. Middle East) crank down their reproduction levels. Thus, for example, each of us would not be morally obligated to keep reducing consumption to accommodate the overpopulation and overconsumption of others. The point of this exercise is to establish a bulkwark against a "race to the bottom" that would ultimately lead to an isotropy of uniform mass-hunger (plus or minus a tiny aristocracy holed up in their castles).

Doly · Expert Joined: Dec 03, 2004 Posts: 4031

Just did the quiz again to test how my footprint would change if I lived in a houseboat. It reduced from 2.4 to 2.1 planets, but the quiz isn't really designed to account for houseboats.

edpeak · Heavy Crude Joined: Feb 04, 2005 Posts: 166

<blockquote>"Try this: instead of integrating all growth as a single figure, establish a threshold for a materially sufficient SOL and then when individuals hit that level, take them out of the calculations. The result being that the only way to show increase in SOL after that point, is to improve SOL for those who are below the threshold for material sufficiency. Thus the wasteful stuff ceases to be reflected in the mean average as an "improvement" in SOL"</blockquote>

I like this so far, but I was referring to even more than that...yes, so as you said, only cound SOL increase for those going
from below-basics to basic sufficiency...but ALSO include
in SOL such things as: traffic congestion (counts negatively
obviously) free time (counts positively) for family, etc.

And yes we need alternatives to a profits-based, expansion
based economy, but those alterantives need not be called
"socialist" and, much more importantly than the name,
alternatives to capitalism need not be anti-libertarian...in
fact we *could* have more and deeper freedoms than
our corporate massculture homogenized system, more
free media than corporate-controlled media, etc. We certainly
do not want (I certainly do not want, nor would it
be any use) a USSR style or a Social Democratic type
system -- those systems are basically state-coordinated
capitalism and while the latter is much more free than the former
they are based on perpetual growth just as much as
the US is, so decentralized grassroots democracy based economic
systems of steady-state, power from the bottom up, not
from the top down offer MORE libertarian options while
offering an alternative to the corporate capitalist model
(as well as an alternative to the other two models mentioned)

EDpeak
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gwmss15 · Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2006 4:47 am Post subject: Re: Ecological Footprint Quiz

this is my footprint form ISSAN thailand (urban area) i work in the city at a university.

CATEGORY GLOBAL HECTARES
FOOD 0.8
MOBILITY 0.2
SHELTER 0.6
GOODS/SERVICES 1
TOTAL FOOTPRINT 2.6

IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 1.5 GLOBAL HECTARES PER PERSON.

WORLDWIDE, THERE EXIST 1.8 BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCTIVE GLOBAL HECTARES PER PERSON.

IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 1.4 PLANETS.

Is this a good amount or what? it says im in the 80% of the world who use less than 4 hectares a person.

my failing is with food mostly ie love my meat too much and too much aircond use. but everything else is good i think

HOWEVER my partners mother one is much better but her lifestyle is very simple and local ie she hardly travels at all. She is a subsistance level farmer

ISSAN Thailand (rural area)

CATEGORY GLOBAL HECTARES
FOOD 0.4
MOBILITY 0
SHELTER 0.2
GOODS/SERVICES 0.2
TOTAL FOOTPRINT 0.8

IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 1.5 GLOBAL HECTARES PER PERSON.

WORLDWIDE, THERE EXIST 1.8 BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCTIVE GLOBAL HECTARES PER PERSON.

IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 1.0 PLANETS.

one thing i noticed about all this is that for you to have only one planet you have to live in a rural area and never commute for work and live off the land for most things.

what do others think?

Pretorian · Posted: Mon Nov 27, 2006 1:42 pm Post subject: Re: Ecological Footprint Quiz

21. Well, I always knew we need to filter our crowd, and not just to 1.5bln as this link might suggest.

gg3 · Posted: Tue Nov 28, 2006 9:39 am Post subject: Re: Ecological Footprint Quiz

For the record:

CATEGORY ACRES

FOOD 4
MOBILITY 1
SHELTER 5. 4
GOODS/SERVICES 4.4

TOTAL FOOTPRINT 15

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 3.3 PLANETS.

In summary my resource impact is 62.5% of normal for Americans, and Earth would be sustainable at this lifestyle with a population level of 1.97 billion.

This is fairly convergent with my point about a sustainable population of 2.5 billion on a reasonable lifestyle. In that case I would still have to reduce impact by about 27%. So this is a reasonable target to go for: a 27% reduction in impacts, which should be achievable...

Now if I make the changes I am already anticipating (move rural, high-mileage vehicle plus high-mileage motorbike, smaller house based on sustainable design, etc.), then what I end up with is:

CATEGORY ACRES

FOOD 4
MOBILITY 1
SHELTER 1.2
GOODS/SERVICES 1.5

TOTAL FOOTPRINT 8

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 1.7 PLANETS.

The planned changes produce a cutback from 15 acres to 8, or 46%, which is far beyond the target cutback level of 27%. Realistically, that's where I'm going to dig in my heels and not budge any further to accommodate the multiplying morons and consuming cretins.

Note also, these changes require not much more than ingenuity and community. They do not require freezing in the dark, doing without toilet paper or showers, or subsisting on roots & berries. The idea that sustainability requires abject misery is a crock of poo.

(Room temperature here is presently 60 degrees fahrenheit, with me warm & comfy wearing longjohns & a knit cap, and using a 50-watt heating pad under my sweatshirt rather than 1000 watts or equivalent to heat the room air.)

EnergyUnlimited · Fission Joined: May 15, 2006 Posts: 2962

dohboi · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Dec 05, 2005 Posts: 1127

So my goal for the New Year is to get close to the one earth replacement level. I am below 2 now, so it's not a huge step--the main changes are going from vegetarian to vegan and going from 10-100 miles a week in cars to under 10. I still need to continue on-going efforts to move my house to green design. What shocks my immediate and extended family most is my refusal to fly.

These changes are all good for me physically and spiritually, and it is a great relief to think that for once in my life I will not be hogging much more than my fair share of the earth's bounty.

Now if I can only convince the rest of my fellow Americans to join me...