What is your ecological footprint?

[Grog]

Let's say it did consider how the houses are cooled or heated... It would, maybe, make a difference of about "half a planet".

This is not just about individual choices, it's about collective choices. Regarding public transportation and urban sprawl, for example. Of course some people live in places where there is no public transportation: over the past century all we've done in North America is encourage urban sprawl, individual housing construction, more roads and more cars. That's what our economy eats for fuel.

Reversing those trends will feel like a significant sacrifice to many, and I think most won't make it, at least not in this generation, not until forced by, say, penury of fuel for their cars. It would also need a revolution in urban planning, not one city at a time, but with all cities working together. Some cities are making progress by at least noticing the problem. But to tell you the truth, I'm not holding my breath...

[xeney]

I actually think you LOSE points for taking public transportation, just not as many points as you lose for driving a car. When I last took the test I scored worse on my transportation footprint, and I was taking the bus fairly regularly. These days I don't take the bus at all, but I haven't replaced those bus trips with car trips, so my score went down.

[lph]

One of the things that makes it difficult for most people to radically change their ecological footprint is that the big differences come from, well, radical changes...

I'm not going to put myself up on a pedestal here, but we chose where we wanted to live by planning out public transportation and biking distances first, then setting a budget, then house hunting. Which means we live where we can both use public transportation OR bike to work, because we set that as a condition before moving. It's a lot harder to change the public bus route (or change jobs) after you've moved

Ditto for various activities, we chose a place to live that has a reasonable amount of sports activities available for our son nearby, because we refuse to drive him around more than necessary. Most of this we did to buy us more time and less everyday stress, but it sure cuts way down on our car use.

Come to think of it - we didn't HAVE a car when we moved here. Hm, maybe that had something to do with it...

Now, if only I could get away from the idea that I truly deserve a trip to Thailand next winter.

[Grog]

Great example LPH...

I was thinking about this conversation last night and came up with that trick for those who already live in less urban areas or even rural areas and are unlikely to move anytime soon, but want to reduce your footprint.

What you have is land. If you use it to grow your own vegetables and fruit, or even hold a little bit of livestock for your eggs, you'll reduce your footprint because that part of your daily food intake will be taken for locally... very locally. And it gives you a clear feeling of what your footprint actually is.

Like those who are lucky enough to burn wood from their own land, well, it makes it easy for to measure what their footprint is: how much forest (and work to pick up the wood and prepare it for burning) does it take to fire a woodstove so that the house is warm in the winter? Now if every house in the country was heated by the same means, how much forest would it take? Do we have enough trees left, relatively accessible, to do that sustainably, so there's some forest left for our kids to heat up their house? The current answer is of course no, which is why we dig for natural gas and coal, and import oil from abroad.

Now of course Emily please don't stop heating your house for this reason!!!!!! What I mean by this whole story is that when we move our footprint closer to ourselves, we realize how much space we need on this planet to cater to our modern needs. It doesn't really take the footprint down to know how big it is, but it certainly makes us more conscious of our weight on this planet. And more careful when we make our next choices about how we live, how we travel around, who we vote for, etc.

To be sedentary in the North, we'll always need to have a bigger footprint because, well, it's cold in the winter. Is that a reason to make it bigger and bigger, as we're currently doing (collectively, not necessarily individually)? I hope not. Yet that's what's happening right now, right here in Canada and certainly down there in the USA too. In those circumstances, every decision becomes important.

[emily_in_nc]

Now of course Emily please don't stop heating your house for this reason!!!!!!

Not to worry, we only use wood from dead trees, trees that fall in wind or ice storms or hurricanes, etc. On eleven acres of large hardwoods, we have plenty to go around. We originally burned wood from trees that fell in Hurricane Fran (lots, sadly) in 1996, but since then, natural attrition of the trees here and there all over our property has given us more wood than we could ever even burn, so some that die we just leave as snags for the woodpeckers to live in or lying on the ground out in the woods. Other than the trees we cut to build our house, we never cut live trees for firewood. Of course, because of that, we don't have enough sun around our house for much of a vegetable garden, but we do grow a few tomatoes, peppers, and herbs. And in the summer we bike to the farmer's market to buy most of the rest of our veggies -- organic or pesticide-free about 95% of the time. Locally grown, of course. We also belong to a food co-op so we can buy as much local and sustainable produce and other groceries as possible. DH bakes all our bread (with wheat berries he's ground!), etc. We didn't get credit for many of these habits in the footprint quiz, which is my beef with it....I'm not trying to say that we're perfect -- far from it -- but I do think we're better than the quiz results show.

Emily

[iFKA]

My country isn't even on the list But if I'd live in my neighborhood like
Austria it would be...

CATEGORY GLOBAL HECTARES
FOOD 1.2
MOBILITY 0.1
SHELTER 3.4
GOODS/SERVICES 4
TOTAL FOOTPRINT 8.7

IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 4.7 GLOBAL HECTARES PER PERSON.

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

IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 4.8 PLANETS.