30 in 30 - 7 - The Grim Footprinthook

From Ecofoot.org, based on fifteen questions my lifestyle requires the following acrage be dedicated to my upkeep:

ACRES / CATEGORY
5.2 FOOD
0.5 MOBILITY
1.2 SHELTER
1.5 GOODS/SERVICES
8.0 TOTAL FOOTPRINT

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 1.9 PLANETS.

   But what's it all mean? The implication of the webpage is that we're all living horrible gluttonous lives and should be ashamed of ourselves. But let us put this in perspective.

   Going back to the beginning: A popular misperception is that life during the stone age was nasty brutish and short. Modern research indicates that it appears in the stone-age humans, living off the land like hippies, only had to work about three hours a day between food hunting, food preparation, & miscellenious other tasks, and the rest of the time was theirs to lollygag about and doodle on cave walls. This however, was only sustainable if humans kept their population density at 1-2 people per square mile -- that is, having an individual "ecological footprint" of 320 - 640 acres. Over time the population increased and people had to work harder to get the same sustenance from smaller portions of land ... eventually leading to today's conditions where in the United States we have to work eight hours a day and have a footprint of 24 acres a person...

   Now certainly we should try to do whatever we can to be as efficient as possible and thus have the smallest footprint as possible, but we can't reduce our feetprints infinitely. And in the mean time I will not be shamed by guilt-tripping webpages.

   In conclusion, we're on a collision-course with a lack of footroom for our prints and all out world resource war. (=


   This entry shameless cobbled together from comments I made to insolent_pool's post, which was inspired by eazyt's post.
   My facts come from Of Cannibals & Kings, by Marvin Harris, which I flipped through one day during a meeting because I found it on someone's coffee table; and also Guns, Germs & Steel by Jared Diamond which I flipped through while waiting in an airport once.

   In unrelated news, anyone reading this from So Cal? I could really use an excuse to visit the Stone Brewery in San Marcos again...

08 of 30 - Sunday

   I'm particularly pleased that 30 in 30 participants are starting to get into the spirit of interacting with one another. hereticxxii has posted challenges for myself, meowmeowpants and metalphoenix. In turn, xaositecte (whose name, btw, I find on his journal and cut/paste from there whenever I need to write it since its impossible to spell) has challenged hereticxxii himself.


   I had mentioned before how it would be nice if all the current 30 in 30 participants' entries could be displayed in one place. I decided toward that end to create another livejournal which would list all participants on its friends list (and only participants). So meet arrrghonaut. Add http://arrrghonaut.livejournal.com/friends/ to your bookmarks as "30 in 30". (= Also I created FAQs about that livejournal and about 30 in 30 if you are interested.


   In other news, a lot of girls have been hollerin about the "Sex in the City" movie. While I haven't seen it and don't intend to, hereticxxii's post about it accurately encompasses my general impression of the movie and series.


More from PRIMUN
   As I mentioned, my delegates were shockingly apathetic about anything and everything. At some point during the last two hours which mainly consisted of staring at eachother a delegate asked what I did and I said I was currently a beekeeper. This actually illicited a huge amount of interest from all of them. So I took to the podium and told them about bees. For the first time all weekend they were all attentive to something, and frequently raised their hands with questions. After several minutes of this (enough time to tell them all about the mysterious bee disappearances and killer bees, and was presently fielding questions on the subject of bumblebees) some resolutions we were waiting or came back so we got back to real business to distribute them .... but as soon as the resolutions had been distributed the delegates clamoured for me to resume my presentation! It continued until something else pertaining to real business interrupted a second time.

   Also my phone died during the weekend because I'd forgotten my recharger. My Vice Chair made fun of me for calling it a recharger and claimed she'd always only heard it referred to as a "charger." Not that I ever looked into it but I've always thought it was definitely a REcharger. Thoughts?
   Friday night I had the insane idea for some reason that I could go to bed at 5am and wake up on time WITHOUT AN ALARM (since I use my phone as an alarm and it was dead). In retrospect this seems like a compeletly insane delusion.
   HOWEVER ... I DID! I am amazed at myself but I jumped out of bed a full 50 minutes before we had to be anywhere and would go without even the benefit of caffiene for two more hours!


   Tomorrow I'm beekeeping again.