20 of 30 - 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.


Unrelated Picture of the Day

20 of 30 - Spain Trip Pt 8 - Return to Barcelona

   LAST TIME on emosnail, we spent the weekend in Zaragoza and had some zany adventures, and then got on a bus back to Barcelona.

Day 16 - Monday, May 25th - Arriving in Barcelona, we WERE going to go frolick on the beach, since we hadn't gotten around to that yet, but it's just our luck that it's the one day it is cloudy in Barcelona. So (after checking in and dropping our stuff off at our hostel) we walk the beach boardwalk and drink sangria at bars just off the edge of the beach. Then we wander around town and do some bar hopping.
   We then get on a subway to go downtown, and even though I'm close behind her the subway door closes on my foot. Unlike NYC subway doors which bounce back if interrupted, these subways apparently don't do that, and it wasn't easily relinquishing my foot either. I started to become alarmed and just managed to yank my foot out before the subway started to move away.
   We hadn't discussed which of the several downtown stations we were going to yet, and neither of us had cell phones that worked in Spain, so this was looking to be a bit of a dilemma.
   I caught the next train 5 min later, kept an eye out for her at all the stations in between and got off at the main downtown station. She wasn't on the platform, I wandered through the labyrinthine station and out onto the street, looked around, didn't see her. Looked around a bit but then concluded there was nothing more I could do, so I took the subway to back to the hostel in case she'd proceeded there ... she wasn't there.
   About five minutes later she did indeed show up. Apparently she had decided to wait for me on the stairs leading up to the street, but had forgotten there were several entrances up to the street and had evidently waited at one other than the one I came out of. So we decide to go down to a nearby square where there were some nice bars.
   Sitting outside at the bar (which is what we almost always did, being as it was always nice out), on either side of us there seemed to be people on dates. To my left this guy seems grossly lovestruck with the girl he's with. They're speaking Spanish but Kerri informs me she was telling a totally boring story about her grandmother, but the guy was gazing at her like she was saying the most fascinating thing he had EVER heard. Ridiculous.
   And to my right there was an American girl with a Spanish guy. She was speaking haltingly in terrible Spanish (so I'm told), and he was leaning back in his chair looking like a smug asshole who knows he's gonna get laid just because this girl wants some Spanish loving.
   Around midnight we call it a night.


Day 17 - Tuesday, May 26th - The next morning I head out to go see some last few museums.
   I go to the Museum of Archeology, but by the time I'm done there it's about 1 -- not enough time to warrant a visit to the neighbouring National Museum of Catalonian Art, so I wander around the beautiful gardens and terraces around it, and then its time to make our way to the airport.
   We catch our plane without incident and are off.


   ...Kerri has work the next day, but I still have most of a week left in New York before my flight home.

( Pictures from this day! )