30 in 30 - 14 - The Grim Footprinthook

[aggienaut]

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.


   I'm not sure who the post of the day is either, since I'm in a hurry, but one thing I do know for sure:
The Award of SHAME for Most Pitiful Post of the Year: goes to otimus for pretending LJ Abuse was about to shut down his livejournal as an excuse to urge readers to comment about how much they love him. Incidently, only one person actually posted expressing concern, whereas at about the same time five people responded to my poll yesterday saying "anything is better than posts like Otimus's."
   Now why do I kick this obviously dead and decomposing horse you ask? Because (1) He had the gall to tell me I'm a bad blogger; and mostly (2) that entry really is offensively pitiful; (3) Also remember he started this by saying I "motherfucking suck" at no instigation of mine, so I don't think I can really be too harsh here.
   But really, that entry, wow.

Comments

[chiriklo-star.livejournal.com]

That's actually a fairly okay footprint for that site... mine was about the same, but some people in my science class (where we took this test) recieved a result of 7 planets.

[shid.livejournal.com]

I don't know why (living in a multistory apartment building) but my "shelter" got a 4.2.. wtf? I live in Los Angeles; how am I taking up 4.2 acres?

Also, due to my meat eatting habits I got 15. HA.

And I'm totally cool with needing more planets. A kick in the right direction I say.

more planets

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

yeah I selected the "meat with almost every meal" and "prepared far away" options for my food.. Otherwise I'd probably be below their 4.5 guilt-trip horizon.


...they don't take into account that most planets are bigger than ours though!

[ashael.livejournal.com]

"Guns, Germs and Steel" is a good book. Read it. Also, stone-age people probably had pretty short lives (about 30 years), with men living longer on average due to women dying in childbirth.