ddubb industries

Affluenza

May 18th, 2006 ecological, literary

I had to return The World is Flat since it was due back in a week but in the meantime, I’ve picked up Affluenza. Actually I’ve had the disease for quite some time now, it’s the book that I just started reading. It couldn’t be a better companion to The World is Flat. Just months before, my excitement was rising as I read about the goodness of all things coming together across the planet for the name of progress. Now this book is helping me to question just what is progress and at what is it’s cost to me, humanity, and the rest of the earth.

A quick question: Do you know how big your ecological footprint is? If you took all the biologically productive space on the earth and divided it by the number of people, you’d have roughly 4.5 acres per person. That’s the space needed to harvest all food, make products, provide infrastructure, and just exist. But that’s just humans! What about all the other things that live here? Let’s say that humans could live on half the world’s space, leaving the rest for all the other millions of species, then we’d need closer to 2-3 acres a person. The problem is that the average American’s footprint is closer to 24 acres per person. Our affluent way of life is becoming increasingly impossible to sustain.

Take the test youreslf: www.earthday.net/Footprint/

I just took the test. See my results here. My footprint it only 12 acres, half the average American but we would still need 2.5 earths if everyone lived like I do! Daunting facts.