Radical simplicity
It’s easier now to calculate your own ecological footprint, and it’s time to begin reducing it
by Dan Crawford
republic-news.org
We all know that every decision we make has consequences. Think back to the first time you really came to understand this. Some classic examples would be if you had to spend an extra semester at school due to a course failure or had your car towed because of where you decided to park. These instances exhibit clear and direct connections between the decision and the resulting consequence.
Unfortunately, for many of life's decisions the connection is not as readily apparent. For example, the consequences of everyday decisions on what we eat or drink and how they relate to both the environment and the body are not readily known. The impacts of these decisions are usually never given a passing thought. People are much more inclined to hastily make these decisions based solely on time and money. Few people ever take the time to research the consequences and formulate an intelligent decision-making process.
Fortunately, a small number of people have taken the time to investigate. One such individual is Jim Merkel, a retired military engineer who decided to dedicate his life to understanding the consequences and impacts of his everyday living on the planet. His book Radical Simplicity takes the reader, step by step, through ways of determining their own impact, how to considerably reduce it and how to monitor their progress.
The main premise of the book is that every action we make has a direct impact on both the land and sea of the planet. If we eat a burger, then a certain amount of pasture land was needed to raise the cow, land was needed for the processing plant, and land was needed for where the fossil fuels were drilled. If we drink a beer, a certain amount of watershed area was needed for the fresh water as well as farmland for the hops and barley and so forth. Surface area is required for all of our inputs and outputs, our consumption and absorption of our wastes. The term “ecological footprint” is used when describing this surface area.
The science of footprinting is a complicated one. It can be very difficult to trace a product back to all of its original sources. The science was first developed at the University of British Columbia by Dr William Rees and Dr Mathis Wackernagel. Their research was able to piece together the footprint mazes for many of our common everyday items.
Performing a complete audit of a person's own lifestyle allows for the calculation of their ecological footprint. For the average Canadian this works out to a footprint of 18 acres. In comparison, a person in India has an average footprint of 1.9 acres.
The physical limit for the planet is 126 billion acres. Much of this, 94 billion acres, consists of low-bioproductive oceans, deserts, ice caps and human settlement, leaving a total of 32 billion acres of bio-productive area available for life. The current human population stands at just under 6.5 billion, translating to roughly 5 acres per person. If 80% of the bio-productive land were left wild for the 25 million other species, then we would end up with each person having only one acre to themselves.
Humans, on average, use 6.9 acres; not only are we leaving nothing for the other species on the planet, but we are also consuming ourselves out of house and home. This is only made possible through depleting and destroying existing resources at an unsustainable rate, effectively reducing the planet’s capital instead of living off of its income. The rate at which we are doing this is only accelerating.
For those who want to live responsibly and equitably on this planet, Radical Simplicity is an excellent starting point. It provides an easy-to-follow road map of how to change one's lifestyle. The footprinting methods provide a useable metric to measure individual progress by. This also allows for goal-setting and pace-setting which can help astronomically when making slow and steady progress towards a better world. More information can be found at Jim Merkel's website: globallivingproject.org. |
