If everyone lived like me, we'd need 8.2 planets

Discussion in 'The big picture' started by murray, Jun 5, 2005.

  1. FREE Permaculture

    FREE Permaculture Junior Member

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  2. CRTreeDude

    CRTreeDude Junior Member

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    Congratulations, you are living an ecologically conscientious lifestyle.
    If everyone lived like you do, we would need only 0.28 Earths.

    Now granted, we live in the Tropics, remodeled a Costa Rican home, and we ourselves process trees to sustainable wood products. We grow most of our own food, my office for the company is in my home, so no travel to speak of.

    It is probably even better than that, if we figure all the offsets we earn from growing 150,000+ trees...

    You all are a bunch of slackers... lol
     
  3. FREE Permaculture

    FREE Permaculture Junior Member

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    it's ok 'cos they found a new earth that's 2.4 times the size of earth, I might be moving so i can continue this lifestyle
    on kepler-22b for much longer then i could here.

    0.28 is very hard for most people though, but thanks for that 'cos your offsetting my lifestyle, we need more people living like you so we can all live without guilt :)
     
  4. CRTreeDude

    CRTreeDude Junior Member

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    I don't think anyone could imagine that we are suffering. And you are going to need a lot more earths if they count in the nearly 900 acres we own... :lol:
     
  5. Finchj

    Finchj Junior Member

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    1.74 earths, but more of a "what if I moved to Finland and lived in this tiny studio" scenario.

    I included 200 miles in car yearly, to get to the summer cottage and back. 1000 miles for buses, 1000 miles for trains/trams, and 5000 miles for international travel. Probably should have done 10,000 for travel if I wanted to go back to the States. We recycle just about everything possible, Helsinki is good about that.

    My carbon and food footprints were highest, although they don't have a wide enough range of options- IMO. Still interesting to see.
     
  6. MelMel8318

    MelMel8318 Junior Member

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    3.83 and dropping, that was interesting.
     
  7. adiantum

    adiantum Junior Member

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    These eco-footprint surveys are so useful and instructive that I go through them as part of the PDC when I help teach. Not only can one get a handle on their own footprint but the survey enables one to play "what if?" pretty quickly and so improve understanding of what things matter more than others. And what things can be changed by the individual at all. This came up in previous posts where people mentioned that their nationality had a significant impact. Costa Rica, I believe, has no military, whereas the USA has the world's largest. The footprint of that institution (as well as all other social institutions in a nation) is divided by the number of citizens and so figures into each person's footprint if they claim citizenship in a particular country. The other subtle issue is the impact of ownership. A vehicle, for instance, has a significant footprint whether or not it is running, because of the embodied energy and pollution in the production of the vehicle itself. Even something like a college education has a footprint if you think about it.....
     
  8. TheDirtSurgeon

    TheDirtSurgeon Junior Member

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    So... should we kill off the Third World so we don't have to share?

    Or give up all our stuff so everyone will live in equally grinding mud-hut-and-cholera poverty?

    There aren't enough resources to give 7 billion humanoids the bare minimum of a Detroit project flat and food stamps. So if we are to agree that all humanoids should have equal amounts of resources (which I emphatically do not), and that all should have a minimally decent standard of living, then there are about 6 billion too many.

    At some point, we'll start terraforming Mars. We know how. We know how to get there in 10 years -- take all NASA's money and give it to Burt Rutan. What is lacking is the political will; at least, that's the case in my country. They'd rather spend our wealth fighting over a finite oil supply, and perpetuating squalor with medicine and minimum calories.
     

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