Ecological footprint... what's yours?
Posted on: May 23, 2008 - 7:32pm
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Ecological footprint... what's yours?
http://www.mec.ca/Apps/ecoCalc/ecoCalc.jsp
Take the quiz and post your results. I answered honestly... sometimes it was painful, and I consider myself a very low-impact kind of guy. Mine was 4.96. When you take the quiz yourself, you'll see what that means.
If superior creatures from space ever visit earth, the first question they will ask, in order to assess the level of our civilization, is: 'Have they discovered evolution yet?' -- Richard Dawkins
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Mine was 4.98. I'm totally embarrassed. My husband and I need to work much harder. I feel like we do so much and was shocked at the results.
We have our eyes on some solar panels. I think they are sexy!
You guys suck. I got 1.12. This is primarily for the following reasons:
I live in the center of the city
I don't have a car. Nobody drives their own car in urban Hong Kong. This is surely the biggest reason.
Hong Kong has an excellent government recycling program
I live in an apartment. The land development in Hong Kong does not allow suburban sprawl.
It is interesting that I got 1.12 given that I'm not an environmental activist or hugely obsessed with ensuring I buy the correct products. Fretting about purchasing incandescent lightbulbs and non-toxic detergents and such is no doubt important. However, surely the greatest way one could relax their footprint is to take their car to the nearest crusher yard.
Thus we encounter books that use quantum mechanics as a justification for an array of metaphysical and spiritual beliefs written by people who would be unable to interpret a Feynman diagram or recognize, much less solve, a simple work function problem, articles smugly asserting that certain structures and organisms could not possibly have evolved, whose authors would be unable to draw a Punnett Square, brazen proclamations that evolution violates the laws of thermodynamics from people who would be unable to calculate enthalpy changes, use the combined gas law or solve a simple problem of dynamic equilibrium
-Me
As I've mentioned before, and IIRC, you agreed, America is designed to be an energy consumer. Our mass transit is terrible. The suburbs sprawl unnecessarily. Our cars are huge. Everybody drives. You have to be an activist to even come close to the more energy efficient countries.
Agreed. I've been doing my best to eliminate my car from my daily life, but it's really difficult here. Buses run only once an hour on my road, and they are regularly more than 20 minutes late. The cabs are... well.. cars, and there's no rail or trolley system of any kind. Bicycles work, but none of the roads are designed for them, so it's literally dangerous to your life to ride on many streets. We've had several people killed just because a driver swerved into the bike lane.
It's scary that in spite of the fact that I really do work hard on being ecologically friendly, I am still atrociously consumptive compared to you.
If superior creatures from space ever visit earth, the first question they will ask, in order to assess the level of our civilization, is: 'Have they discovered evolution yet?' -- Richard Dawkins
Seriously... am I the only American here willing to admit my number publicly?
[edit: whoops... one of only two Americans here... pardon me, ento]
If superior creatures from space ever visit earth, the first question they will ask, in order to assess the level of our civilization, is: 'Have they discovered evolution yet?' -- Richard Dawkins
I got 4.02.
Deluded, how did you get such a low score? I don't own a car either, and also live in the inner city in an apartment complex.
My food rating was atrocious. 30.2. Almost 10 points over the national average. Maybe that's where my problem lies (funny... the guy whose never weighed more than 110 lbs his whole life is such a huge strain on agriculture.
)
'We accepted the products of science. We rejected it's methods.'
- Carl Sagan, Cosmos
We suck hard , Vacuum cleaners we are .... out of control ..... Can we think ourselves better ? I think so ..... just cause we asked .....
I believe DeludedGod quoted his 'Other' footprint as it's not possible to get 1.12 in your total footprint, my other footprint was identical, my food footprint was 2.1, likely because I love meat and only about half of what I eat is grown locally (I love exotic fruit). I scored a 4.17 and I do not own a car and I use public transportation for far less travel than even 25Km. I did not like the test. It makes it impossible for someone to be completely honest. It assumes that I drive a car and that the car has piss poor fuel economy. The choices are not designed for anyone who does not drive or makes negligible use of public transit. (I live in the heart of downtown Toronto). I don't fly. Also, I live in a condo and my power is almost certainly hydro, granted not micro-hydro, but hardly a polluter on the level of most other power generating facilities and it's not possible to reflect that in the test. That said, even by this test, I'm doing better than almost half of everybody and I suppose that's good. I hope the grading system for the questions is methodologically sound, though I know nothing about their methodology.
Read it [the bible] because we need more Atheists and nothing will get you there faster than reading the damn bible. Elvis never did no drugs!
*Penn Jillette
The first thing I noted was that the site wants your email address. If you supplied it, expect advertisements.
Next thing I noted was they want to know what country you lived in. So what does that have to do with you as an individual consumer?
So I compared choices US vs China and clicked ‘next’.
US – 46.91
China – 8.24
and it didn’t matter if I checked 1 person or 5 persons per household nor did it matter if I checked $29000 or less or $120000 or more.
You could be living in a wood shack with no electricity, but if you live in the US your footprint is automatically 5.69 times that of someone living in China in the first 4 questions.
So I didn’t bother finishing it.
You guys do know that they merely want your profile to find out whether you are a potential big customer, right? After all, they are selling goods that are not ecological.
The real problem is the number of humans on the planet.
China - 1,330,044,605 (July 2008 est.) people divided by 9,596,960 sq km = 140/ sq km
India - 1,147,995,898 (July 2008 est.) people divided by 3,287,590 sq km = 350/sq km
US - 303,824,646 (July 2008 est.) people divided by 9,826,630 sq km = 31/ sq km
Yeah... it's not exactly a scientific test, and it's clear that the authors have an agenda, but it's impossible to deny that the point they are making is valid. (Oh, and just don't put your email in... it's optional.)
America is much worse than most places, particularly in terms of cars and food.
If superior creatures from space ever visit earth, the first question they will ask, in order to assess the level of our civilization, is: 'Have they discovered evolution yet?' -- Richard Dawkins
4,25 acres.
I'd like to see how the math these guys use breaks down, cause I totally deserve more than that
Personally, it seems you are essentially screwed if you drive anywhere or live alone. Oh well, can't do much about either of those.l
I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world. - Richard Dawkins
If you love God, burn a church! - Jello Biafra
“Fear is just another word for ignorance. - Hunter S. Thompson
4.21.
My question is - what good does it do to recycle some materials? I saw something (think it was P&T's Bullshit!) that it takes more energy to recycle some things than it does to make them in the beginning.
This test is either flawed... or alot of fuckers are lie'ing in my country -_-
The test is pretty messed up, and reeks of hysteria. I got "2.74 earths" and I'm the most environmentally friendly person I know! I don't own a car, I pool with at least 2 others when I need to get somewhere far away, and 60% of my electricity is provided by a series of dams.
It said my impact was 43 square kilometers. This means that the planet can only sustain about 11,861,990 clones of myself, and the rest of you need to get off before you wreck it for us and our solar-powered robot servants. I recommend Mars, where your carbon levels will teraform the planet rather quickly.
I can see no reason why the reasonable shouldn't be possible. -Mr.M
I took the test several times, giving it several sets of answers, and as far as I can tell, if you drive a car in America, you can't get a good score. I suspect that this is not so much hysterically driven as weighted heavily towards a particular bias.
Having said that, the SUV culture of the U.S., compared with the infrastructure, mass transit, and small car culture of say, Europe or China, is striking. Without doing much math at all, it's easy to see that one American family with two cars and 50 miles round trip per day each is doing more carbon harm than several families in more progressive areas -- and that's just with cars.
If superior creatures from space ever visit earth, the first question they will ask, in order to assess the level of our civilization, is: 'Have they discovered evolution yet?' -- Richard Dawkins
That's just it though, I don't drive. I only travel at most 300 km a year in a bus or with at least 2 other people. If it's closer than 10 miles, I walk.
I can see no reason why the reasonable shouldn't be possible. -Mr.M
That's impressive. I wish we had a better bus system here. Anyway, I wonder what could have sent your number so high.
Oh, I will point out that DG got a 1.12, so it's definitely possible.
If superior creatures from space ever visit earth, the first question they will ask, in order to assess the level of our civilization, is: 'Have they discovered evolution yet?' -- Richard Dawkins
5.03
2.4 but I'm British!.
Don't really make any real effort on the enviroment but live in an flat with no car.
I disagree number of people is the biggest problem whether you live in a city is far far more efficient than anything else.
There is only one serious way to improvement the enviroment and that is to live in extremely high density housing ie a city
And one other thing if you don't share a wall with your neighbour you really don't live in what I consider to be a city (high density housing)
There is no such thing as an enviromentally friendly car!
4.62
I was below average on everything except carbon. In fact I could hardly even see my housing bar above the zero baseline. Obviously, it's the car... and I'm getting ready to buy a car that gets even worse gas mileage that I have now. Sadly the cars that work with my wheelchair aren't the cars that work 'better' with the Earth so I guess I'll have to rely on all you able-bodied people to offset me.
Beltway Atheists "We're good people, just not god people."
I hated that episode... although maybe I'm just biased because Penn has said some really fucked up things about disabilities. Anyway, they do show that recycling aluminum is always beneficial but it's said in such a small "oh, btw" section that I think a lot of people miss is. Also, I really don't care that there is room to put all our trash (one of the main points in that episode)... just because we have room in the dumpster isn't a reason to see how much we can toss in.
Beltway Atheists "We're good people, just not god people."
Yeah, he actually apologized for the disability thing on one of the clips for "Penn Says," which you can find on crackle.com. He mentioned that he really hadn't thought about it, and thanked one of the commentators for mentioning it.
Still, I'm confident that once we have the technology we'll be digging up our landfills to recover the "waste" resources we put there in the first place. I mean, how awesome would it be to know exactly where what you need is, and have it only beneath a few layers of earth?
I can see no reason why the reasonable shouldn't be possible. -Mr.M
Ugh.. 6.63 I drive a ridiculous amount. and I eat a lot of meat that gets shipped all over. That's one of the things I need to work on. Maybe we need to start a neo-victory garden movement.
If I have gained anything by damning myself, it is that I no longer have anything to fear. - JP Sartre
It seems that with respect to environmental catastrophe, the one problem that is never talked about is the most obvious one.
I mean (expresses heavy sarcasm), it's great that so many people are willing to help the environment by purchasing flourescent lightbulbs and occasionally turning off their air conditioners.
How about not having a kid?
By far the most crucial way to improve the environment is to limit the number of children you have. If everyone in the world had two children, the world's population would stabilize. If everyone had just one, it would quickly decline. To put it very bluntly, the Earth is not meant to sustain 6 billion large primates which require a lot of energy and take a large toll on environmental resources. In China, for example, the one-child policy essentially saved the nation from the brink of mass starvation.
Certainly birth control/condoms/abortion provide necessary services in this regard. In Latin America (where the Catholic church is extremely powerful and actively opposes the dissemination of birth control) the population has been doubling every 40 years. It is as Richard Dawkins pointed out: If the Catholic church is so hell bent on using only natural methods to control the population, then they shall get one: starvation.
Thus we encounter books that use quantum mechanics as a justification for an array of metaphysical and spiritual beliefs written by people who would be unable to interpret a Feynman diagram or recognize, much less solve, a simple work function problem, articles smugly asserting that certain structures and organisms could not possibly have evolved, whose authors would be unable to draw a Punnett Square, brazen proclamations that evolution violates the laws of thermodynamics from people who would be unable to calculate enthalpy changes, use the combined gas law or solve a simple problem of dynamic equilibrium
-Me
Food Footprint 2.66 acres (I eat very little, no meat but some cheese and fish.)
Transportation Footprint 0.22 acres (I have a car, but I have not used it this year.)
Housing Footprint 9.4 acres (This should be lower under normal circumstances. I live in a larger living area due to my circumstances. A one bedroom would bring this down to 4.7 acres, 41.22%/52.55%, 2.85 Earths)
Other Footprint 4.53 acres
YOUR TOTAL FOOTPRINT is 16.82 acres.
Your footprint measures 66.76% of an average North American's footprint and 85.12% of an average MEC Eco-Footprint Calculation (based on average results from this calculator).
Your choice means the following:
You believe that every person should be able to live a satisfying life within an average of 3.64 acres.
Worldwide, the biologically productive space available per person is 2.2 hectares, or 5.4 acres.
Hence, it requires 4.62 Earths to support each member of the present human population at your standard of living.
"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. ..." -- Thomas Jefferson
5.65
With the new members joining in I thought it would be interesting to hear from them. BTW I came in at 1.87.
No car, appartment building, modest spending habits, nominal water- and energy conservation measures, and vegetarian... but still, 1.53 Earths and 24.07 Ha
Must be because I am a rather sloppy recycler- I could and should do better than this. Bleh.
3.02 earths
I live 2.2 miles from work and usually bike. Half of my number is coming from food consumption. I do understand the global food network we have in place does cause a lot of problems. Does the typical American's diet (including some locavore buying and gardening) really create such a tremendous impact?