On May 2, 2009, at 5:14 AM, James Heartfield wrote:
> Global footprint network make the extraordinary proposition that the
> world's own ecological footprint is bigger than the world. But that
> only calls into question what kind of calculation the 'ecological
> footprint' actually is.
>
> The original idea of the global footprint was that it was the area
> of land that was needed to produce the resources to live on. But the
> actual area that people farm and develop is quite a small part of
> the land surface of the world. There are 13 billion hectares of land
> in the world, 0.2 per cent is built up, and twenty per cent is farm
> land (it is true that the additional 24 per cent of forest land is
> in part also resource for us, but most of it is not).
James, it's not just about farming. It's about other resource use, too - like energy, water, air, and waste disposal. Cars, airplanes, computers, loads of laundry, paper towels, etc. etc.
But this is like beating one's head against a wall, since you just don't want to believe any of this.
Doug