[lbo-talk] how many earths?

[James Heartfield]

Miles writes
"I don't construe the "global footprint" as primarily about land use. It's about the finite resources"
Well, that seems reasonable, except that it is expressed in hectares (although the fine print explains that these are not real hectares at all, but notional ones). Moreover, the original concept of the global footprint was definitely about land use (as in the works of Herbert Girardet etc.). But those people predicted that the economy would demand more land, and that would lead to a land shortage - another absurd green prediction that proved to be the opposite of the truth. It was only when the actual green footprint, measurable in real hectares, failed to grow, that it was replaced by the notional hectares of the 'global footprint'. Which is to say to save the theory, they changed the evidence