An assessment of my ecological footprint gave me insight into the habits which are detrimental to the environment, and this assessment used the example of how many Earths would be needed if the world’s population lived as I did. The ecological footprint analysis indicated that 4.6 Earths would be necessary for the entire world’s population to live as I did. I feel that my lifestyle and income are fairly modest, so this is an eye opener In fact, 20.6 acres is needed to keep me at my current standard of living. Services were the greatest source of my consumption, and it accounted for over 40% of the footprint.
Essentially it is not possible to keep my current lifestyle if all the people in the world cannot hope to have it. On the other hand, despite changes I was not able to bring down the footprint to a reasonable and sustainable level. This was very frustrating. It is not that I do not think that the developing world deserves a better standard of living, however I am grateful that they cannot afford to consume resources at the same pace as Americans, as it would appear that this would lead to an immediate resource crisis. I need to have different choices in order to live a more sustainable lifestyle, and some consideration needs to be given by corporations and governments which support and maintain these systems that consume so much land and energy.
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I tried the evaluation again, making some slight changes. By reducing my waste and garbage I could bring the number down to 4.5 Earths. Given how difficult it would be to reduce the amount of trash I create, this did not seem to be the most efficient way to improve my ecological footprint. I then tried changing to a green residence, or one which was more ecologically friendly, but this had hardly any impact as 4.6 Earths were still required. My final change was to travel everywhere by motorcycle rather than my current use of a car and public transportation. Unfortunately this increased my footprint to 5.4 Earths.
The most effective change would be to reduce garbage and waste, although it would require buying different things which do not have packaging and recycling more. It would be possible to make this change although initially it might be more difficult to change my habits. It would also enable this change if the producers of products used less packaging in the first place. While I was willing to change my mode of transport to driving a motorcycle, this did not actually result in a positive change, and it is not possible to have no transportation. Public transportation would not permit me to get to work, school and home in a reasonable amount of time, so that was also not an option.
Some of the options were simply not even considered, such as giving up electricity or transportation. I felt that the options which were available were important aspects of the choices that I made, and it seemed to me that the government and others had a responsibility to create the infrastructure that would make it possible to make better choices. Why not have electricity that is carbon neutral and from renewable resources? Why not provide tax incentives or other reward so that local food was more available than packaged, processed foods? As an individual there is only so much that I can do alone to make a difference in the ecological footprint that I make. It will be easier for persons in less developed parts of the world to build such an infrastructure, than it might be to change and transform the existing structures in the developed world.
