On the Ranch

This week, we offer KRC’s first GREEN BYTE – a weekly blog entry that focuses on environmental issues and education.  Today we look at our ecological footprint on the earth.   

In 2002, the European Environment Agency reported that humanity was exceeding its ecological footprint by 23%.  This means that the “human economy is in ecological overshoot: the planet’s ecological stocks are being depleted faster than nature can regenerate them.1”  Wikipedia describes ecological footprint as an analysis that “measures human demand on nature. It compares human consumption of natural resources with planet Earth’s ecological capacity to regenerate them”2.   

American Public Media recently came out with an online game called Consumer Consequences3.  It allows you to plug in attributes on how you live, and then shows how the world would be if everyone lived like you.  It asks questions about your home, your energy use, your recycling habits, how you get around, what you eat and how you shop.  It tallies up your effects on the earth – and the results can be somewhat staggering.  Your impacts are based on an ‘ecological footprint’ model created by APM’s research partner, Redefining Progress.  The most promising part of this is that you are given the opportunity to revise your answers and see how you can reduce your footprint on the earth.  Give it a try and let us know what your footprint is!  Go to http://sustainability.publicradio.org/consumerconsequences/ and press “PLAY”. 

Resources:  1.  Europe 2005: The Ecological Footprint by Jon Lebkowsky – http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003807.html2.  Wikipedia,  the free encyclopedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_footprint3.  American Public Media – http://americanpublicmedia.publicradio.org/
 

Share and Enjoy: