How Big is Your Ecological Footprint?

If there's one nation on Earth that's ever just might have gone overboard with the consumption of goods and services, it would have to be the United States. This is not to say that there's anything wrong with it, it's the beauty of free market economics. However this consumption comes at a cost which we might not consider. All of these goods have to be produced, taking natural resources from the earth, and possibly putting a scar in the ecosystem. No one is absolutely sure how much damage our current usage of the environment will bring; some say very little, others say we are headed toward disaster.

In the last few years environmental groups have developed what they term an ecological footprint. For all intensive purposes, it is a metaphor used to describe how much land and water humans would need to provide sustainable development and absorb its waste given a set of consumption rates and used technologies. The term was first coined in 1992 by a Canadian professor named William Rees from the University of British Columbia.

So what is the idea of an ecological footprint good for? Basically, we can use it as a measure to determine whether or not we are living in a manner that is sustainable, or if natural resource consumption patterns are in check with what the environment can handle.

An ecological footprint takes into account a number of different variables which helps us determine how big of an area of land each person theoretically needs to have a sustainable planet. They take into account the amount of natural resources to create the goods and services, as well as the usage of water, land, energy and building materials.

Many whom are concerned with over population have taken the ecological footprint and used it to convince others that they need to live in a manner that is more earth friendly. There are a number of tests online which will tell you how many earths everyone on the planet would need in the event that everyone lived in the same fashion as you. They will give you your score and suggest ways that you might be able to reduce your consumption rates and be more earth friendly.

The ecological footprint is a novel idea, but it is not without its criticisms. Some believe that the system oversimplifies estimates and that the numbers are not accurate to a lot of different places, and instead they make assumptions based on a North American lifestyle. Others criticize it because the models generally do not account that land could be used for more than one purpose.