Measuring Your Ecological Footprint
Presented by: Aaron Rizzieri, Humanities and
Burl Yearwood, Natural Sciences
Opening Sessions, Fall 2010
Introduction: How many Earth-like planets would be required in order to sustain the world's population if everyone lived the same lifestyle that you live? The typical American flies multiple times each year, has a long commute to work or school, eats meat several times a week, purchases a lot of imported foods and goods, and lives in a comparatively large space that is heated or cooled year round. All of these lifestyle choices require the consumption of a multitude of resources. Even though we all know that we consume "too much", it is actually rather difficult to conceptualize the impact that one person's lifestyle has on the Earth's ecology. Lewis Moncrief once noted that it is more difficult to become environmentally conscious if one lacks comprehensible measurements of the ways that one's lifestyle choices impact the environment. In this workshop we will measure our "ecological footprint" by using the online measurement tool developed by the Global Footprint Network. The content of this workshop is easily transferrable for use in the classroom.
Part I: Getting Familiar with www.footprintnetwork.org
Let us begin by working through the “footprint basics” tab.
1. Read the introduction section under footprint basics.
a. How many planets would we need if everyone lived the same lifestyle as the average American?
2. Read the overview section.
a. Generally speaking, what does the ecological footprint measure?
b. What are the basic categories that the footprint is broken down into?
What is “overshoot”? How long has the human species been in overshoot?
3. Read the world footprint section.
a. How many planets worth of resources is the world’s population currently using?
b. What are the consequences of overshoot?
c. Who is disproportionately affected by overshoot?
4. Read the ecological creditors and debtors section.
a. What does it mean to be an ecological debtor?
b. What percentage of countries are currently ecological debtors? How about
in 1961?
Part II: The Personal Footprint Quiz
5. Click on personal footprint and take the long version of the personal footprint
quiz. At the end of the quiz answer the following questions:
a. How many planets worth of resources would be needed if everyone lived your
lifestyle? Are you surprised at this result?
b. What categories of resources do you consume the most of? What resources do
you consume the fewest of?
c. What lifestyle changes can you make in order to use less resources?
d. What are two lifestyle changes that everyone around you can make that would
have the greatest effect on reducing their personal footprint?
e. Do you foresee these changes happening, taking into account economics,
politics, and people’s point of view? Why or why not?