Measuring Footprints, Musings around Earth Day

Imagine, if you will, that you lived on a farm and you had to live completely off of the land. That is to say, all the food you ate, all the materials you used, and all the items you made had to come from a square patch of land around your house. For most of recent human history this was not an imaginary exercise but a reality. Now, if you had to guess, how much land would you need? How many acres would you require to support yourself?

This is an interesting question since it involves thinking about food, about fuel usage (you are planning to cook, heat and drive, aren't you?) and about travel. In essence you are trying to ascertain what ecologists call your "footprint," the amount of land necessary to generate and grow everything that you need to live - and to live your life.

Recently I went to a website that helped me calculate my Ecological Footprint (www.my footprint.org). It is basically an electronic questionnaire that calculated from my responses how much land was needed to support my lifestyle. It turned out that my footprint was much bigger than I thought it would be: 16 acres. In other words, I require a minimum of 16 acres of usable land to provide all the food and resources I need in my life - and that is just for myself - if I then added the other four people in my household, the acreage would increase almost five-fold.

I thought this was a big number until I read that the average American needs 24 acres to support his or her lifestyle. This number is especially significant when we realize that the rest of the "First World" (the G-8 nations) get by on 10-12 acres per person in terms of resources. And this is to say nothing of the 2 billion poorest people on the planet who eek by on 4-6 acres or less. Indeed, according to www.myfootprint.org, if everyone in the world used the same amount of resources as me, we would need 3.7 planet earths to provide the necessary acreage.

We live in a world that can provide approximately 4.7 biologically productive acres of land for each person now living. At 24 acres per person, we live in a country that uses far more than its fair share. At some point, this will have to change and Earthday is one day each year when we can celebrate and honor the changes that we all need to make. Starting now and from here on out, sustainability must become a part of our spirituality. Maybe we should have a new corollary to the Golden Rule: Consider others, even as you consume those things that you use for yourself.