Ecological Footprint

Ecological Footprint? What does this mean? I am sure everyone has heard of a carbon footprint but what is an Ecological Footprint? An ecological footprint is a measure of human demand on the Earth's ecosystems. Here is the link to Global Footprint Network and their site is excellent. I learned a number of things about the global ecological footprint there. Currently we (humanity) use 1.4 Earth's as far as resources go to sustain ourselves each year. I found it more startling that within 10 years it is expected that this will rise to 2 Earth's resources per year. Another way to think about this that the website explained is that at 1.4 Earth's it takes our planet 17 months to regenerate resources we use and absorb our waste for each year at our current level of usage. To imagine this rising to 2 in such a short period is quite distressing.

To go along with this is Earth Overshoot Day, which in 2009 was September 25. This was the day that we began using more in ecological equivalent than the Earth was going to produce last year.

I also enjoyed the footprint calculator and I will definitely be spending more time on this site because there is so much more there than I could share here in this blog.