Eco Footprints - Have we run out of planet?
6. February 2005
An ecological footprint is the amount of land area required to sustain one human being. Globally, there are about 1.9 hectares of productive area per person, but the average ecological footprint is already 2.3 hectares. So we would need 1.5 Earths to live sustainably. The largest footprint belongs to citizens of the US, at 9.57 hectares. Five Earths would be needed if everyone consumed at that rate. People in Bangladesh, on the other hand, need just 0.5 hectares.
But what will it look like in a few decades when China has a population of 1.5 billion? Supposing that Chinese levels of consumption then are equivalent to American levels now, the Earth doesn’t stand a chance. If the US provides the benchmark for global consumption, 25 Earths will be needed to satiate everyone’s wants. So says this Adbusters ad and the Optimum Population Trust has a great deal more information on such matters that is also less that optimistic about the future.
However both these approaches focus on the problems more than the solutions and so continue to find more problems and fewer solutions. What I want to know is where does all this consumption go? Have we consumed great swathes of planet Earth and shipped it to Mars? No, we have simply turned and are turning the Earths resources into wastes that have little or no useful benefit. Are not all the resources we have consumed actually still here in some form? They have not really been consumed, rather they have been borrowed used once and then locked away again for thousands of years. Pretty foolish eh? But what the heck we’re a young species and it early days yet, after all we did the bulk of this borrowing in only the last 150 years or so. We were young and excited; look at all the great toys we’ve got now, planes, cars, spaceships, computers, yachts… Let’s not get too depressed.
So, where’s the abundance here then? Well projections have a global population rising form around 6.5 billion people to possibly a whopping 10 billion by a little as 2050; that is pretty darn abundant. 10 billion hearts and minds to find some more solutions.
An increasing number of people are aware and care about our eco-troubles. An increasing number of people are also working towards very real solutions. For example manufacturing businesses are starting to design and manufacture products following so called Cradle to Cradle eco-effective design.
So, how do you feel when you read these doomsday scenarios? Do you feel your mood or energy become a little frozen or stifled, does it suck? Absolutely, and that is because they present a future contrary to the one you want and contrary to your alignment with Source. Don’t go there, don’t buy into the gloom. What to do YOU want?
I know what I want, I want to make a difference, I want to be part of the solutions brigade. Doesn’t that feel more inspiring? Be The Difference That Makes A Difference
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I’ve been pondering this one for a long while, Chris. I’m leaning toward the esoteric idea of “you create your own reality.”
First thing I have discovered, is what you’ve said, don’t buy into it. I get the impression of standing in two (or many) vibrational planes. One is the doomsday plane and the other is the positive alternative plane. When I buy into the doomsday scenarios and worry, I seem to literally slip over into the doomsday plane which then over-rides my own thinking, my own desires and what I really want. It seems to have a heavy collective consciousness weighted feeling that is hard to “move” around in.
When I choose to believe that my reality does not have to end up that way, I don’t feel entrapped but rather much more fluid to make good choices that support my life and the world around me.
My husband calls it the gold and the gray energy. When you stay in your essence you are in the gold. When you go out into the gray, be gray but try then to change the gray to gold it doesn’t work. But if you move through the world of gray as a golden light, your gold touches and spreads out from where ever you are (and beyond, I believe).
So how do you deal with the doomsday scenarios, Chris? How do you pragmatically approach the ideas of “not enough” of our planet to go around, global warming, rampant poverty and hunger, etc.?
I know your mastery in the area of manifesting. How do you see us making the shift to the reality we want globally, rather than the doomsday reality we are told is inevitable?
Even now there is already enough food produced on the planet to feed 9 billion people (according to signs at The Eden Project) the problem is one of distribution rather than actual lack.
You or I can only really change our lives and it is not for you or I to say how the rest of the world should be. The world is as it is and will be as it will be according to the sum of our creative desires and choices. The greatest single contribution I can make as a human being is to be happy and joyful and live happily and joy-fully. Its a powerful vibration joy, and it touches those around you. Would you comfort a depressed person by joining in their misery? The task is not for us to change the world in order that we can feel safe and snug but to learn to feel safe and snug in an apparently unsafe world and thus make the world a little safer. Look at the enormous out-pouring of money and good will for the tsunami victims this Christmas. People want to help and people want to make a difference. My relative financial abundance allows me to support various organisations working for change etc. So can yours it is just a question of taking the risk and allowing new opportunities to materialise in your particular patch of reality.
Thank you.
Fran