Your Ecological Footprint – Does it Matter?
Today's crumbling environment, racked by climate change, mass extinction, deforestation, collapsing fisheries and more is evidence global total consumption has gone too far. As a species we are destroying our life-support system. In ecological terms we are in "overshoot" of Earth's "carrying capacity" for humans, our demand exceeding the planet's absorptive and regenerative capacities.
To avert catastrophe as a species, we need to reduce total global consumption. The equation for total consumption can be expressed as follows:
(Per capita consumption of the earth’s resources) times (total global population) equals (total global consumption). There are two factors in this equation: our population numbers and our per capita consumption.
Techno-optimists sidestep the constraints of this equation and hope for some scientific breakthrough that will save both the planet and our life style by doing more with less of the earth’s resources. Debate about how some new exciting technology will solve our problems painlessly in the future is often a way to avoid dealing painfully with these same problems in the present with existing technology. Think of the “Hydrogen Highway”. In addition implementing new technology requires capital investment in infrastructure and may not significantly reduce total consumption. However I am one with the techno-optimists and look forward to drawing my energy from the sun and my food from the atmosphere. However at that stage I may be one with nature (a Scotch Broome perhaps) in the Saturna cemetery.
Eco-moralists take another approach.
"John, if everyone here just consumed less, as they do in Cuba, say, we wouldn't have exceeded the Earth’s carrying capacity.” It's a simple notion: reduce per person consumption and end our environmental problems.
The work of the Global Footprint Network (GFN), home of the "ecological footprint," gives these eco-moralists their ammunition. Measuring consumption as the use of biologically productive land and sea, their data shows a global maximum sustainable footprint, at today's population, of just under 1.8 global hectares (gha) per person. Currently, by drawing down nonrenewable resources, we're a bit over 2.2gha, overshooting Earth's limits by about 22 per cent.
The eco-moralists portray Canadians as among the most egregious abusers of the earth. This is a gross canard. While we consume 7.6gha per Canadian, we have a natural endowment of 14.5 gha per Canadian. The 6.9 unused gha per Canadian contributes to the sustainability of the Earth. With our 7.6gha we produce surplus grain, lumber, and mineral as exports that sustain the world economy.
In comparison the United States consumes 9.6 gha per American and has an endowment of 4.8 gha per American. The “overshoot” of 4.8 gha by 294 million Americans represents 12.4 % of global capacity and more than half of the 22% “overshoot” of the earth’s limits.
China consumes 1.6 gha per Chinese and has an endowment of 0.8 gha per Chinese. The “overshoot” of 0.8 gha by 1,311.7 million Chinese represents 10.4% of global capacity and the rest of the 22% “overshoot” of the earth’s limits.
This is simplistic but my choice of the United States and China as examples is to show that reducing per capita consumption will not solve the problem. To avert catastrophe, we need to reduce both factors in the equation: our numbers and per capita consumption.
If we have 6,301.5 million people and a 1.8 gha limit on consumption, what sort of standard of living would we enjoy if all were equal? Welcome to Jordan and Uzbekistan, which are at 1.8, gha. Residents of Panama and Mauritius at 1.9 gha will have to reduce their standard of living.
However even that standard of living will be too high in the future. The United Nations Population Unit projects world population will reach 9.2 billion in 2050. This will reduce our gha limit to 1.2 gha per capita. Africa is currently at an average of 1.1 gha and the Asia-Pacific region at 1.3gha so a future of abject poverty is a possibility for mankind.
There's more. The GFN authors point out their data is conservative, underestimating problems such as aquifer depletion and our impacts on other species. In response, the Redefining Progress group publishes an alternative footprint measure, which has humanity not at 22 per cent overshoot, but at 39 per cent overshoot. But that too, their authors concede, is an underestimate.
While in overshoot, moreover, we erode carrying capacity. Once we'd got to some level of consumption on a par with countries living today in abject poverty, we'd find there were fewer natural resources on which to draw than there had been when we started.
Ultimately, there are limits to how much we can reduce per-person use of land, water and other resources. A purposeful drop on the part of industrialized countries to consumption levels comparable to those of the poorest areas in the world is not only wholly unrealistic but, at today's population size, would not end our environmental woes. The sheer numbers of humanity prevent it.
We have no alternative but to return our attention to population, the other factor in the equation. Already in overshoot, we must aim for population stabilization followed by a decline in human numbers worldwide.
There is a lot of intellectual dishonesty and evasion connected with issues of population but any numerate analysis shows population reduction is the key to world environmental health.
A modest proposal would be to supplement the carbon tax with a baby tax. Those countries in overshoot like the USA would negotiate population reduction targets and be penalized appropriately for their overpopulation. If their population grew they would have to buy “baby credits” from countries like Canada and Finland that live within their gha endowment. The price mechanism would then work to decrease world population to sustainable limits.
The average gha of the developed world is 6.4. This standard of living would give a sustainable world population of 1,772.3 millions. In 1900 the world population was estimated at 1,600 millions. By 1950 world population had reached 2,475 millions. There was much debate by economists and development experts about population and growth in the sixties and seventies as it was thought population limits had been reached.
This debate was effectively ended by the “green revolution” based on cheap oil-based fertilizer, which enabled the growth of agriculture production beyond ecological limits. Cheap and plentiful food has sustained population growth at exponential levels in the developing world for the past thirty years. Medical intervention has also pushed up survival rates.
The end of cheap oil and peak oil means the end of cheap food and the eventual return of mass hunger and famine to the human experience. War, disease, famine and natural disaster have all played a major role in limiting human population in the past and seem to be surfacing again in the news.
Our current understanding suggests a peaceful and prosperous future for mankind is only possible if population is stabilized followed by a decline in human numbers worldwide. Reducing our consumption will not be enough or perhaps even relevant to environmental problems we face. ∆

I belong to the Vancouver localisation group but I live on Saturna Island, which has a permanent population of 300 and about 100 in the winter. We experience power outages most winters and most of us have a dry wood supply, laterns and power generators ready for the next power crisis. We are already pretty self-sufficient as a group of people and have an active volunteer community life. I have some good role models in the older folk here.
I am interested in increasing my self sufficiency and reducing my requirements for imported food, fuel and outside resources.