How many planets?
'Ecological footprint' theory has nothing to do with ecology and everything to do with a slavish worship of primitivism
Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post Published: Friday, November 16, 2007
To learn how reprehensible you are, visit www.myfootprint.org to determine your ecological footprint. Five minutes later, after you have breezed through the 14-question survey inquiring as to where you live, how you get around, how often you eat meat, and whether your home has electricity and running water, you will discover that five to six Earths, or maybe even more, would be required to sustain the planet's human population if everyone squandered as many resources as you.
Redo the survey, imagining that you have reformed your profligate lifestyle. You now live in a tiny house. You take public transit daily, refusing to even share an automobile ride with a friend. You eat meat only once a week. You have fewer than 2.2 children. You take no trips by plane.
Not good enough. "If everyone lived like you," the Web site tells you, "we would need 3.0 planets."
Think "subsistence." Give up that tiny house and move into a hut with no electricity or running water. Give up public transit and ride a mule. Forsake meat altogether and forsake your children, too.
Still not good enough -- "we would need 1.4 planets" to support a world in which everyone lived like you, the Web site admonishes. To get your footprint down to about one planet, it turns out, you also need to become a vegan......................
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/environment/story.html?id=75942