My Ecological footprint

6.07 Earths!!! If everyone lived like me we would need 6.07 earths to sustain everyone. I knew that my footprint was going to be large but that was absolutely shocking. I really care that my footprint is so huge because it is the people like me that are aware of global warming, but that at the same time still require 6 earths to support everyone if they were to live like me. This quiz is really informative, and woke me up to how selfish I am-- I complain about the affects of global warming (my favorite lake is almost completely gone) and yet its the way i live that is the main cause of this.

To reduce my footprint, I can buy more organic and locally grown products, reducing the detrimental effects that shipping foods long distance has on the environment. Also, I take 20 minute showers, so it would be a dramatic difference even if i just cut my shower time in half. I'm the type of person who thinks of something they need and goes and buys it from the store, making lots of little trips, if i just waited and made a list of places to go while I'm out and make a big circle, I could dramatically reduce the amount of time I'm on the road--thus reducing my carbon emissions. Simple things like unplugging the coffee maker or the toaster really add up too. Lastly, if i began to be more aware of how much meat I actually consume in a week, I could cut back to just a few times a week to reduce the strain on the large areas of land it takes to support the growth of our meat supplies. Even just starting out slow and doing these simple steps will have a large impact on reducing my ecological footprint.

Having such a large footprint is unfair to every individual organism that lives on this Earth. Some people do not have as many luxuries in life such as clean running water and the choice of meat or pasta every day, but I do. This, however, causes me to be selfish and neglectful to doing my part to keep the world a sustainable place for generations to come. This is not fair to those living in other countries that can barely get access to the things they need for survival on a daily basis, not to mention the long term affects that living like this will have in the future. People living like me are causing countries that barely even have a footprint to suffer because they have to deal with the long term affects that we make by having such large footprints. Rising temperatures on Earth mean that more places will be unbearably and deathly hot, also lowering crop's ability to grow. Decreasing trees, algae, and plankton will cause the carbon levels to rise even more and oxygen levels on the planet to decrease--affecting all life. Water supply will decrease as the land becomes more naturally barren, altering local climates. If we, as such a high ecological footprint country, keep taking in resources at this rate we will leave nothing for other countries.

This is not just America's fault, but we are high contributors to this problem. As humans all sharing a planet together, we must be more aware of the problem we have created and we must all work together to reduce our footprint and to save the future of all Earth's species and the Earth itself.