Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Our ecological footprint exceeds the Earth’s capacity to regenerate. A number of useful indicators and frameworks have been developed to measure the ecological impact that humanity and its dominant economic system with its patterns of production, consumption and waste-disposal are having on the planet and its ecosystems.
How do we know at what level our consumption is sustainable, and when we’re in planetary overshoot? How do we quantify what the planet’s capacity is to meet human demands, and how much of that capacity is renewable, and how much of it is just being permanently depleted? And once we had a way to quantify that, what would we do with that information?
To be sustainable as a global village — to be able to keep all of our human and ecological systems healthy — we also need to aggressively identify and bring to market a wide range of affordable, ecologically-sound development strategies in the highly-populated, emerging nations.
The planet’s ability to provide useful materials and absorb wastes (its biocapacity) is deemed essential to sustain human life. Yet consumption of those useful materials (our ecological footprint) per person is rising at an alarming and unsustainable rate.
To be sustainable, an economy can’t expand to a size that overwhelms the ecological capacity of the place it occupies.
The Break Even Ecological Footprint (BEEF) concept provides a quantitative answer to the question of how long a Western IHE/SCD professional would have to live at a local, developing community Ecological Footprint level in order to offset the CO2 they emitted by air travel to the field.
If you’re an American or just familiar with the American scene, you know what’s brewing. We’re not talking about the inauguration, sequestration, or Secretary of State nomination. No, something much bigger. We’re into the NFL playoffs and the biggest sporting event in the world is right around the corner: the Super Bowl!
