MishMouse - 03 June 2008 10:17 AM
2.77 earths.
Largest is my carbon footprint.
I am going to go through it again and figue out what I would need to do to get my planets down to < 1.
If I read between the lines here is the message I get:
The message you are getting is one of a person who wants to deny anything that suggests that your lifestyle is not sustainable if everyone on the planet wanted to live the same way. I live on 85 acres, and it is a no-brainer that if everyone on this planet wanted to raise their family on 85 acres, there would be absolutely NO WAY. If you walked to work or didn’t even own a car, the “number of planets” drops way down. If you give up meat, same thing (if I remember correctly, it takes about 10 gallons of water and some obscene amount of grain to get one pound of conventionally-raised meat. Using that grain and water for human consumption goes a lot further than that pound of meat).
You don’t have to read between the lines, we consume so much in this country compared to many other cultures, and that is a proven fact, it’s unsustainable. I don’t think anyone is suggesting that you move to a government-run apartment, or kill your grandparents. In fact, your angry response reminds me of when Dick Cheney said that american’s shouldn’t have to make do with less. The majority of people in this world don’t have cars, and most live well. We have built this infrastructure in the US around oil, and now it’s turning out to be a not-so-good idea. I mean, what else makes it possible for one to live 50 miles from a job they go to 5 days a week? In the good old days, walking, biking, or horse riding were the modes of transportation. Those long commutes resulted from the invention of the car. Which in turn tore apart our communities, which in turn destroyed our local-based food production. I think if we could work closer to home, not drive (or even own a car), and get our food locally, we’d be on a pretty good path.
Our society needs to move back toward the old ways of doing things, not some future “soylent green” scenario like you are implying. At least we could get some better cars on the road, if nothing else. Of course, they might be smaller, and if it’s not a ford excursion, it’s probably not practical to many
I guess that’s where things get tripped up in trying to make changes…