Personally, I am a pretty environmentally conscious person and often think about my actions and how they will affect the environment. The reason I think my footprint is so high, is because of the amount of travelling I do by airplane. Despite my use of a range of sustainable items, my vegan lifestyle and my environmentally conscious outlook, my use of airplanes for transport transformed by ecological footprint from good score to a very worrying score. This shows just how much of a negative effect air travel has on the planet and how industrialised transport and air pollution is one of the most worrying dangers to the environment and ecosystem.
Left: my ecological footprint
Middle: my flight hours per year
Right: my ecological footprint if i didn’t use air travel.
‘Ecological footprints and appropriated carrying capacity: what urban economics leaves out’ William E. Rees, first published October 1, 1992.
The paper uses the idea and study of ecology to highlight the effects and the potential consequences of humans and their impact on the planet. I found that despite the paper being published almost 30 years ago, it was shockingly relevant to the problems of today, almost in a way that fills you with guilt that the planet is still in decline and that we haven’t taken any action to reverse the situation and respect the planet more.
‘Treatment of symptoms rather than the causes” this quote really hit home for me. It directly criticizes our society, particularly even the current efforts to slow or stop the decline of the planet. As the paper mentions later, we tend to try and preserve our traditions and habits which enrich our conservative mainstream lifestyles and tend to try and only focus on things which only have a small change. This, to me links strongly to the recent ban of plastic bags and straws in the USA and UK in an attempt to reduce ocean waste. When in reality what we should really be focusing on the fishing industry and the amount of pollution that brings to the oceans.
The paper also touches on the fact/theory that if all humans lived within their own regional carrying capacity, then theoretically there would be global sustainability and we could coexist with the ecosystem and other creatures without having any sort of lasting impact. However this is an unrealistic ideal since the world has become so dependent on the luxuries of modern life and are reluctant to go back and rethink the structure of our society. The big global powers rely on capitalism and consumerist tendencies to feed their lust for continued growth both financially and socially. I found it very compelling how relevant this paper is to modern day problems and how there has been an urgency for change for over 30 years. It also has a slightly sad tone when reading it from a future point of view since we realize how bad the planet has gotten and how we should have done something about it when we first noticed the decline.
