Aya Ahmed_ Ecological foot print

How big is your footprint?

Before introducing a solution for Human's increasing ecological foot print, or talking about Wendell's agenda. I must define an ecological footprint


What is an ecological foot print?

Human's ecological foot print is a measure of how many resources you use. Answering a short series of questions about your driving habits, source of food, garbage generation, and local area generates a rough estimate of how much land it takes to sustain you. "4.5 acres of usable land are available to every human being on Earth: in the United States, the average footprint is 24 acres"(berry). 


Clearly, there is a gap between land usage and available resources. Many environmentalists believe that countries with more developed economies have an obligation to reduce their ecological footprints so that future generations will still have resources. Citizens can help by reducing their individual ecological footprints.


Wendell berry's agenda:
According to Wendell Berry, poet and a speaker at The Future of Food conference, humans’ fundamental problem is world destruction. This is caused by “an incompatible contradiction between the natural world and the engineered world of industrialism” (berry). Moreover, berry argued, “that the industrial destructiveness, anyhow, is our disease”. He continues saying that most of our popular fears-climate change, fossil fuel addiction, pollution, and poverty— are “symptoms of this disease”. It is not enough to realize the growing world destruction, or to highlight the cause of this “disease”; in fact, all matters are how every individual can take a part of the “correction process”.

Berry states “local adaptation is not work for a few intellectual and political hotshots. It is work for everybody, requiring everybody’s intelligence. It is work inherently democratic”.  According to berry there are seven steps in order to decrease mankind’s ecological imprint. First, people must not work or think on a “heroic scale”.  In our age of “global industrialism” we must start to “work on a scale proper to our limited abilities”. This means that all individuals should not want more than the nation can afford. In addition, Berry point up that human must not break things that they cannot fix and there is no justification for permanent ecological damage done to the world. For instance, in Netherlands despite the fact that there is a rising “concentrations of carbon dioxide” in the atmosphere, “both large and small cities have crept into the Green Heart, and new roads and railways have been constructed to service commercial and residential development” (Carter-Whitney). Second, people must realize that the damages done by “industrialization cannot be corrected by more industrialization”. Third, people must solve problems by trying to learn where we are “geographically, historically and ecologically”. Fourth, people must compare human demand on nature with the biosphere’s ability to regenerate resources and provide services “learn the sources and costs of our own economic lives”. Fifth, people must “clean up their own messes”. It is not acceptable for this work to be done for us “by wage slavery or by enslaving nature”. “Sixth, by way of correction, we must make local, locally adapted economies, based on local nature, local sunlight, local intelligence and local work”. 




OKAY, so what can YOU and I do about it?


Recycle everything

     The average UK home throws away over one ton of materials every year. Avoid over packaged products when shopping. Donate unwanted items to charity shops. Use your curbside recycling collection and find out where you can recycle items that are not collected.
Check how much you hurt the environment :(

Vegetarian diet


    The ecological footprint of vegetarians who eat a moderate amount of milk and eggs could be 40% lower than their counterparts who consume a low-meat diet. Other research shows that 16,000 liters of water is needed to produce one kilogram of beef, which is over five times that needed to grow a kilograms of rice.


Turn the thermostat down 


      By turning down your thermostat by just one degree you could cut your heating bills by 10% turning it down by four degrees could save the average home 5% of their total ecological footprint. A well insulated home will keep more heat in the home; this can be anything from drawing curtains at dusk to cavity wall insulation.
For more information check: http://www.wwf.org.uk

Work Cited List

Poet Wendell Berry on mankind's ecological imprint. Perf.Wendell Berry. Washington Post Live, 2011. Video streams.

Brown, Marilyn A. "High-tech Fixes for Carbon Emissions: Technology advances can create low-cost and cost-free opportunities for reducing U.S. carbon emissions." Forum for Applied Research and Public Policy 16.3 (2001): 107+. Environmental Studies and Policy Collection. Web. 21 May 2011.

Carter-Whitney, Maureen. "Cinching sprawl: worldwide experience with greenbelts can help Calgary protect its near-urban lands." Alternatives Journal 34.3 (2008): 17+. Environmental Studies and Policy Collection. Web. 21 May 2011.