Humanity’s Identity on

Earth www.oaklandmagazine.com

Every action taken towards using nature’s resources has an impact on

Earth’s ecosystems• Currently in society the yielding of resources and

waste generation are depleting the environment at a rate faster than it can regenerate².

• In order to live in a sustainable world, it is essential for humanity to use nature’s processes at a rate that does not exceed the rate for renewal and that we acquit wastes at a rate no quicker than the rate for absorption². To convey the message of sustainability to the general public a concept or measurement tool was introduced by Dr. William Rees, the Ecological Footprint.

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What is an Ecological Footprint?

• An Ecological Footprint measures the total area of productive land and water used to maintain levels of resource and waste acquit². It reports for all our activities such as recreational and agricultural to the goods in which we consume such as food and timber².

• According to the Canadian Living Planet Report 2007, humanity has been exceeding Earth’s biocapacity since the 1980s therefore the rate of consumption and discharge of waste is accelerating at a rate faster than nature can convert waste into resource¹.

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Did you know? • Canada marks itself as the

fourth highest ecological foot printer in the world, mainly because of the voracious use of its substantial oil and gas ¹. If Canada continues to embark on this path, it will eventually lose the biological productivity in which humanity depends upon. www.commons.wikimedia.org

The graph shows the percentage of consumption within the above components for the average citizen living in Toronto, Ontario. According to the Environmental Impact Assessment & Policy Development Office of the City of Toronto, the average Ecological Footprint for Toronto Ontario is 5.30 hectares. All data was received at http://canadianarchitect.com

Toronto, Ontario

Demand World Biocapacity

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This graph shows how humanity has moved from using half of Earth’s biocapacity in 1961 to over 1.25 times the biocapacity of the Earth in 2003. The global shortage of 0.25 Earths is equal to the globe’s ecological overshoot. All data received from http://www.footprintnetwork.org.

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An approach to Sustainability Canadians need to address issues

around the components of housing, food, transportation and goods¹.

Consider smaller housing, the demand for bigger homes calls for more materials and energy to be consumed, eat less packaged food since processing is energy expensive and replace travelling by car with walking, bicycling or public transportation.

With expanding technology and changing fashions it is important to consider humanity’s ‘needs’ versus ‘wants’, the thrill of having ‘new things’ accounts to the growing volume of resources that are depleting the environment and increasing the Ecological Footprint.www.global-greenhouse-warming.com

References Text Citations

¹McRae, L., Loh, J., Collen, B., Holbrook, S., Amin, R., Latham, J., Tranquilli, S. and Baillie, J. (2007) Living Planet Index. Canadian Living Planet Report 2007 (ed. By S. Mitchell and A. Peller), WWF-Canada, Toronto, Canada. Retrieved September 16, 2008, from http://www.wwf.ca

²Wackernagel, M. (1995). Ecological Footprint; Reducing Human Impact on Earth. In (R. William, Ed.). New Society Publishers: Phil Testemale. Retrieved September 17, 2008, from http://books.google.ca  

Image Citations

http://www.oaklandmagazine.com/media/Oakland-Magazine/June-2007/Green

http://www.scarp.ubc.ca/faculty%20profiles/rees.htm

http://www.bookrags.com/Ecological_footprint

http://blog.lib.umn.edu/tupp0008/environment/2008/02

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Globe.svg

http://www.youropenbook.com/growing.php?p=2

http://www.global-greenhouse-warming.com/global-warming-and-sustainability.html

Chart statistics citations

http://canadianarchitect.com/asf/perspectives_sustainibility

http://www.footprintnetwork.org/gfn_sub.php?content=global_footprint