note to self: work out minimum footprint

[miriam_e]

I must spend some time some day soon trying to figure out the minimum footprint a person needs in order to live efficiently, but with some degree of luxury.

What do I mean by footprint?

The most important part of that is the amount of land a single person uses, but also the energy, water, and air. Put another way, what is the smallest self-contained system a person could live in?

At the moment each person in Australia is the most wasteful on the planet. We consume vast amounts of water, not just directly, but in production of cotton we wear, crops we eat, and other products we use. We each effectively take up square kilometers of land for food that we eat. We each use absurd amounts of coal for electricity. We waste terrific amounts of oil (paid for in blood) driving to a neighbor, or to the corner shop, or work, or school (when most work or school could be done from home via the net). And all these things impact the atmosphere, using up far more than our fair share.

We need to use far less while maintain a low-stress, luxurious lifestyle. It must be luxurious otherwise few will adopt it before it is forced on us by terrible circumstances. And it will be forced on us eventually. Do we choose to do it on our terms or have it imposed on us? More importantly, what do we want our children to have?

Stay tuned as I look more into this...

Comments

[gothxxangel.livejournal.com]

I'm interested in this myself. I see a LOT of wasefulness, and since moving to Japan it's struck me even more simply because it stands out how differently we are wasteful. In Canada we are more wasteful of space--this includes having gigantic cars, big sprawliong houses, huge refridgerators, more TVs than are good for us etc.. In Japan where space is at a premium people are wasteful of other things (like electricity).

There's also a fallacy that recycling is the be-all and end-all for "saving the Earth" when it's a process that is waseful of energy in itself. Reducing waste should be our primary focus.

This is somewhat tied in with voluntary simplicity, I think.

Anyway, I'm sure none of this is new to you, but just sharing some thoughts. Keep us updated on yours!

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Yes.

Interesting thoughts on the different ways other people waste. I hadn't thought about that.

Recycling the way we humans tend to do it is hardly recycling at all. We barely stave off the toxic endpoint at all. Recycling the way plants and animals do it is really neat though. It would be great if we could aspire to that kind of recycling, where nothing has an end, and everything breaks down to be rebuilt as something else of use. Unfortunately it would require a complete change in our outlook.

[ratfan.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to live by this myself. I'm rather ironically observing the Big-Brotherish admonitions to turn lights off at the wall and save water - it's all fashionable now - but I had to think of this stuff bit by bit when nobody was telling us how to do it and people like my mother thought there was something the matter with me. Well, perhaps there is but not for this reason :-)

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

That's what I've been trying to do too. My parents were at us kids to always turn the lights off too. At the time we used to think it was overreaction, but now I see how right they were.

I don't remember when was the last time I bought new clothes. I use low energy fluoro lights, but worry about the toxic mercury and PCBs in them, and can hardly wait for LED lights to become more available. I use absolutely minimal water, even washing in a bowl. I cook in a microwave which uses far less energy than pretty-much any of the alternatives. I want to set up solar power here (but won't be able to afford that for a while). One of my next personal projects is to build a very low power computer that will be about the size of a pack of cards and doesn't have a fan or hard drive. Ever since I was a teenager I wanted to work out the minimum size of garden that you could grow food enough to survive, but I'm a crappy gardener so never managed it.

[ratfan.livejournal.com]

That's better than I've managed. I'm good with turning lights/switches off and don't have a car, so that's a big saving right off. I try to rug up rather than use heating. Haven't had a heater on this winter yet. I buy *some* new clothes but am hampered by not a lot of money :-) Got to have office-presentable stuff too. What else? I try with showers but am aware that staying in too long is one of my sins, esp in the winter!

Don't have the new bulbs at present but as mine wear out, I'm going to replace them with the energy-savers. Or should I do it now even tho the present bulbs are still functioning?

I couldn't tell you re gardening size either. I'm better at it now - third crop this year - but so much relies on how the plants do or even whether they survive. I've got a lot of potato plants but can't predict how many potatoes each will grow or how large!

Let's keep exchanging notes as we think of things. I'm sure there's heaps more I could be doing :-)

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Avoiding the heater and simply donning more clothes is something a surprising number of people don't do. The only time I had the heater on this winter is for about a minute after I'd been repacking stuff in my freezer and my hands were so cold they were hurting. After that I turned it off again. My small bar-fridge and a smallish top-loading freezer are both rather wasteful of energy, but I haven't worked out a way around that yet.

I don't really have to be presentable so old clothes aren't a problem. Wouldn't it be nice if people's attitudes changed so that new clothes became an embarrassment? Hmmm... something to think about as an item to add to a story. :)

Difficult to decide about lightbulbs. I replaced mine as they died. I have only one bulb and all the rest are compact fluorescents. The single bulb is in my larder because fluorescents don't take kindly to be switched on and off lots. The bulb in the larder is on for just several seconds a number of times each day.

I have to say I worry about compact fluorescents. They are mercury vapor lights so when they go in the tip (we are terrible at recycling here in Oz) the mercury ends up in the water poisoning everything for centuries to come. Still, they apparently are responsible for less mercury pollution than the old incandescent bulbs if power comes from coal-fired power stations. It seems burning coal is the biggest producer of mercury contamination.

Whew! I was mistaken in thinking that modern compact fluorescent light have PCB (polychlorinated biphenyls). It seems old tubes that needed that heavy black box called a ballast had PCBs in that. PCBs are extremely toxic and probably carcinogenic so it is a very good thing the new compacts don't use them.

I'll be glad when we have LED lights. At the moment they are not really bright enough for home use, but I think they'll get there.

I'm hoping someone develops living lights one day. The luciferin used by some fungi, bacteria, algae, deep sea animals, and those party light tubes, is quite non-toxic and can be constantly renewed inside a living creature.

Showers are a real trap. I love to stand under a shower too. I think it goes back to us being aquatic apes. No other ape loves water like we do and it is causing us big problems. I'm almost glad my shower can't be used.

Potatoes are wonderful! My favorite food! They have much more vitamin C than oranges and lots of potassium, and their starch content runs our energy-intensive brains without the need and the dangers of sugar.

[slave-driver.livejournal.com]

At the moment each person in Australia is the most wasteful on the planet.

Really? I thougt we Americans were the most wasteful people on the planet.

I agree that we all need to start thinking about our footprint and do what we can to reduce it. One of the best ways to do that is something I rarely ever hear being discussed and that is: limit the amount of children we have. I think the underlying cause of global warming and a lot of other environmental issues all boil down to over population. Science has eliminated all kinds of diseases, causing us to have a longer life span, but when we lengthened our life span, we didn't stop to think what kind of effect having more people on the planet longer would have. As we reduce the death rate, we also need to keep in mind that we need to reduce the birth rate as well. So far the only country I know of that is making any effort to do that is China. I don't want to see the same kind of reproductive laws that they have in China immposed elsewhere, but if we don't do something about the population explosion future generations won't have enough food to eat, water to drink, or clean air to breathe.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Yep. Sad but true. We Australians waste much more per capita than anybody else -- a truly shameful state.

USA is the most wasteful country on the planet. Australians are much less numerous -- our entire country, which is about the same size as USA, but largely desert, only holds about the population of New York City. So Australia is probably more wasteful as a whole than New York City (though I don't have figures on wastefulness of NY'ers).

I am very interested in things that have the opposite effect to what you'd expect. One of my favorite is the birth rate vs death rate. It is natural to think that reducing the death rate leads to overpopulation, but things actually aren't quite so straightforward.

If you have a look at population growth rates you'll find that numbers are growing most rapidly in places where the death rate is highest. Parts of the world with the best health systems where people live very long lives actually have negative population rates -- their populations are declining!

How could this be? It seems to run counter to good sense. But no. It has a simple fact at its base. When people stuggle in insecure circumstances, never sure how many of their children will survive then they have lots of kids. In countries with good public health systems where people are not at the mercy of unexpected illness and death and don't have to worry about being able to afford doctors or health insurance then they concentrate on lavishing their attention on just one or two children.

China's draconian reproductive laws have had awful consequences. There is a terrible imbalance of male children that is going to make itself felt in a few years. Female infanticide is a sad result of that law.

By far the best, most efficient, most humane way to dramatically cut population growth is to increase the standard of living. Most people think a high standard of living equates with profligate consumption, but I don't believe so. I have a very high standard of living, but my income is below the poverty level, I hardly use transport at all, I eat just twice a day, and then only vegetable. I have thousands of paper books (mostly second hand) and many thousands of ebooks. I live like royalty.