waste
CATEGORY / ACRES
FOOD / 3.5
MOBILITY / 1.7
SHELTER / 4
GOODS/SERVICES / 5.2
TOTAL FOOTPRINT / 14
IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 24 ACRES PER PERSON. WORLDWIDE, THERE EXIST 4.5 BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCTIVE ACRES PER PERSON.
from here. interesting. and yes, it would be completely perverse of me to take pride that i waste only half as much as my countrymen, since my using fewer resources isn't because of any moral decision by me; it's because i live in the city and don't drive. it's also because of my vegetarianism; i'm mostly a vegetarian because eating meat isn't part of my constitution. it makes me feel sick, i don't like the way it feels in my mouth, the way it smells, or the way it tastes.
also, i don't like the idea that consuming natural foods, recycling, things like that is somehow a solution for overconsumption; the problem is consumption itself and the way we relate to resources and land. i like to eat organic and local foods because it sits better with me to know where my food comes from; but there's no reason for me to think that organic food is free of the impersonal market forces that produce other corporate food; it's produced by companies interested in profit, not little farmers who do it out of love for me and their other consumers. and how is there any less alienation of me from the products i use, or of the farmers and factory workers from their labor when i buy a box of organic crackers from the hippie store in Northampton, or a shirt from American Apparel? how is that more authentic? ultimately i don't think there is any kind of sustainable consumption.
the prevailing way of thinking about environmentalism is thinking about humans taking over the natural world (you can see this throughout the myfootprint.org website) as opposed to destructive ideologies taking over human patterns of life. this shifts blame from corporations and governments, who use the most resources anyway, to ordinary people in the first world but even more destructively to third world people who are supposedly reproducing like rabbits and must be stopped. i'm glad environmentalists like the myfootprint.org people aren't focusing on "overpopulation" in the third world but overconsumption in the first; still, i wish they would question what the processes are that have caused people to consume this destructively.
***
i'll admit that i absolutely revolting to think about the amount of garbage i produce and fuel i use, not because it's destructive to the environment but because waste is aesthetically disgusting. this is a very Puritan, American way of thinking. i sense a lot of this kind of feeling in environmentalism; moral and aesthetic outrage at how disgusting waste is. i wonder how fair that is.
FOOD / 3.5
MOBILITY / 1.7
SHELTER / 4
GOODS/SERVICES / 5.2
TOTAL FOOTPRINT / 14
IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 24 ACRES PER PERSON. WORLDWIDE, THERE EXIST 4.5 BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCTIVE ACRES PER PERSON.
from here. interesting. and yes, it would be completely perverse of me to take pride that i waste only half as much as my countrymen, since my using fewer resources isn't because of any moral decision by me; it's because i live in the city and don't drive. it's also because of my vegetarianism; i'm mostly a vegetarian because eating meat isn't part of my constitution. it makes me feel sick, i don't like the way it feels in my mouth, the way it smells, or the way it tastes.
also, i don't like the idea that consuming natural foods, recycling, things like that is somehow a solution for overconsumption; the problem is consumption itself and the way we relate to resources and land. i like to eat organic and local foods because it sits better with me to know where my food comes from; but there's no reason for me to think that organic food is free of the impersonal market forces that produce other corporate food; it's produced by companies interested in profit, not little farmers who do it out of love for me and their other consumers. and how is there any less alienation of me from the products i use, or of the farmers and factory workers from their labor when i buy a box of organic crackers from the hippie store in Northampton, or a shirt from American Apparel? how is that more authentic? ultimately i don't think there is any kind of sustainable consumption.
the prevailing way of thinking about environmentalism is thinking about humans taking over the natural world (you can see this throughout the myfootprint.org website) as opposed to destructive ideologies taking over human patterns of life. this shifts blame from corporations and governments, who use the most resources anyway, to ordinary people in the first world but even more destructively to third world people who are supposedly reproducing like rabbits and must be stopped. i'm glad environmentalists like the myfootprint.org people aren't focusing on "overpopulation" in the third world but overconsumption in the first; still, i wish they would question what the processes are that have caused people to consume this destructively.
***
i'll admit that i absolutely revolting to think about the amount of garbage i produce and fuel i use, not because it's destructive to the environment but because waste is aesthetically disgusting. this is a very Puritan, American way of thinking. i sense a lot of this kind of feeling in environmentalism; moral and aesthetic outrage at how disgusting waste is. i wonder how fair that is.