[Pil-pc-oceania] Fred's Footprint ... some scary statistics

[Robyn Williamson]

Fred Pearce, senior environmental reporter at New Scientist maintains that
measuring our ecological footprints as carbon-dioxide emissions is a far cry
from our true ecological impacts and only represents the amount of land you
would have to plant with trees to soak up those emissions.

Not accounted for in the equation is ecological efficiency since carbon
footprint calculations generally assume the same amount of land is used whether
you are yielding 2 tonnes, or 20 tonnes per hectare of crops, trees, whatever.

If strictly applied or complied with, carbon footprint analysis could therefore
become an incentive not to be more eco-efficient.

In the same fashion I assume, the carbon credit trading scheme does not withdraw
one single molecule of carbon from the atmosphere but is generally touted as
some kind of solution or way forward.

Carbon footprint stats however do reinforce the nature of the problem at a
global level, here are Fred's latest:

***The average world citizen requires 2.2 hectares of land to meet their needs
compared to the 1.8 hectares available.

***India requires 0.7 hectares per person.

***China needs roughly 2 hectares per person.

***Average Europeans need 4.7 hectares per person, roughly twice the land area.

***Australians and Canadians - 7 to 8 hectares per person.

***North Americans - 9.7 hectares per person.

Read Fred's interesting article here:

http://www.newscientist.com/blog/environment/2007/08/freds-footprint-measuring-our-global_989.html?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=blogenv

Robyn