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In other words, researchers interested in ecological footprints can gather data and put it into a table built in a software program such as Mircosoft Excel and then analyze these data to compare, say, one country to another, one industry to another, one household to another and so on. At a manageable level, say a household, if you knew what your ecological footprint was you could, if you chose to, modify your consumption, pollution and other environment-relevant patterns to reduce your ecological footprint.
Elsewhere, at the National Indicators Project, it says "The average American uses 25 acres to support his or her current lifestyle. This corresponds to the size of 25 football fields put together. In comparison, the average Canadian lives on a footprint 25 percent less, and the average Italian on 60 percent less." The problem is that according to calculations about ecological footprints, "Nature provides an average of 5.5 acres of bioproductive space for every person in the world. With a global population of 10 billion for the year 2050, the available space will be reduced to 3 acres. This should also give room for the 25 million other species. Already, humanity's footprint may be over 30 percent larger than what the world has to offer as it consumes more than what nature can provide." This estimate comes from calculations of global footprints, which say that "The 52 countries listed here contain 4,701,000,000 people out of 1997 world population of 5,892,000,000. The available capacity is 88 percent of the existing capacity within the country, since 12 percent is deducted for biodiversity preservation. These 80 percent of the world population occupy a footprint of 117 million square kilometers, but only have the equivalent of 86 million square kilometers available. This corresponds to a 35 percent overshoot." More Information |
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