Awareness: Ecological footprinting and the system

Last time I wrote about my plan to make a plan (resisting the urge to simply jump ahead and start "going green" without one) to follow my ecological footprint. I wrote that the first step of the planning process was the "A" (awareness) of ecological footprinting.

Now this "awareness" naturally means that I understand what ecological footprinting is, but it also means that I should understand my own reason for using this tool. My reason is further based on:

• Awareness of how the ecological system I am a part of works
• Awareness of the current state of that ecological system
• Awareness of my own ethics and values

While I had originally intended to lump these all together into one post, as I began to write it grew, and grew, and grew. To make it less tiresome to read, I will simply break it down into three more "bite-sized" posts.

What is ecological footprinting? ↑menu

This is something I have written about before, and has been covered well by many other sites, so, at the risk of further boring anyone who has made it this far, I will pretty much copy and paste:

The Ecological Footprinting is an accounting process used to quantifiably measure the total area required to produce the food and fiber that a single person, family, or organization consumes, absorb its waste, and provide space for its infrastructure.

Footprinting by itself does not regulate how you live, nor does it pass any moral judgments. It doesn't tell you what you should or should not do, it doesn't tell you if what you are doing is "good" or "bad". It is simply an accounting tool , and as with business accounting, the numbers, in relation to the goals, speak for themselves. By tracking our footprint, we can estimate the environmental impact a population's consumption habits have with regards to:

• Land and water resources used to raise livestock, harvest crops, or mine materials.
• Energy resources needed to manufacture and ship the goods to our door.
• Energy resources required to recycle waste.
• Land and energy resources used to assimilate non-recyclable waste.

How does our ecosystem work? ↑menu

As huge of a topic as this is, my guess is that most people have some basic understanding if only based on simple intuition. Even answering these questions based with my liberal arts background I can see that I have some understanding of at least how the ecosystem does not work.

1. How much earth is there?
2. Are the earth's ecosystem resources infinite?
3. How much of the ecosystem resources do humans use?
4. How much of the ecosystem resources are humans expected to use in the future?
5. How many other species do we share that ecosystem with?
6. What are those species' resource needs?
7. At our current rate of consumption, how much will be left for future generations?

As for how it does work, I'm obviously not qualified to go into details, but I am confident enough to say that, in a broader sense, it all boils down to a few realities based on thermodynamics. While the ethical reasons for following my ecological footprint are certainly not shared by everyone, there is just no way to get around the laws of thermodynamics, no matter who you are.

Someday I may get into a deeper explanation of what I mean by these bullet points, but for now... Basically, what this is supposed to be saying is that what we have here now is what we get -we have to make due with it. New material resources do not spontaneously appear, and all of our energy resources originate from the sun. Likewise, our waste does not spontaneously disappear. Some waste can readily be broken down and re-integrated into the system. This takes an input of energy, which comes from the sun.