WEDESDAY, JAN 11, 2023: NOTE TO FILE
Module 1-8
A short 8-week course in ecological design, module 1, lesson 8
Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS
TOPICS: SUSTAINABILITY, FROM THE WIRES, LANGUAGE GAMES
Abstract: As I have sustainability concerns and concerns for posterity's and the biosphere's future, I will start a course in Ecological Design tomorrow, which is one of four 'dimensions' of the offering. Subnotes to file will likely follow.
COOS BAY (A-P) — The 8th lesson. [My comments are in brackets.]
The Ecological Footprint
The greater the ecological footprint of a community or population, the greater will be the impact on the ability of ecosystems to provide the means to support life. [Footprint being proportional to the number of people x per capita consumption x techno-behaviors as the centuries pass.]
The Ecological Footprint compares human demand with Earth's ecological capacity to regenerate from the impacts of natural resource use and waste generation. It represents the amount of biologically productive land area (measured in global hectares or gha) needed to regenerate the resources a human population consumes and to absorb and render harmless the corresponding waste. Using this assessment and comparing it to the (theoretical) fair share each human being (all 7.5 billion of us) has of the world’s bioproductive surface area, it is possible to estimate how much of the Earth (or how many planet Earths) it would take to support humanity if everybody lived a given lifestyle. [The human footprint concept/metric/measure is a step in the direction of noting limits, but doesn't go nearly far enough. By claiming we are consuming 1,6 earths and that we have been consuming more than the total sustainable productivity of the planet since 1970, the idea of 'overshoot' is offered to modern techno-industrialized humans who are educationed from shortly after birth to not understand carrying capacity nor overshoot. Making the claim that we are in overshoot thinkable is the step in the right direction, but claiming that we Anthropocene enthusiasts only came into existence in 1970 is a fatal failure to understand the expansionist form of human that we are that came into existence 50k to 60k years ago to exterminate all other hominins and hundreds of species of megafauna. The global population of humans in 1970 was 3.6 billion. If we went into overshoot in 1970, then Earth should be able to sustainably support 3.6 billion humans or more if everyone learns to live by permaculture principles, which in 1970 few did. Per textbook definitions of carrying capacity, the expansionist form of human went into over 3k to 4k years ago when their population exceeded 35 million causing the beginning of the Anthropocene mass extinction event.]
For example, if all human beings consumed resources and generated waste at the rate the average US American does today, we would need 5 planets the size of Earth to sustain such patterns of production and consumption. Clearly, we only have one planet, and such patterns are deeply unsustainable. We will revisit ecological footprinting in some more detail in the economics dimension of the curriculum.
A number of ecovillages, in particular Findhorn in Scotland and Sieben Linden in Germany, have been able to demonstrate that through whole systems design and the associated changes in lifestyle it is possible to reduce a communities ecological footprint to a fraction of the national average in their location. [If we are in this fine mess of messes that is our problematique because of poor ecological design, then it follows that we can get out of our predicament by designing our way out. The premise is false, however. Reducing human population by about 99.56% would reduce the human footprint to below carrying capacity whether done by design or by die-off as usual for all other species past (last 3.9 billion years) or presently in overshoot. The reindeer on St. Matthew Island when their population reached five thousand did not have an option to design their way out of a die-off event even if they were twice as smart as we are.]
Comparison of Ecological Footprints for UK, Scotland, Findhorn Foundation and Community and Bed Zed.
In 2001-2002 researchers at the University of Kassel in Germany compared CO2 emissions from Sieben Linden; another German ecovillage, Kommune Niederkaufungen; and the average German household. The study showed that both communities use far less water, electricity, heating fuel, fossil fuel for heating, and fossil fuel for growing and transporting food, than the average German household.
Module 1, lesson 9
