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Wrong Goals - Bad Science
You cannot possibly compute 'humanity's global footprint' as limited right now! North American Indians were slash and burn, run herds of buffalo off a cliff which was all around wasteful. The great herds had so reduced forrests -- today there is greater forrested area than in those days......
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Inappropriate?HI SR
Although in more general terms I would agree with you about the horror of being wasteful, isn't the point more about being sustainable
Or have I misunderstood the point you are making? (apologies if so)
I mean, you could spend your money on buying the same pair of shoes 50 times and wearing each pair only once. But if you earn enough money to do that, although it is terribly wasteful, it is at least, in terms of your income, sustainable?
About the forests: really? OK - I will see if I can find any facts on that as I'm no expert.
Thanks for your input.
Cheers
ste -
Inappropriate?Hi
Just to add to Ste's thoughts - globally, our population is much larger than it was when North Indians were engaged in the activities you describe. Population density is very different depending on where you live too.
http://www.panda.org/about_our_earth/...
Globally, our forested regions are far fewer than they once were.
"Figures released by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in 2005 indicate that the rate of natural tropical forest loss is about 13 million hectares each year – equivalent to 36 football fields a minute. Beyond the tropics, there has been a significant loss of old-growth forests and the replacement of natural forests and woodlands with single-species plantations that provide few of the environmental, ecological and
social benefits of native forests." http://assets.panda.org/downloads/int...
What is more we need a lot more forests to "mop" up some of the greenhouse gases emitted by using polluting forms of non-renewable energy.
http://www.panda.org/what_we_do/footp...
We also rely on forests to provide us with wood for so many of our modern comforts including very large homes on cleared land. (North Indians, when chasing buffalo, certainly didn't live in 2-3 storey homes with 5 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms and a dedicated entertainment area with a larger than life plasma TV whilst happily drawing energy needs from a coal-fired power plant.)
Living sustainably now is much harder because there are more of us and many of are used to living in extremely unsustainable ways. As the world maintains more people wanting higher and higher living standards, the world's resources are extremely strained and need us to respond. So. regardless of whether past human exploits were more or less wasteful than current human exploits our sheer numbers suggest that each one of us now needs to live in ways that limits strain on the earth's resources so that we all can continue to enjoy our life, even our grandkids.
Like Ste, I hope I haven't missed your point!
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