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Ecological Footprints
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| With the exception of the solar energy that we use directly, all of the resources that maintain life arise from our planet. Those resources that we use cannot be used by another living organism at the same time. Therefore, we appropriate a part of the global resources by our living on the planet. Solar energy is converted by photosynthesis into "food" for secondary producers by the primary producers, then decomposers (ordinarily microbes, but we like the imagery of dung beetles) until there is no energy remaining -- only inorganic matter such as CO2 or mineral materials. Our waste, or unused portions from partial use of an organic resource, is used by other organisms, until all of the "value" is depleted. Metabolism is a part of the entropic process that "uses up" the solar energy initially converted into a usable "resource" for other life. The space required to maintain our supply of renewable resources is part of our global footprint. Recycling amounts to purifying" our environment by reuse of resources until they become incorporated once again into the organic cycle by primary producers. This simplification makes the ecosystem sound like an engineered system. However, for a glimpse at the complexity in the soil food web, read the article by Dr. Elaine Ingham. | ||||
| Resources that are not "used up" such as minerals must be incorporated into the biological cycles before they are useful again for sustaining life. Humans add an additional burden on the system. For example, almost all of the gold mined today is used for jewlery. Humans tend to hoard certain minerals, and as the population of the planet grows, these nonrenewable materials are appropriated and removed from circulation or "available" storage, and either become in short supply, or are mined with increasingly higher costs -- economic costs as well as ecological costs. This appropriation of nonrenewable resources constitutes a part of our global footprint, and sometimes hoarding becomes hazardous by "reburying" some of it in abnormally high concentrations or chemical forms, such as radioactive materials. Some is simply applied intentionally in smaller amounts but accumulate to toxic levels, such as endocrine-mimicing pesticides in the soil. We also reduce the biological value of some valuable materials by contaminating it with toxic industrial materials, such as PBC and pesticides in sewage flowing in our cities to treatment plants, instead of where it can be a food resource for soil microorganisms. This practice of hoarding, whether in a landfill, in the atmosphere, in our soil, or on our bodies, presents a serious threat to life. | ||||
| Today with extensive processing, trade and storage technology, it is difficulty to recognize our footprint. What we eat may be grown thousands of miles away, and stored for weeks or even years. The total footprint includes the resources used in manufacture of equipment for processing, shipping and storage, and a portion of the resources to sustain the people who operate the equipment. We depend not only on the living organisms that transform solar energy to food that we eat, but also upon the solar energy that is required to produce, process, move, and store it for us. Fossil fuel is solar energy that has been stored for millions of years, and we use this solar energy faster than photosynthesis "captures" contemporary solar energy. While we depend on a nonrenewable resource in the form of fossil fuel, we also return to the global system the raw material of photosynthesis, CO2, at an accellerated rate, and cause "pollution" of the atmosphere. As in any system, there is a limited range within which a balance must be maintained before the system becomes less and less efficient. The buffering capacity of the system can be overpowered when extraordinarily large changes occur. We can expect such a condition to be reached, and it may already be indicated by climate changes (global warming effects, ozone hole effects, etc.). Our contribution to reduction in the effectiveness of the life support system is also part of our global footprint with long term effects well past our lifetime. | ||||
| In this course you will estimate your personal ecological footprint. It may surprise you to find how many people a population with similar footprints our planet can support. The management of your footprint is the most basic form of natural resource management. Everything else that we do likewise manages natural resources, but is more difficult to evaluate directly. We will be developing this web site to allow you to enter your data weekly into a database, from which your footprint will be calculated. | ||||
| For an interesting discussion by Gil Friend of this concept for the design of buildings and cities, read the "Zero Ecological Footprint" article. | ||||
| For our society, the ecological footprint MUST be changed, and very soon, or we will destroy our support system. Gil Friend has written a number of essays that give some insights into how these changes may be achieved, and the ways that we can monitor our progress. Also, a protocol called "The Natural Step" was developed in Sweden, and has been adopted by some of the largest corporations in the world. (Part 1; Part 2) This development gives me hope that the transformation can be accomplished. The worry I have now is can we do it before we crash -- HARD? | ||||
Last revised 05/27/01