September 29, 2004

• That was really interesting, some of the questions (like those on air travel and processed foods) were great examples of how reliant on fossil fuels we are for even seemingly unrelated things.
• I scored a 25! "IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 5.6 PLANETS." Woot! I beat you, Jerry Garcia! Consumer and *proud* of it.
• I use even less, 3.8 and would take 2.1 planets. I don't think I could use less than what I do. I don't drive, can't ride my motorcycle (being restored), I walk everywhere I need to go, don't fly, rarely purchase prepackaged food, live in a tiny house, I conserve energy, recycle. On a humurous note: apparently if I live in a hut with no running water, became vegan, etc I would score 1.5 well below their limit.
• 4.3 planets. mars is looking pretty good. some of those moons are pretty big.
• IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE mexican, WE WOULD NEED 1.6 PLANETS. 2.9 hectares me.
• 60..The rest of you had best start conservation efforts to offset my consumption.
• 60 = 13.5 planets
• The size of your house seems to have a huge affect on the outcome. Too big and affect, I think.
• I assume that, like Galactus, I regularly feast upon worlds teeming with sentient life, so I've never had the heart to take this test. If there's anything worse than Galactus, it's Guilty Galactus. All moping in front of the TV, eating big scoops of frozen homeworlds, realizing what he's doing, bawling, crying into puddles of half-dissolved civilizations, getting more frozen homeworlds out of the freezer, so on and so forth... you have to trust me it's a bad scene.
• 1.7 planets here. Bummer. I'm a skinny vegetarian, live alone in a cramped apartment, and bike or bus everywhere. About the only thing I can consume less of is electricity. Maybe I should be using these solar backpacks...
• 14 acres, or 2.5 planets...yet I dont feel guilty, because the handy little quiz informs me that others in my fine nation require an average of 25 acres. *sigh*
• 2.1 planets. It's damn hard to get down to just one planet. I'll have to a) go vegan b) convince a woman to live with me, and I'm not sure which of those is less likely.
• Wow. I only need 7.9, which is pretty good, considering I own two cars and a motorbike 8). Most of that is eating and housing. I refuse to live in a small box.
• 2 planets exactly. But what about all the food I grow right here? And what about all the computer landfill I generate?
• Funny - on the transportation bit, you can answer 0 miles for public transit, 0 miles for motorbikes, but only 0-10 miles for cars. It's like they assume that you must go somewhere in a car. I walk everywhere - and take the bus a few miles only every few months (I do love where I live). Yet in the Canadian version - they do let you say 0 ....hmm (US and Canada aren't very different car cultures). But that said, my food and shelter ate up the acres, as did consumption (3 times too much). And that's living wih a roommate in a small apartment, though I do eat meat often (and takeout at that). Now, I'm normally the first person to want to cut down on consumption, live in a smaller house, use public transit, etc, and I believe the world is most definitely finite. But I do start to wonder - what can/will we realistically do? Can we really cut down our consumption that much? Is it culturally/psychologically possible? I don't know what I would have to do to reduce my total - even becoming vegan would leave me consuming 11 acres, most of it in shelter and consumption. (But how do you really quantify shelter into acreage?)
• 2.9 planets. Flying does me a lot of damage. If I didn't do 25 hours of air travel per year (and it's likely to be less in the next year anyway) I could get it down to 1.4. Funnily enough most of the travel I do is to environmental conferences and events.
• (That's 7.9 acres, not 7.9 planets).
• jb: One of the (to my mind flawed) assumptions is that people behave uniformly: that is, give a bunch of Africans a Western European lifestyle, and you'll still have the current population numbers and growth. Experience suggests that as people get richer, they have fewer kids, eventually dipping below replacement rates naturally. So if we *all* get rich, it may self correct.
• 3.1 hectares/1.7 planets. With me it's the food that does it...
• IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 7.1 PLANETS. i win! i win! well, crud. and here i sold my car and walk or use my bike or public transportation to get around, i thought i'd score a bit better. sorry, everyone. anyone loan me a few planets?
• Buddy can you spare a moon?
• Biffa, the flying thing did me in too. Now that I live in NYC, i score 15 acres and 3.3 planets. Based on my previous lifestyle in TN, it was 24 acres and 5.4 planets. So much for the simple country life.
• 5.8 Planets. But they have to be *good* planets. I'm not taking Neptune, it's an iceball.
• I require 16 acres (3.7 planets) but luckily I've already got 200. And you can't make me share. Okay, fine. But you can only have ONE acre.
• drive to work (more than 100km) in a fuel efficient car (acompanied half the time), walk everywhere else if I can, live in a separate medium sized house with running water and electricity, eat mostly prepackaged food and meat all days. score 4.6 hects, 2.6 planets. It seems house size and travelling patterns affect the most. Eventually technology will catch up and reduce most of those factors to half the footprint. The rest I don't need to change much. I could live in a apartment without problem (which I plan to do soon).
• But, heck, would be better if we reduce global population instead of reducing personal footprint.
• But, heck, would be better if we reduce global population instead of reducing personal footprint. We're workin' on it.
• Current global consumption levels could result in a large-scale ecosystem collapse by the middle of the century