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It can be combined with overpopulation concerns and stated as "the number of Earths it would take to support every human living exactly the way you do." Ecological footprints have been used to argue that current lifestyles are not sustainable. The concept of ecological footpriniting has been challenged on several grounds. Firstly, many factors of the calculations are based on crude estimates and it is questioned whether the numbers are applicable to other places. Secondly, the model generally does not count multiple uses of land: a forest is there as a carbon sink and the same area is not counted for food production. Finally, some of the processes involved are currently poorly understood.
To counter these uncertainties, the models of ecological footprinting are constantly being refined. Moreover, the use of ecological footprint analysis is considered to be a guide, rather than an exact measure, of sustainability. For instance, few ecological footprint models include the use of fresh or salt water. But since the focus of the ecological footprint is heuristic--to awaken people, particularly in the North, to their extensive resource use and its externalized costs--greater precision or detail might actually get in the way of this teaching goal.
Ethically, the number of Earths "consumed" alludes to the categorical imperative, which requires everyone to behave in such a way that they can consistently advise all others to behave. However it is often the case in discussions of ecological footprinting that the focus shifts from how to reduce one's own consumption to the real or imagined threats of increased consumption by people in southern or Asian nations. The implicit idea is that it's acceptable if those currently consuming the largest share of the world's resources continue to do so, and continue to grow in number. But this is more a limit of the use of ecological footprint than of the tool itself. How to move footprint thinking from abstract thinking or teaching to action is one of the method's challenges.
One of the less-publicized but most powerful insights of ecological footprint methods is that, contrary to many people's assumptions, it is human use of renewable resources, not of non-renewable ones, that poses the real sustainability crisis. Nature can restore renewable resources at a certain rate. Humans consistently, and increasingly, consume renewables faster than ecosystems can restore them.
This state of ecological overshoot eventually threatens those very ecosystems by not allowing them sufficient time to "recharge." Furthermore, humans can clearly live without nonrenewable resources such as metals or fossil fuels, did so for many hundreds of thousands of years, and will again. It is the renewable resource base on which we as a species depend. The ecological footprint approach can introduce the concept of resource recharge and the rate at which we use resources as key elements in more sustainable human societies. This time element helps us understand that it's not just what we use, or how much, but how fast. This meshes with other movements to "slow down" human consumption and help people disengage from that acceleration of actions and expectations that has been a crucial feature of industrial and proto-industrial societies.
See also: urban economics, ecology movement, Deep ecology
EnvironmentAn environment is a complex of external factors that acts on a system and determines its course and form of existence. An environment may be thought of as a superset, of which the given system is a subset. An environment may have one or more parameters, p EthicsEthics is a general term for what is often described as the " science of morality". In philosophy, ethical behavior is that which is " good". The Western tradition of ethics is sometimes called moral philosophy . This is one of the three major branches of