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Topic: A Problem With the Ecological Footprint Concept
Part of the forum "Ishmael and Saving the World" in the IshCon Forum Archive
| Poster and Date | Post |
| Snowman Thu Jan 13th, 2005 at 12:54 PM |
I used to be a fan of the ecological footprint concept. If you haven't heard of it, it estimates a number of acres that it takes to support your lifestyle based on questions about your lifestyle. The purpose is to minimize your ecological footprint. An ecological footprint quiz is available at http://www.earthday.net/footprint/index.asp Especially since reading Ishmael, I have found a big problem with the well-meaning concept, which is that it doesn't take into account the way that those acres are impacted. A leaver tribe takes more acres to support each person than a modern American, but the acres that support a leaver tribe are lush with a diversity of life, in contrast to the acres used to support an average American, which are mostly pesticide-soaked monocultures ehere the soil is rapidly washing away, pavement, and other areas useless to almost all other life. Athough the ecological footprint questions aren't set up for use by leaver tribes, the same problem is there, just to a lesser extent. For example, perennial pasture used to feed grass fed meat, although still much less diverse than a native forest, will support more life and lose far less soil than a chemically sprayed grain monoculture. Yet, the ecological footprint would favor the monoculture because it takes less land to produce a given amount of food. Also, someone eating locally in a desert climate would naturally need more land to support their lifestyle than someone eating locally in a wet climate. Its easy to see that if all the land is being abused just as bad, someone who uses more acres to support their lifestyle is having a more negative environmental impact than someone using less land, but what about if person A impacts fives times the acreage as person B, but person A's acres are being used much more sustainably, while person B's acres are being rapidly depleted. The ecological footprint would favor person B. I would favor person A, and I'm pretty sure Ishmael would also. |
| Nene Thu Jan 13th, 2005 at 01:09 PM |
Hey -- Oye! Look out -- here comes Matt's footprint equation again! No, really. There has been a lot of discussion about this very topic ( see here, for example) in the last year (at least 8O ). I think this plays into a big part of our MC indoctrination and should be considered extensively as we move forward. I am kind of in a place right now where I can consider efficiency to be a good thing or a bad thing depending on the intent or purpose for increased efficiency. In other words, if I start a 'tribe' and we use maximum efficiency techniques for our chosen vocation, with the intent of having lots of time to goof off and lots of 'unused' land (I would like to get 1000 acres with something like 900+ left 'natural' ) If, on the other hand, effiency is undertaken in order to produce more, waste more etc etc...that ain't gonna fly. :wink: Janene |
| silas Thu Jan 13th, 2005 at 01:09 PM |
Good thoughts, Snowman. I think this may be an "Apples to Oranges" issue. In a world full of leaver tribes, as you described it, the concept of ecological footprints probably gets significantly redefined. The name even sort of helps out here: a footprint is something out of place, something that is overlaid on an existing setting, disturbing it, reshaping it. When a species or society is living "in community" with their surroundings, instead of placing their footprint on it in some "out of place" way, we can think less about ecological impact and acreage used as measures of the effect they're having on those surroundings. For another example, think about trying to measure other "taker" concepts of quality of life and impact for a leaver tribe: cost of living, post-consumer waste recycled, gross national product, social security retirement accounts, and so on. That's not to say that thinking about ecological impact in other contexts isn't useful, you just might have a hard time making the math add up when all the base assumptions have changed. Silas |
| Nene Thu Jan 13th, 2005 at 01:11 PM |
Hey -- Quote: The name even sort of helps out here: a footprint is something out of place, something that is overlaid on an existing setting, disturbing it, reshaping it. When a species or society is living "in community" with their surroundings, instead of placing their footprint on it in some "out of place" way, we can think less about ecological impact and acreage used as measures of the effect they're having on those surroundings. Good Point, Chris! Janene |
| ProjectPurity Thu Jan 13th, 2005 at 06:05 PM |
excellent point. What i was going to say before it was mentioned in a slightly different way is that when you look at a footprint what you see is the amount of land it took for that being to rest on at that point in time, and you can notice that it is equal to the surface area of his/her feet. At a basic level, that much land is needed to hold that person, but if you are more efficient you can teeter on a sharp rock or something, decreasing the size of your footprint. That's how it works when your trying to equate food production capacity to population need/desire. But when you are looking at the "footprint" of a tribe (i'm not sure that the term even applies anymore) you consider the teritorial needs that they require whilst living in the hands of the gods. It's a much greater land mass per tribe member, but you do have to take into consideration their needs for that land: food, shelter, tool, water, entertainment. It's just a whole different scale, which i'm sure CAN be calculated with the variables being Population, Fertility, Water availability, and a number of other variables... whereas with TA, the amount of food production capable per hectare changes with technology, and so does the environmental impact. I'm not sure that either of those (food density, enviro impact) effect leaver tribes. |
| maha Thu Jan 13th, 2005 at 09:25 PM |
I think everyone pretty much covered it. There are many considerations to be made when talking about ecological "feetprint". :) It's more than just acreage versus where you eat, stand, and excrete waste (shit). It's also about how you interact with your community (of humans and non-humans). Do you deny them the right to exist on land that you exist on? If you kill animals or prevent them from inhabiting an area of land that you occupy, then this dramatically effects that ecosystem---Takers are the equivalent of an elephant stomping through a daisy patch, destroying everything in its wake on account of a larger and heavy footprint (in a metaphorical sense). The point is, there are many different ways in which one interacts and effects his/her environment. It would be difficult to accurately figure out and assess all of those factors. All we know is that Takers have a far larger and deeper imprint than Leavers do, no matter how you measure it. |
| Snowman Thu Jan 13th, 2005 at 11:12 PM |
Lots of good points. Maha, I think your comments about footprints being both large and deep is a great example. If we think of the size as the amount of acreage impacted and the depth as how it is impacted, that makes the concept much better. In that model, although the size of leaver footprints might be large because of using lots of land, the depth would be just about negligable because lots of other life can still share the footprint. An extreme taker use such as pavement of chemically treated monoculture would be a gaping hole, even if the size is smaller. |
| Ghost Fri Jan 14th, 2005 at 02:29 AM |
:D Oh, Richard. How I have waited for you. :D --- footprint x population = available land That equation will tell you everything you need to know about population trends. footprint in hectares = (average individual production / resource extraction efficiency) + (average individual waste / waste reclamation efficiency) aka the land used on average, directly or indirectly, by each individual of the society in question as measured in metric hectares, which represent 2.471 acres per 1 hectare, for all of their needs including food, shelter, clothing, water, electricity, transport, waste and all the rest = (how much is produced on average, in tons say, over a year say, for each individual both directly and indirectly / the amount of resources that the society in question can extract from a given hectare, in tons say, over a year say) + (how much waste is produced on average, in tons say, over a year say, by each individual / how much waste, in tons say, over a year say, that the land can reclaim) That equation will tell you everything you need to know about how footprint is affected by the lifestyle and production methods of the culture in question. --- Check out "Our Ecological Footprint" by Wackernagel and Rees HERE. They invented footprint at UBC. The book is a complete scientific breakdown of the theory. It's dull like chewing driftwood but it has all the particulars. They're also members of the board (along with David Suzuki and E.O. Wilson 8O ) at the Global Footprint Network HERE I once e-mailed the Global Footprint Network and told them that they were employing footprint incorrectly and that I'd like to discuss that with them. They have yet to reply. --- You're ABSOLUTELY CORRECT in your assumption, Richard. Impact on a given system is NOT directly linked to footprint size. It is the one flaw of footprint, or more specifically, in how the theory is being employed predominantly right now. The theory is bang on, they just refuse, consciously or no, to recognise the impact of exactly what you just described. Why would they? What do they know from the difference between Taker and Leaver cultures? The fatal flaws of the people curently using footprint is that they make the basic assumption that 6.5 billion people are a good idea and that it is important to somehow create a situation that can somehow support that many people sustainably. With that as their basis it makes perfect sense that everyone should live like Mexicans. If everyone lived like North Americans we'd need 5 planets. With that rationale, everyone should diminish their footprint and we'll all fit. Makes perfect sense. Wrong and destroying the planet, but well meaning and perfectly logical More info HERE (the 8th post down) Also, a significant portion of my book deals with the issue of footprint. It's called "Saving the Human Race on a Shoestring Budget" and can be obtained by sending a request e-mail to info@walkawaymedia.com (No it isn't free, printing is spensive mang, but it's cheap. I'm only asking for cost and shipping.) --- For real, this equation: footprint x population = available land the Theory of Population, is the KEY to understanding the mechanics of Taker destruction and the mechanics of changing things. It explains why Leavers lived with diversity and why Takers do not. It corrects a misperception of the Food Race and explains why there are more people in India than in the US even though there is more food in the US. It's human survivability's answer to physics' Theory of Everything. I'm so happy that you figured it out independantly. That means that not only am I not insane, but that people CAN figure this out. If you ever have specific questions about ANYTHING relating to this subject.... OOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHH... feel free to ask :D :D :D I will happily take hours out of my day to explore this with you. Peace and Love and Empathy, Matt |
| Hypnopompia Fri Jan 14th, 2005 at 03:09 AM |
I was wondering how long the Matt-summoning invocation would take. :D I have a question. If footprint X available land = population And footprint = (resources used/resources available) + (waste/reclamation of waste) Then, since a leaver society would use few resources, but there would be a much larger number of resources in the area (especially compared to city), and almost 100 percent of their waste would be reclaimed, then, for a leaver society, wouldn't it be: footprint = (small number/big number) + (small number/~same number)? Then footprint would be a small number (comparitively). So, considering that leavers have access to very little land, what's the problem? Civilization uses huge tracts of land, leavers use comparitively little. The fact that they claim as "territory" hundreds of hectacres isn't important to this equation if they only actively use one. The rest of it is left to the rest of the biosphere. So the original equation now seems to work. Small number times small number equals small number. So my question is: what am I not getting? |
| evade379 Fri Jan 14th, 2005 at 11:39 AM |
thats an interesting quiz...just by changing one thing you do a lil differently it can multiply the effects. |
| Snowman Fri Jan 14th, 2005 at 11:40 AM |
Wow, Matt, your idea is like mine but taken ten times more in depth and made much more clear. How much does your book cost? Quote: So, considering that leavers have access to very little land, what's the problem? Civilization uses huge tracts of land, leavers use comparitively little. The fact that they claim as "territory" hundreds of hectacres isn't important to this equation if they only actively use one. The rest of it is left to the rest of the biosphere. So the original equation now seems to work. Small number times small number equals small number. I would think leavers have access to and use nearly the same amount of land takers do, its just the way they use it that differs dramatically. The majority of land used by leavers would be just used for hunting and gathering with room for many other species to live. Even agricultural leavers such as the cherokee only farmed a small portion of their land (river valleys) and hunted and gathered from the rest. I have read about how many American Indian tribes changed the ecology of the land by use of fire. Some takers have used that as justification to destroy the Earth, saying "the Indians changed the land, then its fine if we do", not mentioning that changing a forest to be more open with fire is not anything like building a parking lot or a monoculture. |
| Hypnopompia Fri Jan 14th, 2005 at 01:51 PM |
"Snowman" wrote: I would think leavers have access to and use nearly the same amount of land takers do, its just the way they use it that differs dramatically. The majority of land used by leavers would be just used for hunting and gathering with room for many other species to live. Even agricultural leavers such as the cherokee only farmed a small portion of their land (river valleys) and hunted and gathered from the rest. Then how are they using as much land? A Taker moves in to an area and turns the entire area into his. Cuts down forest, plants, fields, ect. A Leaver enters an area, and settles down in a clearing, gathers some fruit, and hunts down a couple of deer. Perhaps the equation should be: Footprint * (Total Land * Percent actively used) = Population ? |
| Nene Fri Jan 14th, 2005 at 01:56 PM |
Hey -- The point that you're missing is that the equation reflects the neccessary correlation between footprint, total land and population. Although a leaver does not strip an area of its resources, he does NEED all of that land in order to make a living. If you adjust for sustainability, then you are not getting an accurate representation of the population aspect of the equation.... Janene |
| ProjectPurity Fri Jan 14th, 2005 at 02:05 PM |
I think the important word distinguishing leavers and takers in their food production and footprint size is ACTIVLY. This planet has an enormous ability to absorb and recover damages done, and leaver tribes most likely don't exceede that limit, but if 6 billion people were burning forests i think the carbon emmissions would be a bit too high for ecological cycling to occur at the same pace. With the cherokee, i'm not sure the history of their tribe with respect to migration and origins, but it would be my guess that they first inhabited an area that natively allowed their agricultural practices to occur without slash-and-burn, but then they moved to an area that didn't support this so they had to change it to suit their needs. Again, I'm not sure of this, and most likely someone here can correct me if i'm wrong... please do, it's just a speculation. This thought just gives more support to the idea that if lived in a way that embodied regional diversity, the effects of each tribe would be minimized, but when you have everyone doing the same thing, the earth can't keep up. |
| Hypnopompia Fri Jan 14th, 2005 at 02:20 PM |
Perhaps "Percent actively used" could be a rating of sustinability? Something like: (resources used / resources reclaimed per year)? then the entire equation would look like: ((ResourcesUsed/ResourcesAvailable) + (Waste/ReclaimationOfWaste)) * AvailableLand * (ResourcesUsed/ResourcesReclaimed) = Population If you used fewer resources than the area could reclaim (the very defintion of sustainability) then that measure would be quite less than one. Thereby decreasing the population. Of course, if you were unsustainable than it would increase your population....hmmmm. Right up until you used in a single year all of the resources available, then you collapse, because next yer your ResourcesAvailable would be zero. I can see the headline now: "Civilization Attempts To Divide By Zero, Falls." Although, seriously speaking, we would still have resources available, salvage from what's left in civilization. You would only be able to use very limited amounts of resources (comparitively), which forces your population down quite significantly. Hmmmm, interestingly enough if you graphed this the moment that the unsustainability caught up with us our population would decrease substantially, it would be an asymptote, which occurs when you divide by zero. This could be useful, if it works. onedit: oh wait. no, no.....reclamation of waste is a different, although related, measure. |
| Snowman Fri Jan 14th, 2005 at 03:41 PM |
Quote: Then how are they using as much land? A Taker moves in to an area and turns the entire area into his. Cuts down forest, plants, fields, ect. A Leaver enters an area, and settles down in a clearing, gathers some fruit, and hunts down a couple of deer. Perhaps the equation should be: Footprint * (Total Land * Percent actively used) = Population ? The leavers are still using just as much land, and substantially more per person, than the takers. The difference is in how they use it. Leavers use land the same way other species do, in a way compatible with the law of life that does not deplete the land. Takers deplete the land they use and destroy the biodiversity. They are both using the land, however, because they would both suffer if part of that land was taken away. I'm afraid don't understand your equation. First of all, what land would be included in "total land" that would not be actively used. I guess I don't know your definition of actively used, but I would call land used to hunt and gather to be actively used. Also, how would the footprint * land be the population? If you swapped places of the land and the population, that would be Matt's equation, which does make sense to me. |
| Hypnopompia Fri Jan 14th, 2005 at 03:58 PM |
Oh, |
| Ghost Fri Jan 14th, 2005 at 04:55 PM |
:D Quote: So, considering that leavers have access to very little land, what's the problem? Civilization uses huge tracts of land, leavers use comparitively little. Big bad negatory there, dude. Something in a Quinn book about Europeans considering North America as a giant empty space. NO. It was FILLED with natives. Take the Navajo. How much land area did they cover? How many were there? Thousands? How many MILLIONS of Americans now live in that exact same space? Follow? Think of the difference like this. A Taker and a Leaver need to make a table. They need 10 pounds of wood each. On one hectare of land there are 10 trees that each weigh a pound. The Leaver takes one tree per hectare, not because he's benign, but because that's the limit of his production methods. So the Leaver needs 10 hectares to build that one table. So for every one person to have a table, each person needs 10 hectares of land. Not only that, but within that 10 hectares of land lie 90 trees that the Leavers can't exploit. The Taker has TA and tractors and chainsaws and so they can clear cut the entire hectare, take all 10 trees and build one table for every hectare of land. Each person needs only 1 hectare of land and they leave 0, zero, zip, ziltch, nada trees for anyone else. Right now there are about 11.4 billion hectares of arable land and fresh water on Earth. There was more 10 000 years ago. But there were only 10 million humans. Not because there were still unsettled land masses, because there were humans on every continent save Antarctica. There were 10 million humans because they could only exploit so much. Each person needed HUGE tracks of land in order to support themselves. This is the whole POINT of the Agricultural Revolution. People who had to be nomadic before (because they needed wide tracks of land just to collect enough nutrients to survive) now could create that same amount of food on a small and convenient farm. The more stuff you can squeeze out of one hectare, the more people you can fit. Peace and Love and Emapthy, Matt |
| Ludi Fri Jan 14th, 2005 at 05:00 PM |
But totalitarian agricultural practices reduce the carrying capacity of the land. |
| Nene Fri Jan 14th, 2005 at 05:38 PM |
Hey -- Exacty! Thus the huge conundrum. Agriculture can produce lots of food mass because it completely drains the nutrients from the soil. But in the long haul...not sustainable in the slightest. Janene |
| maha Sat Jan 15th, 2005 at 08:47 AM |
Ludi wrote: Quote: But totalitarian agricultural practices reduce the carrying capacity of the land. Ludi, very true. Could the earth support six billion hunter/gatherers right now?---Hell no. If the earth was not filled with Takers and their concrete jungles could it support six billion hunter/gatherers?---Perhaps. What's notable here is that the earth would never have six billion humans to support were it not for totalitarian agriculture. |
| Ludi Sat Jan 15th, 2005 at 09:02 AM |
There are existing agricultural practices which could possibly support 6 billion people without further damaging the biosphere. Unfortunatley these are not being promoted on a wide scale. |
| maha Sat Jan 15th, 2005 at 09:13 AM |
Dictatorships are rarely open to new practices, even if they are better. This is true for government dictatorships, or agricultural ones. |
| Hypnopompia Sat Jan 15th, 2005 at 03:58 PM |
Ok guys, try this one on for size: Footprint(hectares/person) * Population(people) = Required Land(in hectares) Not available land. Footprint = (Resources Used / Person) / (Resources That Can Be Obtained / Hectare) This way a Taker society would have a significantly smaller footprint and a larger population. This means that they have a large population density. A Leaver society would have a comparatively large footprint and a smaller population. This means that they would have a smaller population density. In the same territory, of course. The larger the footprint, the more spread out the impact, the smaller the effect of the footprint. Leavers are just wearing snowshoes. :lol: The population density a society is capable of maintaining would be: Population / Land = 1/Footprint = (Resources Obtainable/Hectare) / (Resources Used/Person) If land is a constant then the fewer resources each person needs, the greater the density of population. And the more resources that can be obtained the greater the density. A Taker people with an increasing population would have to do one of four things: 1) Get rid of some people 2) Get more Land 3) Find a way to obtain more resources per acre. 4) Have everyone make do with less This seems to work better with observed phenomenon. What do you guys think? |
| Ludi Sat Jan 15th, 2005 at 04:13 PM |
I'm still not sure this necessarily holds true in actual situations. For instance, the population of Takers in the Australian outback is relatively low, however, they have trashed an ecosystem which supported the Aborigines for 40,000 years. Even this very spread out few Takers have through their practices reduced the carrying capacity of the land. The same situation is true here in Central Texas, where the Lipan Apache used to live. A few widely spaced Takers ruined the carrying capacity of the land, which used to be tallgrass prairie, with cattle, sheep, and goat raising. I would guess the land used to support more people than it would be able to do now, though I don't have any statistics on that (nobody knows much about the Lipan Apache, who are now extinct here). |
| Hypnopompia Sat Jan 15th, 2005 at 04:56 PM |
I doesn't matter (as far as the equation goes). The equation is for a instant of time, not an entire slope. As time goes on the amount of resources a society can obtain when they use unsutainable practices changes. When the amount of resources they can obtain reduces below the minimum that society needs per person, then they need either more land or fewer people. Sustinable practices means that the resources you can obtain remains constant over time, unsustinable means that they increase until they zero out. |
| Ghost Sat Jan 15th, 2005 at 06:44 PM |
Hey, Ben. I love your passion, but take a moment to drink in what's already been done before you try and rewrite it. A lot of your concerns have already been addressed. Quote: But totalitarian agricultural practices reduce the carrying capacity of the land. In the sense that they eventually lead to desertification that's true. But we're speaking more of tons of production. Your average factory cattle farm can have anywhere from 50 000 to 500 000 head of cattle. That's some serious production from a small amount of land. The problem is that nothing else can survive on or around a factory farm. It's like an almost 100% use of the land for human purposes. Over time these farms will break down and eventually that land will not support anything, but that's not a concern to people who worship unlimited growth. Quote: Could the earth support six billion hunter/gatherers right now?---Hell no. If the earth was not filled with Takers and their concrete jungles could it support six billion hunter/gatherers?---Perhaps. The Earth never could. We know about how many hunter-gatherers the planet could support: 10 million. 10 000 years ago every human on the planet was a hunter-gatherer (there's room for debate there) and there were about 10 million people. There is a direct correlation between the two. In fact, the Earth was more lush then than now, so we couldn't even support 10 million hunter-gatherers today. But remember, the problem is not all forms of agriculture, just TA. Quote: What's notable here is that the earth would never have six billion humans to support were it not for totalitarian agriculture. That IS what's notable and it's the whole point of the revamped footprint equation. TA allows us to produce more human food and human's food's food per hectare. The cost is less biomass for other species. The result is more people per hectare. Quote: Footprint(hectares/person) * Population(people) = Required Land(in hectares) Not available land. It has to be available over required for a few reasons. When you're applying the equation, you have to apply it to a specific group. It can be as wide as the human race or as refined as a tribe of 30 individuals. In either case, the land available to them is finite at any given time. It is important to note that available land is not about geographical or even geopolitical borders. It's about available land. Dole, a US company, owns fruit farms in Mexico that local Mexicans have zero access to. Therefore that farm is a part of the US's available land and not a part of Mexico's. The importance of this is that when available land is fixed (which is most of the time. It can really only be affected by expansion or loss of territory, primarily through military action but also through economic and political forces) there is an inverse relationship between footprint and population. When population goes up if forces footprint down. When footprint goes up if forces population down. Quote: Footprint = (Resources Used / Person) / (Resources That Can Be Obtained / Hectare) There's a couple problems with this equation. The primary problem is that it doesn't account for waste. Landfils take up a significant portion of our available land as an example. The second is that he hectare divider is ambiguous (let it be known that I have grade 9 math). Does it refer to total hectares? If so, it makes no sense. You're right to assume that resource extraction efficiency is affected by technology. It's also affected by other things. From my book: Quote: ...Resource extraction efficiency is defined as the amount of resources that can be extracted from a single hectare as affected by: production methods, technology and ecological conditions. -"Saving the Human Race on a Shoestring Budget" page 119 Ie, TA will allow you to take more than gathering, tractors will allow you to take more than oxen and plough, lush rains will create higher yields than drought. Quote: This way a Taker society would have a significantly smaller footprint and a larger population. This means that they have a large population density. That's already accounted for when using this equation: Quote: footprint in hectares = (average individual production / resource extraction efficiency) + (average individual waste / waste reclamation efficiency) It tells you how many hectares each individual requires relative to the relationship of how much is produced and how many hectares are needed to support that and the relationship of how much waste is generated and how many hectares are needed to support that. Quite simply, Takers require less land to produce more stuff. So overall, they use less land than Leavers. Plug that smaller footprint in the the Theory of Population equation and you get more Takers. Quote: The larger the footprint, the more spread out the impact, the smaller the effect of the footprint. Leavers are just wearing snowshoes. This is a dangerous misnomer. The USA has a footprint of about 9.8 hectares. Canada has a footprint of about 4.8 hectares. We're quite comprable in lifestyle, but the US does far more damage and has a larger footprint. India has a footprint of about 1.8 hectares. But they do a fuck load of damage because they have a huge population BECAUSE of their small footprint. Leavers can have footprints in the hundreds or even thousands of hectares. So larger does not mean less impact. Footprint is very counter intuative and really does what it wants on a case by case basis. The solution IS to increase footprints to bring down population. But if we did it by doubling US prodcution and waste levels it would be a terrible idea. So we have to reduce the efficiency of the footprint; what is the percentage of stuff we're taking from each of those hectares that each person is using. By doing that you require more gross hectares but take less resources from each hectare. Quote: Population / Land = 1/Footprint = footprint x population = available land = available land / footprint = population I prefer to keep footprint and population together because I'm most interested in the inverse relationship of those two variables. They're the most likely to change anyway. Quote: If land is a constant then the fewer resources each person needs, the greater the density of population. And the more resources that can be obtained the greater the density. Excellent observation. This is precicely why India has a much larger population than the US even though the US has more food. Indians use less per person and can therefore fit more people into their territory. Like mentioned, the US footprint is about 5 times that of India. So you'd assume that if the US has a population of 300 million that India should clock in at about 1.5 billion. But it clocks in at about 800 million because they have roughly half the available land. This is why the notion of solving the world's problems through decreasing first world footprint is so dangerous. There will be room for MORE people. But that only makes sense when operating from the basic assumption that we should maintain a population of 6.5 billion; impossible to do anyway because our unlimited growth meme, coupled with our surplus food production guarantees population GROWTH rather than maintenance. Over time, population pressure will FORCE this same decrease in footprint, but these people want to speed that process along. Not a good idea. I've always said: What we gain in population we must sacrifice in standard of living What we gain in standard of living we must sacrifice in population Quote: A Taker people with an increasing population would have to do one of four things: 1) Get rid of some people 2) Get more Land 3) Find a way to obtain more resources per acre. 4) Have everyone make do with less Again, Ben, excellent! footprint x population = available land, applies universally to every species on the planet. Takers have short circuited this relationship by locking the population variable in one direction, UP. The population has steadily increased for the last 10 000 years from 10 million to over 6 billion; a 60 000% increase! Because there is an inverse relationship between population and footprint, when one goes up, the other MUST fall. And so there has been a constant downward pressure on footprint for 10 000 years. Footprint is tacked to standard of living. If footprint falls to a level where it can no longer provide at the SUBSISTANCE level, that society experiences some form of collapse, likely famine. This is not a solution for Takers. So for 10 000 years, Takers have been forced to mitigate this by relieving this pressure. 1) Get rid of some people: Not a big hit. It happens through war which seems to be acceptable, and famine, which is one of the single most unacceptable things to Takers. 4) Have everyone make do with less: This isn't a solution so much as it is an imposed state. Indians are not poor because of choice to be so but because it is the situation they have created for themselves. They can only produce so efficiently. Their population is rapidly outstripping their ability to provide. It proves Quinn's theory that during a famine or scarcity, food supply is evened out accross the entire population. 2) Get more Land 3) Find a way to obtain more resources per acre. A ha! Now we get to the crux of Taker policy. The conditions? Grow unlimitedly. The population is only alowed to grow, never to shrink. The ramafications? A constand downward pressure on footprint. The solutions? Annex more land - This is why, no matter what anyone has ever told you, war is simply a reaction to population pressures. This is also the reason that Takers were FORCED to overrun the planet. Increase efficiency - You have to be able to produce more per hectare. This is why we went from TA to TA with better ploughs. Then steam tractors. Then diesel tractors. Then factory farms and GMOs. It is the result of a constant need to increase the food supply within the confines of the land available to you. But you can only annex so much land and you can only increase efficiency so quickly. Eventually the population pressure wins out and the result is that it forces footprint below the subsistence level. This causes a famine and a population crash. This is an INNEVITABLE FEATURE OF THE SYSTEM. The REAL solution? Decrease efficiency - adopt systems that force you to take LESS from a given hectare. This will INCREASE footprints while DECREASING their impact. This will reverse the process and place the downward pressure on population for the first time in 10 000 years. Anyhoo, you can read more about that in my book. Quote: For instance, the population of Takers in the Australian outback is relatively low, however, they have trashed an ecosystem which supported the Aborigines for 40,000 years. You have to think of the ENTIRETY of Australia's available land, domestic and foreign. All the land they've deemed as useful has been swallowed up. They may not farm extensively in the outback, but they'll take what little biomass is there and throw it on the pile. Sydney could not exist without all of the resources piped in from elsewhere and the people on the outback couldn't exist without their shipments from Sydney. Eventually, TA will desertify a location, that's a certainty. This is one of the possible causes of the collapse. If you need to produce 500 megatons of food to feed the population and one day find that you can only produce 250, keeerash. Unfortunately, this mathematical certainty doesn't seem to deter civilisationalists. Peace and Love and Empathy, Matt |
| Hypnopompia Sat Jan 15th, 2005 at 09:48 PM |
"Ghost" wrote: Quote: Footprint(hectares/person) * Population(people) = Required Land(in hectares) Not available land. It has to be available over required for a few reasons. When you're applying the equation, you have to apply it to a specific group. It can be as wide as the human race or as refined as a tribe of 30 individuals. In either case, the land available to them is finite at any given time. It is important to note that available land is not about geographical or even geopolitical borders. It's about available land. Dole, a US company, owns fruit farms in Mexico that local Mexicans have zero access to. Therefore that farm is a part of the US's available land and not a part of Mexico's. The importance of this is that when available land is fixed (which is most of the time. It can really only be affected by expansion or loss of territory, primarily through military action but also through economic and political forces) there is an inverse relationship between footprint and population. When population goes up if forces footprint down. When footprint goes up if forces population down. I getcha. I'd still say "available" is a misleading term though. A society does not need to use all the land it has access to, it certainly tends to, but the Northwest Territories aren't exactly full of cities and landfills. Also it makes it sound like a constant, which it isn't. What we have is an equation full of functions. Integrating it would be bitch. Quote: Quote: Footprint = (Resources Used / Person) / (Resources That Can Be Obtained / Hectare) There's a couple problems with this equation. The primary problem is that it doesn't account for waste. Landfils take up a significant portion of our available land as an example. The second is that he hectare divider is ambiguous (let it be known that I have grade 9 math). Does it refer to total hectares? If so, it makes no sense. You're right to assume that resource extraction efficiency is affected by technology. It's also affected by other things. From my book: Quote: ...Resource extraction efficiency is defined as the amount of resources that can be extracted from a single hectare as affected by: production methods, technology and ecological conditions. -"Saving the Human Race on a Shoestring Budget" page 119 Ie, TA will allow you to take more than gathering, tractors will allow you to take more than oxen and plough, lush rains will create higher yields than drought. I figured that the land mass needed for each person’s waste would be included, but I suppose you could add it in separately. "Hectare" referred to a single hectare, I thought the use of the singular was sufficient since, when factor-labeling, the "1" is often not written. After all, you don't write 2/1, the denominator becomes irrelevant. Oh well, advice taken. Quote: Quote: This way a Taker society would have a significantly smaller footprint and a larger population. This means that they have a large population density. That's already accounted for when using this equation: Quote: footprint in hectares = (average individual production / resource extraction efficiency) + (average individual waste / waste reclamation efficiency) It tells you how many hectares each individual requires relative to the relationship of how much is produced and how many hectares are needed to support that and the relationship of how much waste is generated and how many hectares are needed to support that. Quite simply, Takers require less land to produce more stuff. So overall, they use less land than Leavers. Plug that smaller footprint in the the Theory of Population equation and you get more Takers. I'm trying to fix the problem in this equation, specifically the fact that it does not take into account the sustainability of a society into the footprint calculation. Sustainability requires several items (I know we know these, just being specific): 1) Using resources at a rate less than or equal to the rate they can be regenerated. 2) 100% biodegradable waste, or all waste produced is reclaimed by the environment in an expedient fashion. The equation: Footprint = Resources Used per person / Resources Obtained per hectare was supposed to take into account all that while still getting a footprint out of it: "hectares used per person." The resources you can obtain is dependant on technology (takes a lot longer to cut down a tree with an ax), terrain (less trees in a desert), and inclination (you don't have to take it all). A leaver takes little from each hectare because of all three. This leads to a small denominator in the equation, which would explain why leavers need so much more territory per person than a taker. A taker would have a large denominator, and a widely differentiated numerator. In the US it’s much larger than in Indonesia. We are fond of saying that if everyone lived like Americans we would need four Earths to provide for us. But it everyone lived like hunter/gatherers it would take considerably more. A big footprint isn't necessarily a bad thing. Unsustainable practices coupled with a huge and expanding population is a bad thing. The key word here is production. Leavers do not produce like Takers do, they can't. And hence they need much more territory than a Taker does, but there are a lot more Takers. The US uses 9.8 hectares per person, we have 260 million Americans. If we only had 10 million Americans and no one else, there would be room to spare, and no one to provide for the Americans, which is another story altogether. Perhaps we should expand on Karl's observation. A footprint is both a measure of how much land, and how deeply that land is affected. How about: FootprintDepth(FPD) = (RateOfResourcesTaken - RateOfResourcesRegenerated) + (RateOfWasteExpended - RateOfWasteReclaimed) As long as you lived sustainably, this value would never get very high. Indeed, for Leavers both sets would always be just above zero or at zero. Takers on the other hand..... FPD would be in terms of kilograms/hectare. When multiplied by the land mass being affected by the FPD (calculated by the FootprintBreadth (FPB)) you would have a measure of the effect of a society. The higher the value the more likely the culture is unsustainable and about to collapse. Basically: how many hectares are being used per person * how much is being used irredeemably per hectare * how many people are doing this = how much damage is a society doing Quote: Quote: The larger the footprint, the more spread out the impact, the smaller the effect of the footprint. Leavers are just wearing snowshoes. This is a dangerous misnomer. Yes, I apologize for my clumsy phrasing. I should have said that "while leavers have the larger footprint, their impact is spread out and comparatively negligible." Quote: Quote: Population / Land = 1/Footprint = footprint x population = available land = available land / footprint = population I prefer to keep footprint and population together because I'm most interested in the inverse relationship of those two variables. They're the most likely to change anyway. All aspects of this equation are subject to change. In this case I was talking about population density, which is: number of people / amount of land. Land/Footprint was an irrelevant measure to that end. But by writing it like I did we could readily observe the inverse association of population density and footprint, or Matt's Law of Standard of Living. :wink: -Ben |
| Ghost Sun Jan 16th, 2005 at 02:48 PM |
Hey, Ben. I've got a big smile on my face. Why? Because when I was first working with this stuff a trotted out all kinds of wacky equations. But the simple stuff works best for one simple reason. This is not a scientific calculation. There is no way in hell that you could ever actually provide any of these variables. They don't make a planet big enough to house the computer we'd need to build and there aren't enough humans to collect the data. The Theory of Population is and can only be a PREDICTOR; "it may happen much in this fashion". Footprint itself only works as an average and as such it's accuracy is severely limited. Quote: I getcha. I'd still say "available" is a misleading term though. A society does not need to use all the land it has access to, it certainly tends to, but the Northwest Territories aren't exactly full of cities and landfills. Also it makes it sound like a constant, which it isn't. What we have is an equation full of functions. Integrating it would be bitch. Be careful. Northern Canada is hardly empty. There are 3 territories that make up our north. Here they are with populations: - Yukon 31 100 - North West Territories 41 900 - Nunavut 29 400 That's 102 400 people living on tundra. Tundra is frozen year round. It makes farming all but impossible but we've managed to shoe horn in 100 000 people. And by the by, Churchill, Manitoba is famous for its garbage dump. It's right along polar bear migration routes and they have a huge problem with polar bears scavenging at the dump. Yellowknife is one of those non-existent towns with a population of 15 000. Nature abhores a vacuum. If a nich opens up it WILL be filled. Humans have filled every niche, on land, on this planet. There is a degree of choice involved, however, if the consensus is that it CAN be done, it is. So it's more accurate to say that humans don't exploit niches as the exception to the rule. Also, it's not misleading because it describes exactly what it says, the amount of land available to the population of a given society. Make room, add food, population increases. That's simple Food Race mechanics. You're right to say that available land isn't a constant. But it's by far the most stable of the three variables. For instance, the USA just increased it's available land significantly. How? It occupied Iraq. In this equation you can have a maximum of one fixed variable. Otherwise you'd have perfect stability which is impossible. More often than not available land is the fixed variable. I'd like to know what you mean by equation full of functions? You seem to know more about math than me. Quote: I figured that the land mass needed for each person’s waste would be included, but I suppose you could add it in separately. Nope. That was Wackernagel and Rees idea. It makes sense though. You're trying to figure out how much land each person uses. The two things we do is consume and create waste. They both have to be in the equation. Quote: I'm trying to fix the problem in this equation, specifically the fact that it does not take into account the sustainability of a society into the footprint calculation. You're trying to make a rocket ship out of a hang glider. There's no way a footprint calculation can tell you that anymore than 2+2 can tell you what's being added together. It's only in the application of footprint that we can determine sustainability. It's not there to tell you how things might turn out, just what's going on at a given moment. That's what footprint x population = available land, is for. What it will tell you is what pressure the population is exerting on footprint. It can and will force it down. Footprint is tacked to standard of living. If your footprint is forced down to a point where the average individual's production is BELOW the subsistence level, then carying capacity is overshot and collapse ensues. What is inherently unsustainable about this is locking population in the UP position and doing whatever possible to keep it there. That, acording to the equasion is a guaranteed crash waiting to happen. There is SUPPOSED to be an inverse relationship between population and footprint. It's a relationship that Takers deny. That's what's causing the problems. Lastly, can you think of a sustainability variable? What the hell would it be? It's not a variable, its a byproduct of the process. Quote: Sustainability requires several items (I know we know these, just being specific): 1) Using resources at a rate less than or equal to the rate they can be regenerated. 2) 100% biodegradable waste, or all waste produced is reclaimed by the environment in an expedient fashion. If you want to figure out how long a given set of resources will last based on consumption/regeneration rates, it's another equation. Speifically, regeneration minus consumption. If you're in positive numbers it's all good, you go negative and you lose. Then it's supply / rate until you run out. Creating easily biodegradable waste increases your waste reclamation efficiency. Which in fact decreases your footprint. Yes. I just said that recycling leads to more people. The greening of the planet is having the opposite effect intended. That's what's so fucked about this equation, it basically says, "yeah, everything you were doing that you thought was saving the planet is actually compounding the problem." Quote: The equation: Footprint = Resources Used per person / Resources Obtained per hectare was supposed to take into account all that while still getting a footprint out of it: "hectares used per person." Which is half of: footprint in hectares = (average individual production / resource extraction efficiency) + (average individual waste / waste reclamation efficiency) That and footprint x population = available land, are the only two equations you need to figure this all out. The break with Wackernagel and Rees, which is what Richard figured out at the outset, was that they basically said that footprint was: footprint in hectares = average individual production + average individual waste But that never accounted for Takers and Leavers and different lifestyles. Quote: The resources you can obtain is dependant on technology (takes a lot longer to cut down a tree with an ax), terrain (less trees in a desert), and inclination (you don't have to take it all). ...Resource extraction efficiency is defined as the amount of resources that can be extracted from a single hectare as affected by: production methods, technology and ecological conditions. -"Saving the Human Race on a Shoestring Budget" page 119 As far as inclination goes, the only sure fire way to ensure that people don't take it all is to make it impossible. Hence the solution: adopt less efficient production methods. If ALL YOU HAVE is the axe then you no longer have the choice. Fortunately, the primary cause of surplus production is class which is impossible in a Leaver society. Ergo, TA and industrialisation are right out and with them, the vast bulk of planetary production. Quote: We are fond of saying that if everyone lived like Americans we would need four Earths to provide for us. But it everyone lived like hunter/gatherers it would take considerably more. A big footprint isn't necessarily a bad thing. And this is where the purponents of footprint have fucked up so horrifically that they're now throwing gas on the fire. They've decided large footprint equals evil. But it's only large footprint that will save us. Not more US, but more Leaver style, less efficient, less impacting footprint. Quote: The key word here is production. Leavers do not produce like Takers do, they can't. And hence they need much more territory than a Taker does, but there are a lot more Takers. There are a lot more Takers BECAUSE they need less land. Quote: Perhaps we should expand on Karl's observation. A footprint is both a measure of how much land, and how deeply that land is affected. It's interesting and certainly a vivid image, but I don't like the dimension it conveys. It think surface area is equally flimsy. I've always prefered density. Quote: How about: FootprintDepth(FPD) = (RateOfResourcesTaken - RateOfResourcesRegenerated) + (RateOfWasteExpended - RateOfWasteReclaimed) Hmmm... I was about to shit on this and then I realised what you'd changed. Hmmm... I even said it myself earlier. Hehehe, now I get to tweak your equation :twisted: Footprint Density = Total resources - [ (rate of production - rate of regeneration) + (rate of waste generation - rate of recycling) ] That's what I came up with. I don't think it works at all though. I figured I'd share it anyway. KISS, it's probably just input/output. Anyhoo, I don't see the functionality of your equation, but keep trying to impress me 8) Hmmm... Footprint Density = [ (rate of production - rate of regeneration) + (rate of waste generation - rate of recycling) ] / Total resources I think that's closer. At least it gives you a percentage. But I feel wierd about having waste in there if it's total resources. Anyhoo... Quote: FPD would be in terms of kilograms/hectare. When multiplied by the land mass being affected by the FPD (calculated by the FootprintBreadth (FPB)) you would have a measure of the effect of a society. The higher the value the more likely the culture is unsustainable and about to collapse. Now this just seems wonky. It's not a likelyhood/non-likelyhood situation. "Do we have enough to feed everyone? Yes or no?" There is a tangible mathematical point to pass. The only thing I'm convinced of is that there isn't any room for this in footprint x population = available land and that there probably isn't any room for it in calculating footprint itself. Whew... I'm done for now. Oh how I love talking about this stuff :D Peace and Love and Empathy, Matt |
| Hypnopompia Sun Jan 16th, 2005 at 04:28 PM |
"Ghost" wrote: I'd like to know what you mean by equation full of functions? You seem to know more about math than me. I mean that over time each of those factors is subject to change. Hence, the equation was written is really just a point in time rather than a length of time. But, if we got enough accurate data points, we could regress them into an equation (basically we find a line that matches where the points are, thereby allowing us to have fun with them). If you put that into the equation you could see the effect that each had on each other over time, and you could predict the future. So, it’s an equation of functions. The problem is that in order to get a valid prediction you'd need accurate data over a long period of time. We don't have it. Quote: Quote: Perhaps we should expand on Karl's observation. A footprint is both a measure of how much land, and how deeply that land is affected. It's interesting and certainly a vivid image, but I don't like the dimension it conveys. It think surface area is equally flimsy. I've always prefered density. Either way, we're talking about a new equation rather than altering the old one. Quote: Quote: How about: FootprintDepth(FPD) = (RateOfResourcesTaken - RateOfResourcesRegenerated) + (RateOfWasteExpended - RateOfWasteReclaimed) Hmmm... I was about to shit on this and then I realised what you'd changed. Hmmm... I even said it myself earlier. Hehehe, now I get to tweak your equation :twisted: Bwahaha, you can try! Quote: Footprint Density = Total resources - [ (rate of production - rate of regeneration) + (rate of waste generation - rate of recycling) ] That's what I came up with. I don't think it works at all though. I figured I'd share it anyway. KISS, it's probably just input/output. Anyhoo, I don't see the functionality of your equation, but keep trying to impress me 8) I thought mine was pretty simple. I don't think yours would be a measurement of density though. It’s a measure of how much we're "leaving" behind though. Quote: Footprint Density = [ (rate of production - rate of regeneration) + (rate of waste generation - rate of recycling) ] / Total resources I think that's closer. At least it gives you a percentage. But I feel wierd about having waste in there if it's total resources. It is closer, but not quite there yet. That is a measure of the percentage of our resources that are unsustainable. Quote: Quote: FPD would be in terms of kilograms/hectare. When multiplied by the land mass being affected by the FPD (calculated by the FootprintBreadth (FPB)) you would have a measure of the effect of a society. The higher the value the more likely the culture is unsustainable and about to collapse. Now this just seems wonky. It's not a likelyhood/non-likelyhood situation. "Do we have enough to feed everyone? Yes or no?" There is a tangible mathematical point to pass. I used "likely" because I didn't want to discount an unforeseen situation, perhaps a new way of life, beyond taker and leaver. As for the point where a society collapses, we don't have anything like enough data to pin point it, so we have probability. Quote: The only thing I'm convinced of is that there isn't any room for this in footprint x population = available land and that there probably isn't any room for it in calculating footprint itself. Then we need a new equation. FPD = (RateOfResourcesTaken - RateOfResourcesRegenerated) + (RateOfWasteExpended - RateOfWasteReclaimed) I use "RateOfWasteReclaimed" rather than "Recycling" because apple cores are reclaimed quite suficently without any inference. It’s plastics and such that never go away. FPD = [(rateofresourcestaken per hectare - rateofresourcesregenerated per hectare) + (rateofwasteexpended per hectare - rateofwastereclaimed per hectare)] / TotalAreaAffected in Hectares This gives us Footprint Density rather than Footprint Depth I think. It’s the calculation of how much effect you are having over and beyond the sustainable level per hectare. Then we divide it by how many hectares are being affected at this level. This gives us kilograms/hectare, a density measurement. "How many kilograms are being used over sustainability over our entire territory each year." A Taker would have a high numerator and a low denominator, and is found to have a dense footprint. A Leaver would have a very small, nearly zero, numerator, and a large denominator. Leavers do not have very dense footprints. Impressive? -Ben |
| Nene Sun Jan 16th, 2005 at 04:51 PM |
Hey -- Just a thought on the FPD equations.... there is really another level of resource use vs waste reclamation to consider.... in any 'real world application' (HAH!), ideally, the 'waste reclaimed' should be not only of a volume but also of a kind relative to extraction.... In other words, in a natural environment, say a forest, there are X nutrients removed from the soil, Y moisture removed from the water table, and Z mass of new plants that are 'born' per peiod of time(etc). In that same period of time, X nutrients are added to the soil from decomposing plants and animals, Y rainfall, and Z old plants that die. This is important in that it maintains a balance to the ecology of the entire environment. If you are going to play at equations to represent sustainable practices...this should be reflected in some way.... Janene |
| Hypnopompia Sun Jan 16th, 2005 at 05:00 PM |
It is: RateOfWasteReclaimed. You take X amount of resources out of the environment each year. Y amount of those resources are "waste," not kept from the environment. Z amount of Y is reclaimed by the environment. So that W resources can be regenerated. For leavers this is all kept in balance, takers take a large amount of resources, and now a lot of our waste is "locked up." Polystyrene is holding on to its carbon for mellenia. I wonder how many resources are currently being kept in suspention? |
| Nene Sun Jan 16th, 2005 at 05:14 PM |
Hey Ben -- Yeah, I understand all of that. Has nothing to do with what I just said, but I do understand.... There is a HUGE difference between 'fertilizing' your garden with 100 lbs of grass clippings and fertilizing your garden with a composite mix of grass, leaves, ash, mushroom compost, and 'kitchen waste' (egg shells, vegetable waste, fruit cores and skins, sour milk, etc) It is not going to be sustainable to remove, say, 20 lbs of trace minerals from a plot of land, while 'reclaiming' 20 lbs of dead tree branches. Its not going to balance out. You cannot assume that an FPD<1 is neccessarily sustainable.... that was the only point I was trying to make... Janene |
| Hypnopompia Sun Jan 16th, 2005 at 05:23 PM |
It's all accounted for. I think the problem you're having is use of "kilograms." Fair enough, forget "kilograms," I just need a standard unit of measurement. Resources = sum of all resources. We're keeping the association simple, because it is simple. How about Standard Resource Units (SRU)? |
| Nene Sun Jan 16th, 2005 at 06:06 PM |
Hey Ben -- If you want to keep the equation simple, that's fine. But don't tell me that it is all accounted for... that's exactly what is getting this culture in so much trouble. Ignoring the 'fine print'.... I don't care what unit you use, what you call it or anything else... I'm merely making the point that 'simple' units don't tell the whole story and we should maintain an awareness of this. [props to etbnc] All models are wrong, but some are useful.[end props] Janene |
| maha Mon Jan 17th, 2005 at 04:49 PM |
Nene, you're right. Check out Matt's new thread on this topic. We're trying to delve a little further into this equation. We may not ever fully account for all of the factors involved, but it's worth trying to get close. The closer we are to answers, the closer we are to sustainability. Ben is very analytical when it comes to this stuff. He is just trying to simplify it for the sake of ease. Some things are simple, however, this particular issue, is not. |
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