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Carbon Footprint

http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/basics_introduction/

Footprint Basics - Introduction

You’ve probably heard of the Ecological Footprint - the metric that allows us to calculate human pressure on the planet and come up with facts, such as: If everyone lived the lifestyle of the average American we would need five planets.
This section of our Web site explains how the Ecological Footprint works in basic terms. It examines the benefits of ecological accounting, introduces some of the most important Footprint findings, and addresses provocative questions: Do we fit on the planet? How can the Footprint foster sustainable human development? How do carbon emissions contribute to humanity’s Ecological Footprint?

Footprint Basics - Overview

Humanity needs what nature provides, but how do we know how much we’re using and how much we have to use?
The Ecological Footprint has emerged as the world’s premier measure of humanity’s demand on nature. It measures how much land and water area a human population requires to produce the resource it consumes and to absorb its wastes, using prevailing technology.
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Our current global situation: Since the mid 1980s, humanity has been in ecological overshoot with annual demand on resources exceeding what Earth can regenerate each year.
It now takes the Earth one year and four months to regenerate what we use in a year.
We maintain this overshoot by liquidating the Earth’s resources. Overshoot is a vastly underestimated threat to human well-being and the health of the planet, and one that is not adequately addressed.
By measuring the Footprint of a population—an individual, city, business, nation, or all of humanity—we can assess our pressure on the planet, which helps us manage our ecological assets more wisely and take personal and collective action in support of a world where humanity lives within the Earth’s bounds.
Conceived in 1990 by Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees at the...