17 acres for me as well. Very interesting, and very sobering.

CATEGORY ACRES
FOOD 4.7
MOBILITY 0.7
SHELTER 4.2
GOODS/SERVICES 4.4
TOTAL FOOTPRINT 14

Some of this, though, is forced. I mean, how easy is it for you to get fresh locally grown food in the city of Chicago? And, in my city, you *can't* bike anywhere. There are no shoulders, no sidewalks, and the speed limit everywhere is 35+. I've never seen anyone biking here. I'd walk to the store if there was one closer than 3 miles away.

My point is the biggest mark against us, even the ones who *try* to live more healthfully and be more ecologically friendly, is that we live in the U.S.

True ... and sobering. My mobility footprint was pretty low -- but I'm lucky. I live only five minutes from my workplace, and I'm tremendously lazy about commuting places. For some reason, it's the 'shelter' footprint that really gave me pause.

My point is the biggest mark against us, even the ones who *try* to live more healthfully and be more ecologically friendly, is that we live in the U.S.

I agree completely. Even in the much smaller town of Tallahassee, there's no safe bicycle route from my home to my place of employment. And our joke of a bus system is completely unusable if your intention is to get anywhere on time.

If more ecologically sound choices were offered, I think a lot of people would use them. But for the most part they simply aren't.

Mmmm. Would we? I think it would still take a major cultural shift for our nation to see those things as normative. Tripling or quadrupling fuel prices might help the process along, but still...

I think enough people would to make a difference, if it required little effort on their part and had minimal impact on their lives. If this town had a clean and efficient public transit system that ran on time, a lot more people (including myself) would use it.

The housing issue is my biggest bugaboo, too. For me, living in an apartment means having to listen to other people's music, look at other people's trash... basically, live in uncomfortably close proximity to other people. If there were a way of stacking people into high-density housing without them getting in each other's way, I'd be all for it, but I don't know if such a thing is possible.

Yeah, I have to agree with you here. Nobody really cares because:

a.) It doesn't affect them
b.) There's no profit
c.) It's too hard
d.) There are more profitable / better ventures to pursue
e.) They don't know any better
f.) .... something I've not thought of yet ....

But, yeah, don't screw up gas prices :-|

damn.

we actually do get fresh, locally grown food. There are a number of organic farms in the area working on exactly that problem.

And the local organic food store here, although they've got fair prices and good selection, are QUITE expensive. I can get a frozen pot pie (for lunch) at the store for all of $0.95 on a bad day, but the vegetarian ones (not even organic -- still good though, all the ingredients are understandable at least) cost more on the scale of $2.49 on a good day. El Monterrey burritos ... $5 for a pack of 10 (that's about 3-4 meals), but the organic burritos are $2.79 per meal.

Anything "organic" costs more. For us, its worth it. Used to be that we'd go to the store and get a HEAPING buggy full (about 3-4 weeks of groceries if we didn't eat out) for $120. Now we can easily spend $200 on 2 weeks worth of groceries (even if we get the non specialty items at Target with our 10% discount).

If you want to talk fresh raw materials, that's another story, though. We do have a farmer's market here (that we've yet to visit). The problem with that stuff on our end though is storage and prep time. Going from potatoes, corn, carrots, peas, flour, butter, etc. to a ready to heat & eat pot pie would take a sizeable time investment. Plus the problem of storing that food and not wasting it. Since money is rather important to us right now (in that we're comfortable but there's not much margin to spare), it's smarter to work more and spend a fraction of the earned income on pre packaged (though still organic or vegetarian) meals (for lunch at least) as opposed to spending less on the food and losing that earned income.

Oh and there are no organic / veggie restuarants around here. We've asked at the natural food market.

There are plenty of places where such things are available. The problem is that people choose to live where the efficiencies aren't available. They even choose to live where there aren't sidewalks. Or bike lanes. It's not like the average American HAS to live where they do - they COULD move to where those things are available, but they choose not to.

I choose to live in Chicago near bike lanes, with sidewalks, without a car and use the (electric) "L" and bus system and my bike and my legs in an apartment. This efficient lifestyle is very available in Chicago and New York and to a less extent, Boston, Portland, San Francisco, New Orleans and Washington and a few other places. Do people choose to live that way? No, for the most part, they don't. Most people still buy that single family home with a car and, more often than not, no sidewalks and no bike lanes in a town where most shopping isn't within walking distance of their home. When people vote for the efficiencies brought by density and walking and such with their home purchases, builders will take notice and create more of them. But until then, we'll keep getting sprawl.

Modern cement apartment buildings transfer very little noise between units. Even in a single-family-home, you have the neighbor's dog, the neighbor's teen-age son's basketball games, the "parents-are-away" parties. It's not like living in a single house ever eliminates all noise.

Part of the problem is that too many people's experience with "apartments" is either college apartments, where the noise level is exponentially higher than your average adult complex, or cheap post-war wood-frame suburban apartments that have paper-thin walls. Build quality today is horrible more often than not.

I live in an 1890 building, top floor. With the windows closed, I hear very little outside noise and have at least a foot of brick between my neighbors to the sides and rarely hear the people below me (and I'm on the top floor, so I don't hear anything above me). In many ways it's quieter than the house I grew up in in a small rural town.

CATEGORY ACRES
FOOD 4.2
MOBILITY 0.2
SHELTER 4.7
GOODS/SERVICES 3.5
TOTAL FOOTPRINT 13

IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 24 ACRES PER PERSON.
WORLDWIDE, THERE EXIST 4.5 BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCTIVE ACRES PER PERSON.

IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 2.8 PLANETS.

I live in Boston and I walk to work. I'd ride my bike, but the chances of getting into a serious accident would increase a thousand fold. Crazy Masshole drivers. Everybody drives here and in September it gets worse because of the student migration. Nothing like a bunch of freshman driving around like idiots in their metal boxes.

I've lived in apartments since I was 18 and I've never been in one where I haven't been bothered by noise from the neighbors. I can't wait to live in a shack somewhere!

mmmmm, yes, the preparation time..... We get a sizable box of fresh produce every week, but that means you have to cook all that. I don't get home from work until 7-8 pm most nights, which makes it very difficult to cook. By that time I've also been working for 7-10 hours, and in no mood to cook either. Fortunately we have a roommate who likes to cook, and Sarah has at least SOME more time to cook than I do.

CATEGORY ACRES
FOOD 3.5
MOBILITY 2.5
SHELTER 1
GOODS/SERVICES 2.5
TOTAL FOOTPRINT 10
IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 24 ACRES PER PERSON.
WORLDWIDE, THERE EXIST 4.5 BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCTIVE ACRES PER PERSON.
IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 2.1 PLANETS
This is why I live with hippies in the forest. :P

CATEGORY ACRES

FOOD 5.9

MOBILITY 1.5

SHELTER 25.7

GOODS/SERVICES 24.7

TOTAL FOOTPRINT 58

IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 24 ACRES PER PERSON.

WORLDWIDE, THERE EXIST 4.5 BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCTIVE ACRES PER PERSON.

IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 13 PLANETS.

what did i do??

...

acres of land for the bodies of your slain enemies: priceless

Part of the attraction for a home is that at the end of 30 years, you have $100,000 or $200,000 in equity. At the end of 30 years of living in an apartment you just have more rent due.

Also, not everyone can live in cities like that. It's just not affordable. The more people there are, the more scarce both housing and jobs are, and that unbalances some economic things in bad way.

A fun and ubernerdy way to reduce your shelter acres: http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/duh/tour.html.

To those in the know, you can buy an apartment (as I have). Commonly called a condo.

As for the relative scarcity: If jobs are so scarce in cities, then people must be fighting to get them and people in cities much earn much less than people outside of cities. Which just isn't true. Wages in healthy cities are higher (sometimes far higher) than wages in small towns.

As ar costs.... This is why I have more spending power than a friend of mine making $12,000 more per year in New York. His leaky crappy small apartment costs $18,000 more per year than my nice little apartment here in Podunk, Midwest.

If everyone lived like me, there'd be plenty of room.

It's the whole celibacy thing. ;)

I automatically disbelieve any kind of statistical model like this, because it's based on a zero-sum game, which does not exist.

I've been there too -- the "zero Sum Game" assumes that we never increase the planet's carrying capacity, which is untrue.

At the same time, though, we ARE consuming resources much faster than we're increasing carrying capacity. Unfortunately, China's now entering the same gemoetric consumption curve.

I'm not very worried about food and space. But fossil fuels in particular are going to bite us, bigtime. Every aspect of our economy is tied to them, and it's one of the things that keeps us tied to repressive regimes like Saudi Arabia.

I don't accept the premise that oil is going to bite us, bigtime. You're going by the assumptions that 1) oil is a fossil fuel and not the result of microbial processes deep within the earth, 2) there is a finite supply, and 3) we're using it faster than it's being created.

I don't like being tethered to Saudi oil, either, but it concerns me in the near term as a matter of price and the instability of the Saudi regime, not as a matter of long-term supply.