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Just imagine...KILLER
BEES
have
infested the planet, and the swarms are fast approaching your city.
In order to save yourselves from immanent horrific death, your city
has enclosed itself in a transparent dome that lets light in, but prevents
all material objects from entering or leaving. The city has to survive
on whatever is trapped inside from the moment the dome is put in place,
and the entire city is sealed off. But city officials had not recognized
how unsustainable the city is, and their plan spells mass devastation.
All people and objects are either trapped inside or out: air, soil,
water, cars, food, products... everything. The urban systems fall apart,
and all in habitants die a hideous death within a few days.
By Alison Maddaugh
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Imagine
how big would a glass dome over a city have to be in order for everyone
to survive. The size of that dome would be the "ecological
footprint" of all the inhabitants of the city. |
What this means is
that the physical space a city occupies is actually much smaller than
what is really needed to support the ecological burden of all its inhabitants.
So the actual amount of land that would have been under the glass dome
in our imaginary city would have to be much larger. The actual amount
of land required for the food, products, and energy used by the urban
dwellers, combined with the amount of land needed to absorb the waste
they produce, represents the "ecological footprint" of our
imaginary city.
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If we look at
it on an individual level, the average Canadian requires 3 city
blocks’ worth of land to sustain their personal level of
consumption. But cities have dense populations - one doesn’t
maintain a 3 block distance between oneself and any other human
being! And there just isn’t enough land on this ol’
planet of ours for everyone to use that much.
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What
happened?
When
an urban population and its economy are cut off from vital resources
and essential waste sinks. Without them, the city would suffocate,
starve, and drown in our massive amounts of waste in a short
period of time.
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In many countries
of the world clean air and water are scarce. Maybe in the future
there will be air/water vending machine such as this!
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So
do the math: take the
amount of ecologically productive
land
on earth and
divide that by
the number of
people on
earth (a
number that’s
rapidly increasing)
and that
leaves us with 1.5
hectares of land per
person on earth, if everything
is shared equally.
BUT the ecological footprint
of the average
Canadian is 4.3 hectares.
So if we’re hogging more
than our fair share, then
that means that other
people are forced to
make do with less - less
food, less water, less
products...
(source Our Ecological
Footprint,
Mathis Wackernagel &
William Rees, New Society
Publishers, 1996, p.9-10)
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