Walk gently

The “human footprint” on the planet comes with an unnecessary heavy connotation.  To be fair this notion is a recent one. But this by itself isn’t an excuse or doesn’t inhibit our responsibility and compromise to the wellbeing of the planet. This is our “only home” for now. Every daily action we make (drive to work, air-conditioned room, do a laundry etc.) comes with a price in the form of natural resources that we take from Earth. By adding all those extractions, we can calculate the human footprint on the planet- basically the measure of how much of Earth’s natural resources we are using (carbon, cropland, grazing land, forests, fishing grounds, built-up land)

Besides that and simultaneously we have to calculate the planet’s biocapacity – Earth’s ability to produce natural resources, provide land for humans to build on, and absorb waste such as carbon emissions.

Once we put the two together we start to see the dimension of our problem. It takes a year and a half to generate the resources that the human population uses in only a year. This simply means is not a sustainable path for our planet’s future.