Report: Humans could
use two Earths
Global footprint left by consumption is growing, conservationists
argue
MSNBC staff and news service reports
Updated: 9:32 a.m. ET Oct. 25, 2006
BEIJING - Humans are stripping nature at an unprecedented rate and
will need two planets' worth of natural resources every year by
2050 if current trends continue, according to a report published
Tuesday by the World Wildlife Fund and the Global Footprint
Network.
"For more than 20 years we have exceeded the Earth's ability to
support a consumptive lifestyle that is unsustainable and we cannot
afford to continue down this path," WWF Director-General James
Leape said in releasing the 2006 Living Planet Report in
Beijing.
"If everyone around the world lived as those in America, we would
need five planets to support us," Leape added.
Largely because of its huge per capita emissions of carbon dioxide
a gas many scientists tie to global warming the United Arab
Emirates were placing the most stress per capita on the planet
ahead of the United States, Finland, Canada, Kuwait and Australia,
the report said.
Using the report's criteria, Cuba is the only country in the world
that has a high level of development, including good health and
education systems, and does not use up more resources than is
sustainable.
Groups: Footprint getting bigger
The report estimated that "humanity's footprint has more than
tripled between 1961 and 2003" and that consumption has even
outpaced global population growth from 3 billion in 1960 to the 6.5
billion today.
In 2003, the report added, humanity's ecological footprint the
demand people place on the natural world was 25 percent greater
than the planet's annual ability to provide everything from food to
energy and recycle all human waste.
"This ecological 'overshoot' means that it now takes about one year
and three months for the Earth to regenerate what we use in a
single year," the conservation groups said in a statement.
"Overshoot has increased by 4 percent since the last Living Planet
Report, which was based on 2001 data, and is projected to rise to
30 percent in 2006."
"On current projections, humanity will be using two planets' worth
of natural resources by 2050 if those resources have not run out
by then," the latest report said. "People are turning resources
into waste faster than nature can turn waste back into
resources."
"Humanity is living off its ecological credit card," Mathis
Wackernagel, head of the Global Footprint Network, said in a
statement. "While this can be done for a short while, overshoot
ultimately leads to liquidation of the planet's ecological assets,
and the depletion of resources, such as the forests, oceans and
agricultural land upon which our economy depends."
The report noted that an index tracking 1,300 vertebrate species
birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles and mammals showed that
populations had fallen for most by about 30 percent because of
factors including a loss of habitats to farms.
Eyes on China, other growing nations
The conservation groups added that the footprint from use of fossil
fuels, whose heat-trapping emissions are widely blamed for pushing
up world temperatures, was the fastest-growing cause of
strain.
Leape said China, home to a fifth of the world's population and
whose economy is booming, was making the right move in pledging to
reduce its energy consumption by 20 percent over the next five
years.
"Much will depend on the decisions made by China, India and other
rapidly developing countries," he added.
"The cities, power plants and homes we build today will either lock
society into damaging overconsumption beyond our lifetimes," he
added, "or begin to propel this and future generations toward
sustainable living."
