What's your life's full impact?
Whether as a moral or intellectual exercise, something I've commonly heard is people want to leave the world a little better than when they left it.
Socially speaking, so long as you're someone who listens and acts on issues of injustice/oppression, acts with kindness and empathy towards others, and throws in some random acts of kindness, this is probably a reasonable thing to achieve.
Environmentally speaking, it's hard to measure, and perhaps harder still to achieve. This is partially because we're not well set up for it, we don't talk about it much, most things we've built as a society are very resource intensive, and it's really hard unless you've devoted your entire life to this purpose. For many, the environment isn't their purpose. But it's an area where they'd like to leave the world a little bit better.
So, how?
Tangible change: Measure, reduce, offset - all the things suggested on this website already. If you're like me, you want some numbers to know you've made a reasonable attempt. To make the world "a little better", perhaps go extra beyond with sparkles, buy some more offsets, etc. because not everyone will be able to afford this step. Many organizations are choosing to be "net positive", instead of reducing their theoretical negative impacts to neutral, they are trying to have an overall positive impact.
Systems change: Write, sign, decide - while the tangible change work will contribute to systems change just by increasing awareness, starting conversations, supporting organizations reducing impacts and creating valuable projects, the little "extra" change we leave on the planet could take place by writing letters to organizations and governments supporting improved environmental performance.
Setting a goal can help make the intangible feel tangible. For example, once I wrote one letter each day for a full year (okay, I didn't quite finish, but I'm sure within my lifetime I'll have written well over 365 letters and signed that many petitions). And in the few cases where you are a decision maker, even if just in purchasing decisions at home, or deciding where the resources at your organization go, doing what you can to support the environmentally preferable options.
Could someone theoretically "offset their life" and its negative environmental impact?
While someone's impact is too complex to measure purely in terms of footprints, if we are to use these as a measure of someone's environmental impact, and assuming the person has already reduced as much as possible but still wants to "offset" their impact pre-reduction activities, what would it look like?
Simplistic Human Impact =
Ecological Footprint (includes Carbon)
+Water Footprint
+Other Measures (ie. Certain Pollutants)
And then add all that intangible, systems changey stuff talked about up there.
What does a full person's life footprint look like?
Using the average person from the USA can give a good picture; while known for having some of the largest impacts it therefore also creates some great teaching moments. However, no matter where anyone lives, we all have an impact we can improve.
The average American requires, if we assume they live 80 years:
227,297 m3 water (over 1 Olympic swimming pool a year)
1,400 tonnes C02
184 global hectares of land* (many international sports fields are approximately 1 hectare)
*(656 global hectares if you include the land for CO2, but we've taken it out and put it separately above)
Socially speaking, so long as you're someone who listens and acts on issues of injustice/oppression, acts with kindness and empathy towards others, and throws in some random acts of kindness, this is probably a reasonable thing to achieve.
Environmentally speaking, it's hard to measure, and perhaps harder still to achieve. This is partially because we're not well set up for it, we don't talk about it much, most things we've built as a society are very resource intensive, and it's really hard unless you've devoted your entire life to this purpose. For many, the environment isn't their purpose. But it's an area where they'd like to leave the world a little bit better.
So, how?
Tangible change: Measure, reduce, offset - all the things suggested on this website already. If you're like me, you want some numbers to know you've made a reasonable attempt. To make the world "a little better", perhaps go extra beyond with sparkles, buy some more offsets, etc. because not everyone will be able to afford this step. Many organizations are choosing to be "net positive", instead of reducing their theoretical negative impacts to neutral, they are trying to have an overall positive impact.
Systems change: Write, sign, decide - while the tangible change work will contribute to systems change just by increasing awareness, starting conversations, supporting organizations reducing impacts and creating valuable projects, the little "extra" change we leave on the planet could take place by writing letters to organizations and governments supporting improved environmental performance.
Setting a goal can help make the intangible feel tangible. For example, once I wrote one letter each day for a full year (okay, I didn't quite finish, but I'm sure within my lifetime I'll have written well over 365 letters and signed that many petitions). And in the few cases where you are a decision maker, even if just in purchasing decisions at home, or deciding where the resources at your organization go, doing what you can to support the environmentally preferable options.
Could someone theoretically "offset their life" and its negative environmental impact?
While someone's impact is too complex to measure purely in terms of footprints, if we are to use these as a measure of someone's environmental impact, and assuming the person has already reduced as much as possible but still wants to "offset" their impact pre-reduction activities, what would it look like?
Simplistic Human Impact =
Ecological Footprint (includes Carbon)
+Water Footprint
+Other Measures (ie. Certain Pollutants)
And then add all that intangible, systems changey stuff talked about up there.
What does a full person's life footprint look like?
Using the average person from the USA can give a good picture; while known for having some of the largest impacts it therefore also creates some great teaching moments. However, no matter where anyone lives, we all have an impact we can improve.
The average American requires, if we assume they live 80 years:
227,297 m3 water (over 1 Olympic swimming pool a year)
1,400 tonnes C02
184 global hectares of land* (many international sports fields are approximately 1 hectare)
*(656 global hectares if you include the land for CO2, but we've taken it out and put it separately above)