Calculations based on the ecological footprint of individuals is only one way of determining the sustainability of a technological society. And many believe that it is a flawed methodology, based on a simplistic calculation:
"... the ecological footprint theory is disputed by some specialists who argue that applying the earth's carrying capacity to human populations is flawed. Humans, the critics argue, "can and do increase the carrying capacity of their environment to meet their needs", for example in the case of renewable energies. Moreover, they say, carrying capacity has limited relevance when resources can be traded to make up for their scarcity. Additional uncertainties include calculation methods to evaluate land space needs or the lack of distinction between land uses that are sustainable and those that are not ... http://www.euractiv.com/en/sustainability/.../article-131513"Also, maybe you should focus your own attention on home ground - see below.
China's carbon footprintChina, now the world's biggest carbon dioxide emitter, will play crucial climate role
By Matt Crenson
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Sunday, July 08, 2007
NEW YORK — It's China's turn on the climate hot seat.
Last month, energy analysts announced that China's booming economy has propelled it past the United States as the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide, the atmospheric pollutant that is primarily responsible for global warming. China emitted 8 percent more carbon dioxide than the United States in 2006, according to a report by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.
Eugene Hoshiko ASSOCIATED PRESS
During the next five years, China expects to complete at least one new coal-fired power plant a week. Coal releases more carbon dioxide than any other source of energy - and supplies two-thirds of China's power.
The milestone has reignited a perennial debate between developing and developed countries: Who should take responsibility for preventing catastrophic global warming?
Developing nations have insisted that rich Western economies take the lead in shifting to a low-carbon economy, since they are the ones who have pumped most of the greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to date. But there is little disputing that if China, India and other rapidly modernizing countries grow in the same unsustainable way the West has over the past 150 years, catastrophic global warming will result.
''Without the participation of the
United States, China and India — the main emitters — we will not stop global warming,'' Japanese Environment Minister Masatoshi Wakabayashi said last month at a meeting in Singapore of the World Economic Forum on Asia.
Unfortunately, those three countries — along with Australia — traditionally have been the major holdouts against an international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.Australia and the United States refused to join the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which requires developed countries to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions to 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.
China and India agreed to sign the accord only because, as developing countries, they have no responsibility to limit their emissions.
Officials in China and India say that economic development must come first.
''It is a fact that more and not less development is the best way for developing countries to address themselves to the issues of preserving the environment,'' Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said recently.
But India and China aren't helping the environment when they build coal-fired power plants and shun mass transit for auto-centric transportation.Coal releases more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than any other energy source, and it supplies two-thirds of China's power. Over the next five years, China expects to complete at least one new coal-fired power plant a week.
In India, where several automakers are competing to provide affordable cars to the country's enormous middle class, there were 300,000 cars registered last year in Delhi alone. The government acknowledges that it expects the country's carbon dioxide emissions to more than quintuple by 2031, which would put India about where the United States is now in terms of emissions.Governments in developing countries are not completely blind to the importance of taking steps against global warming.
''As a developing country of responsibility, China attaches great importance to the issue of climate change,'' a report on the nation's climate change program has declared. The report laid out a plan to increase energy efficiency 20 percent over 2005 levels by 2010.
But that effort, even if it succeeds, will do little to slow the growth of China's carbon dioxide emissions.
China emits nearly three times as much carbon dioxide as it did in 1990. Its emissions will double again by 2030, according to projections by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
As Chinese officials are quick to say, the country lags behind developed countries in per capita carbon dioxide emissions.
China pumps about 10,500 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere per person annually, compared with 42,500 pounds for the United States. And much of the growth in China's emissions results from the manufacture of goods for export.
Developed countries also have failed to take significant steps toward cutting their own carbon dioxide emissions. President Bush's recent proposal for international negotiations on carbon dioxide reductions was interpreted by environmentalists as a mostly empty gesture, an attempt to forestall any meaningful agreement on global warming by leading industrialized nations.
Democrats in Congress have largely abandoned hope of enacting major global warming legislation before the end of Bush's term. About the most they can hope for is an increase in fuel economy standards to 35 miles per gallon, thanks to legislation that passed the Senate in June and is pending in the House.
The European Union has been more aggressive than the United States in committing to carbon dioxide reductions, signing on to the Kyoto Protocol and committing this spring to a 20 percent emissions reduction by 2020.
But meeting that commitment has been difficult. The European Commission reported last month that its member nations had reduced carbon dioxide emissions just 2 percent since signing the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. At that rate, it is highly unlikely Europe will reach the 8 percent reduction the protocol requires by 2012.
That means that a decade after Kyoto, no major economic power has actually done anything significant to confront global warming.
--
ps As an honest and uncompromised individual, I can state quite categorically, that I DO use my computer for fun (although not games), for business and to promote technology. These are the types of reasons why computers have been developed over the years and have become available for individuals such as yourself to use to promote your own dogmas.
