My Footprint: My Personal Impact On Biodiversity

After learning about the statistics of how much agriculture consumes our planet, I was appalled to see how destructive it is. Jonathan Foley put into perspective the increase and rapid demand for food. Agriculture alone consumes 40% of our land surface, 70% of our irrigation system, and

It won’t come as a surprise to anyone that Americans like their meat. In fact, America produced 93 billion pounds of meat and poultry in 2012, which included some 32 million cattle. As many of us already know, agriculture has a significant impact on our environment in a variety of ways. In order to successfully rear livestock, slaughterhouses require large quantities of water, and emit plenty of greenhouse gases – methane and CO2 specially – during production.

Throughout history, land employed for agricultural production has caused greater environmental change to the biosphere than any other land use (Gliessman, 2010).

Farming for our food causes many issues. Growing our food is causing a major decrease in finite resources, like fertile soil and water (Clemmitt 555). Fertile soil and water are being wasted on crops that are not successfully growing. The decrease in finite resources is caused by old, non-efficient techniques, like the throw-and-grow (Clemmitt

The two most intense components to my ecological footprint are services (44%) and shelter (21%). These are the two highest components because only a small percentage of my home’s electricity comes from renewable sources (less than 5%). Also, multiple people live in my household, so water usage is high.

Relevance: We all share the same planet, therefore, I believe it is vital to know the ways animal agriculture shapes our environment.

The raising of cattle, pigs, chickens, turkeys, and more are the reason for most of the destruction of the environment on the planet. Over all farm land covers about 38% of the worlds land area. So humans can continue to eat meat millions of animals and insects are losing their homes and even going extinct so more farm

This movie documents why animal agriculture is the #1 contributor to greenhouse gases, the #1 environmental problem , the leading cause of rain forest destruction and habitat loss, creating massive amounts of untreated waste and using far more of our precious aquifers than if we all simply ate a plant-based diet.

“Between 1967 and 2007, the number of people in state mental hospitals dropped 81%” (Hooley et al. 615). This drop in mental institutions, termed “deinstitutionalization,” has left many patients with nowhere to go. In addition, a large amount of these former patients were not ready to assimilate into the community. Overall, deinstitutionalization has been harmful to the mentally ill community.

If that isn’t enough, the Amazon rainforest is being affected by beef production; four-fifths of the deforestation is due to cattle ranching (Scheer). This is because there needs to be room for the livestock to roam and crops to feed the animals. There isn’t enough space for humans and our livestock since reported by Suzanne Rice, writer for the Journal of Thought, “30 percent of the earth’s ice-free land is... involved in livestock production” (Rice 118). 30 percent doesn’t leave us with much and it is no wonder we are deforesting these rainforests. However, although cattle seems to be the most detrimental livestock factor to the environmental problem, they are not alone.

An important strength of the ecological footprint tool is that it breaks down your consumption patterns into five different categories. By including this information, a person has the ability to see what type of footprint has the most environmental impact and find ways to begin to limit that problem. The tool also provides a shock factor by showing how much we overconsume many resources. After viewing the score you receive many people want to find alternatives to their negative environmental impacts. However, an important limitation of this tool is that many of the questions require an educated such as how far you travel car each week.

Every day when I go to school, I was observing police officers at the station, which is located at West 8th. They don’t act unusual, I always wait for the Q train and every time I glance at them, they respond with a smile. They always stand very firm, and look around to observe the people, in one occasion they helped a person that was asking for directions. On Saturday, July 2nd my family and I went out to play soccer, while we were in the field I noticed two police officers ceased a car. Therefore, I approached a little closer in order to observe and I noticed that the police officers started to question him, and I became aware that he had crashed a car a few miles away.

This essay reviews my personal carbon footprint and discusses ways to manage it and reduce some of the biggest areas of my resource consumption. The footprint calculator that I used required that I answer a series of questions about my consumption habits, and based on the answers I provided, showed the impact of my lifestyle on the planet. The footprint calculator uses data for selected countries, based on National Footprint Accounts. The online calculator asked questions to determine how to distribute the ecological footprint into different categories based on the country's average consumption profile. In addition to calculating the amount of carbon a person is responsible for through their daily activities, the calculator also estimated a total ecological footprint to represent the amount of land and sea area required to provide the resources a person needs and to absorb their carbon emissions.

An ecological footprint is your overall impact on the environment based on the resources that you use. The resources that you use will give an estimate to determine the area that is needed to support your lifestyle. Typically a person in a modern society that is industrialized can have a bigger ecological footprint than a person in a society that is not as developed and where certain resources have not reached. After taking the quiz my overall footprint was 4.6 planet earths. It surprised me very much because when I first went on the website I took the basic quiz first just to get an idea of what the point of the test was, and I got a total of 5 planet earths. Once I was done I thought for sure that I would get a lot less if I had to put in details, so I answered everything honestly and it only decreased by .4 planets. I was also surprised because for a few questions my answers were “infrequently”, or “occasionally” which I thought would help.

In order to be an integral part in saving the Earth’s environment and ensuring resources for future generations, the way individuals live needs to change. Being fortunate enough to reside in one of the nation’s most developed countries, I wanted to make sure the way I have been living has been meeting the standards set by sustainable living. Using the overall environmental footprint provided by Global Footprint Network, I was able to pinpoint the areas in my life that needed to improve in order for me to be more sustainable. I chose to use this Footprint calculator because it gives you a breakdown on how many resources from the planet are needed in order to provide for your living standards. Once you have input the information, the calculator provides a general ecological footprint explanation and gives real case scenarios in which you can do to reduce it. The results for my footprint were as follows: If everyone were to live the way I do, we would need 5.3 planet earths to provide enough resources. It would take 23.6 global acres of land for energy production, which would emit 23.6 tons of carbon dioxide, and the biggest impacts on my personal footprint included 36 percent of services, 21 percent food and 19 percent mobility.