Emirati Atlantis
According to some calculations, the average American has an ecological footprint of 9.5 hectares, or rougly 23.5 acres. That's roughly the amount of land that would be needed to support the resource demands we place on the planet. For our consumption levels to be sustainable, therefore, we'd need about 5 Earths' worth of resources, all told. And nobody knows where to get 4 more Earths. There is one place in the world that has the U.S. beat. That would be the oil-rich United Arab Emirates in the Persian Gulf. Pictured above (click to enlarge) is a satellite photo of the port city of Dubai in the UAE, which among other extravagances features an indoor ski resort (with another on the way) and an underwater hotel (under construction). You'll also notice the many artificial islands being created offshore, including the man-made archipelago known as The World, for the world-map shape in which it is formed.
It's interesting to consider that, given futue sea level projections, this could be the shortest-lived real estate in the history of mankind.
2 Comments:
I've been thinking about those ecological footprint calculators a lot, and there's one key thing about them: figuring out that highly entertaining statistic, the "number of earths required" depends obviously on population. If population was lower, ecological footprint could still be high and the number of Earths "necessary" would be closer to 1. I have a feeling this is the secret unspeakable theme behind some of those calculators: population needs to be restrained. That'll be difficult, but reducing ecological footprint by changing lifestyle will be difficult too. Just go play around with one of those calculators and try to get your number of Earths down to 1. It's not a pretty life you'll be leading...
Just go play around with one of those calculators and try to get your number of Earths down to 1. It's not a pretty life you'll be leading...
You're absolutely right, bottleman, on all counts.
For starters, yep, population is definitely the heart of the matter and one with no immediate or apparent solution. We're now 6.5 billion headed for at least 9 by 2050 and will be still adding 34 million annually at mid-century(UNEP projections as of 2004).
So, how could we possibly cut back our consumption levels even enough to counteract that growth?
Then, as you point out, the one-planet lifestyle appears to be one of enforced poverty and self-denial. [If anyone can show me how you get there via solar panels and a Prius, I'll be interested to hear].
This is the realization that makes people like Jared Diamond and James Lovelock dismiss the notion of "sustainable development" as a false promise. In Lovelock's words, we need a "sustainable retreat." When I heard him speak in SF he said something to the effect that, maybe when Malthus was writing and there were only about 1 billion people on the planet, we could have had sustainable development. Not now.
Of course, the cornucopians like Julian Simon and Bjorn Lomborg say this is just the kind of pessimism human progress has repeatedly proven wrong. Every time we think we reached our limits, some new technological revolution comes along to save us....
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