Website Assignment (Essay Sample)

Name:
Instructor:
Subject:
Date:
Website Assignment
Part 1
How Many Earths Would It Take to Support 7 Billion People Who Live Just Like You?
Approximately four Earths
Which Consumption Category Is the Biggest Contributor to Your Ecological Footprint?
Carbon emissions
Which Biome Contributes the Most to Your Ecological Footprint? Think about Resources You Use that might Come from this Biome and List Them.
Forestland is the largest biome at 40 percent. Some of the resources that might come from this biome include:
Wood harvested unsustainably for building
Home furnishing from unsustainably produced materials
Paper products
Click “Reduce your footprint.” Find the Consumption Category that was Your Biggest Contributor. What can You Do To Reduce Your Footprint? List at Least Two that are Applicable to Your Consumption Habits.
My largest consumption category was carbon. This is as a result of a lifestyle that entails a regular use of modes of transport that require fossil fuel,; little or no use of sustainably produced products, and zero purchases of carbon emission offsets associated with my home energy and transportation.
Part 2
Reflection on My Consumption. With a population of approximately seven billion, an ever increasing life expectancy, reduced infant mortality, rapid growth in population, the earth’s life supporting resources are severely strained. Globalization has turned the world into one huge community through reliable means of transport, communication, and technological advancement. Nowadays, more people inhabit the world than ever before. This unprecedented expansion of urban centers has subsequently led to creation of human settlements at the expense of natural forests, wildlife, and vegetation. The sum of all human activities in pursuit of a “modern lifestyle” has led to a sustained assault on the intricate balance of nature, to an extents that the Earth is on the brink of a major climatic catastrophe.
Often people do not realize how our ordinary activities contribute to the bigger picture. Many will unnecessarily leave the lights on, keep the fireplace burning or use the car even if it is not a necessity. On an individual level such activities may appear as negligible threats to the balance of nature, but imagine a scenario where about seven billion people did the same. From the result on my “ecological footprint” quiz, the human population living just like me would require about four Earths for habitation. From the results, my carbon footprint has the largest consumption category at 55.0, food footprint is 42.9, housing footprint is 31.5, and my goods and services footprint is 25.2. On the other hand, my footprint share by biome is 40 percent of forestland, 27 percent of pastureland, 20 percent of marine fisheries, and 13 percent of cropland.
From the foregoing forestland and carbon emission seems to be the highest casualties of my lifestyle in terms of footprint share by biome and global acreage by consumption respectively. These two are related and a positive change in my lifestyle can have a profound reduction on both. Greenhouse gases like carbon can be regulated by an increased forest cover (carbon sink) as green plants need it for photosynthesis. Moreover, a reduced reliance on fossil fuels (petroleum, LPG, natural gas, propane) can limit the volume of carbon emissions being fed into the atmosphere. In this case I should strive to use wood produced sustainably and use less fossil fuel.
These results are surprising to me because my lifestyle in way contributes in a substantial way to the ecological imbalance. It is startling revelation that human population world need about four ‘earths’ if each of the se...