Image Source: National Geographic.
For those of us deeply entrenched in environmentalism and the battle towards a more sustainable future, it is easy to forget the incredible impact of concepts that are common water cooler talk to us. One of those concepts re-presented itself to me in the simplest way today – through a series of photographs in National Geographic’s article: Enter the Anthropocene – Age of Man. As a highly visual person, I have a bad habit of skimming magazines, articles and other sources of information for the pictures first. Admittedly, I often go back and read the articles with the most interesting or thought provoking pictures and skip the rest. Luckily, in a publication like National Geographic all of the pictures are utterly spectacular, but in the March issue, the photo series for Age of Man literally stopped me dead in my judge-an-article-by-its-pictures tracks. The meaning of the term “ecological footprint” resonated deeply in me as I looked from the magazine, to my desk, the window and city buildings beyond and wondered what this massive urban sprawl called Chicago looks like from far above: a deep black scar interrupting the winter gold of the sleepy Midwest.
Ecological footprint is a term we learn in environmentalism 101, in fact, by now it’s probably a bonus word on 2nd grade spelling tests (if it’s not, it should be). I remember the first time the concept was presented to me, by an outspoken, un-showered slacker in one of my early communications classes in college. For my entire life I had been instructed to turn off the lights when I left a room, recycle my soda cans and that taking long showers is a waste of water, but never before had I seen my little daily actions put into universal perspective. My actions, combined with the actions of my family, neighborhood, city, country, continent and the rest of humanity all combine to have a big, dirty, irreversible strain on the living and breathing ecosystem that is our planet. This is our ecological footprint as a human race, and it all begins with the steps taken by every contributing individual. We are big foot and the planet is quivering in fear below. For the first time in my life lugging the weekend’s beer bottles and newspapers to the recycling bin on the other side of campus didn’t feel like humoring some leftover campaign slogan from my grade school days – it felt gravely necessary; urgent even.
Years later I work every single day on a sustainable endeavor in the travel industry – The Resort at Isla Palenque. Words like green, LEED, sustainable, eco, and footprint have become so common in my vocabulary that I hardly realize them anymore. With “climate change” and “sustainable future” making grave headlines on a daily basis, I’m sure I am not alone in this insensitivity. Among all of the soap box speak in this industry, it is refreshing to happen upon some clear cut imagery like the Age of Man photographs, which you can view at the end of this post. Suddenly footprint doesn’t seem like such a commonplace term anymore – it seems like the most important concept in the world. That is, if we want to keep the world around and all. Sometimes we just need to get out of the environmental grind consisting of legislation and scientific arguments and get back to the basics of what we are doing – trying to save the planet from ourselves.
While viewing this series of grey, brown, muck, acid, carbonates, oil, poison, waste and sprawl, all I wanted to do was run straight into the jungles of Isla Palenque and hug a giant tree wrapped in glowing green vines. When you work with an island that is every shade of green and full of hundreds of creatures, it is easy to forget that there is not an endless reserve of these places anymore. Half of the world’s large rivers are dammed, the summits of our mountains are vanishing as we drill and species are literally disappearing from our oceans. To preserve the places that are still pristine is not only necessary, but an absolute privilege.
It was nice to be hit over the head with the concept of ecological footprint again – and it made me think, perhaps viewing the world is best done from outside the environmentalist sphere – shouldn’t we always acknowledge the initial shock of realizing our ecological footprint, no matter how baseline that knowledge becomes in our pursuit? Oddly enough I stumbled upon a similar line of thinking over at Treehugger.com today, suggesting that often times the self interest of environmentalism takes precedence over the virtue behind it. In the case of our ecological footprint, everyone’s impact matters. So in the words of Sami Grover, “everybody is an environmentalist whether they realize it or not.”
To view all images, click the photo below:
For the record, the entire Anthropocene article is an incredibly worthwhile read and study, I just happen to have fallen for the pictures first.
*In 2006, the average biologically productive area per person worldwide was approximately 1.8 global hectares (gha) per capita. The U.S. footprint per capita was 9.0 gha, and that of Switzerland was 5.6 gha per person, while China‘s was 1.8 gha per person.[9][10] The WWF claims that the human footprint has exceeded the biocapacity (the available supply of natural resources) of the planet by 20%.SOURCE
TAGS: Business Must Read Sustainability
Great post