The green space is teeming these days with lengthy and complex explanations about the meaning of sustainability. But from that wealth of information, two exceptionally simple methods emerge for understanding what such a planet would actually look like, and how we can get there. Ecological Footprint and One Planet both frame human impact in terms of physical space. One indicates the space we exploit through our consumption patterns, and the other indicates the space we have to share -- equitably and permanently -- as a global population, if we intend to sustain life on Earth. The concepts distill daunting challenges into individual goals: If we can each shape our own footprints such that they never exceed what the planet can support, we'll accelerate our progress exponentially.
Winning the Great Wager -- A shrinking planet, a growing population: How do we redesign the world and achieve sustainable prosperity for every person living here?
Ecological Handprints -- While we work furiously to reduce our ecological footprints, we might consider the possibility that instead of simply reducing or eliminating the damage we cause, we might act in ways that actively heal and reverse it, leaving in those places an "ecological handprint."
Letter from Japan: Prosperity Within Limits -- Japan is a nation of great wealth and limited space. What does the need to balance their prosperous industry with precious little land mean for Japan's future as a pioneer in sustainable innovation?
Happy Planet Index -- What's the correlation between our ecological footprint and our overall happiness? The Happy Planet Index ranks nations according to both of these measurements, demonstrating that a low-impact life can be a happy one. But there might be a few more accurate ways of measuring and showing that small footprint = good life.
Green Flight -- A large portion of the footprint of people from wealthy nations consists of the heavy-duty impact of air travel. Designing new aircraft engines could help make air travel more sustainable.
Zerofootprint -- Zerofootprint was one of the early players in offsets for personal consumption. Today their website is full of resources and their services have been used widely (even by Worldchanging!)
London 2012: The World's First One-Planet Olympics -- Few events are more powerful in drawing the world's attention to a single spot on the globe (for positive reasons) than the Olympics. Which means the Olympics have a unique opportunity to be a model for change in the world. London has big plans for the 2012 Olympics to demonstrate that great traditions can be adapted to 21st century circumstances.
Creative Common's Photo Credit
