My Ecological footprint quiz

I recently calculated my ecological footprint using an online calculator. If everyone lived as I do, we would need 2.39 planet earths, and we obviously have only one. I started this blog with the concept of ecological footprint because it is an integrated measurement of the effect of lifestyle choices on the ecosystem and its sustainability. It measures emissions of carbon dioxide and the amount and types of land and resources needed to support one's consumption and resulting waste products.

The current resource-intensive lifestyle of people in the developed world is not sustainable, but the toll on the environment from poverty and rapid population growth is not sustainable either, as depicted in the strikingly moving video She's Alive

Is it possible for humans to live in harmony with the environment in the 21st century? There are many choices that people can make to reduce their impact on the environment. "Where there's a will, there's a way." But where's our collective will? What keeps us from confronting the ongoing destruction of the web of life of which we are a part? As described by Doherty in Ecopsychology, this is where psychology has a role.

A number of psychological disciplines examine this problem: environmental psychology, ecopsychology, conservation psychology, and the psychology of sustainability, and others. Psychology offers insight into what motivates people to take action on behalf of the environment, as well into the various defense mechanisms that allow us to go on living in ways that are destroying the ecosystems on which we depend for food, water, energy, and material goods. Psychology also helps us understand the inner drives and fears that fuel consumerism, current rates of which cannot be sustained on a global scale.

Another psychological aspect is the effect of global ecological crises and ecosystem destruction on the human psyche. Humans are connected to the earth; we are part of the web of life. As Chief Seattle famously said in 1854, "This we know: All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself."

• Ecological footprint model
• Ecological footprint PPT
• My Ecological footprint
• Ecological Footprints quiz