More Where That Came From

Well, I got SOO MUCH comment on my last blog that I couldn't help but give you more! Seriously though, should we not be in on this conversation? I had to find this article because Paul mentioned it the other day and it HAUNTS me. So, here are a few interesting facts, thanks for humoring me.

(Link to full article)

http://http//www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15398149/

Humans will need two Earths, report claims

Global ‘footprint’ left by consumption is growing, conservationists argue

• "For more than 20 years we have exceeded the Earth's ability to support a consumptive lifestyle that is unsustainable and we cannot afford to continue down this path," WWF Director-General James Leape said in releasing the 2006 Living Planet Report in Beijing.
  

• "If everyone around the world lived as those in America, we would need five planets to support us," Leape added.
  

• In 2003, the report added, humanity's ecological footprint — the demand people place on the natural world — was 25 percent greater than the planet's annual ability to provide everything from food to energy and recycle all human waste.

• 
  "On current projections, humanity will be using two planets' worth of natural resources by 2050 — if those resources have not run out by then," the latest report said. "People are turning resources into waste faster than nature can turn waste back into resources."

• 
  "Humanity is living off its ecological credit card," Mathis Wackernagel, head of the Global Footprint Network, said in a statement. "While this can be done for a short while, overshoot ultimately leads to liquidation of the planet's ecological assets, and the depletion of resources, such as the forests, oceans and agricultural land upon which our economy depends."

• 
  The report noted that an index tracking 1,300 vertebrate species — birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles and mammals — showed that populations had fallen for most by about 30 percent because of factors including a loss of habitats to farms.