What's Your Ecological Footprint?

Have you ever wondered how much your lifestyle impacts our planet? The Global Footprint Network has a calculator quiz that may give you an idea. A series of simple questions about the food you eat, how you travel, and where you live reveals how much or how many Earths it would take to support life if everyone lived as you do. After the quiz, there are options to explore ways to reduce your ecological footprint.

I took the quiz half-seriously and found out that six planets would be necessary to sustain life as I live it. I need to take some drastic actions to reduce my ecological footprint, including eating more locally grown foods and limiting air travel each year.

I challenge you to take the quiz yourself and share your results.

Earth Day Reflections

In looking for Earth Day resources, I came upon a page of quotes about our earth. Many of them are very striking and made me really pause to reflect on the way we live our lives.

• Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed.
  ~Mahatma Gandhi, spiritual and political leader
  

• Take nothing but pictures.
  Leave nothing but footprints.
  Kill nothing but time.
  ~Motto of the Baltimore Grotto, a caving society

• Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money.
  ~Cree Indian Proverb

• The earth is what we all have in common.
  ~Wendell Berry, Author, farmer, cultural critic

Which of these quotes is the most meaningful to you?

Please share your thoughts about any of these quotes or about Earth Day. What are some things that you do to reduce, reuse, or recycle?