What
is Ecological Footprint? Part 1, Total-True-Costs, Energy,
Carbon
& toxic impacts?
Ecological Footprint
- became a eco-friendly
term in 1990s ecology movement book by Wackernagel & Ress (Ô98 New Society). It measures a product or lifestyle impacts
by how much land it requires &
energy is used to make &or use it.
The true costs of products & services in our economy are hidden by
the money cost in wholesale & retail markets.
The TTC = ÔTotal
True CostÕ of anything we call ÔEcological FootprintÕ = total energy impacts.
That includes extracting it from nature, into factory, storing, processing, packaging
& shipping, marketing, advertising process. All these are middle-men business
profits & techno costs. Now with C02 being a greenhouse gas heating up our
skies, we add Ôcarbon- emissions/pollution cost to TTL or Eco-Ftpt, elemental
& techy energy costs. Add the costs at home of storing, cooling &
heating, cleaning & disposing of waste & garbage related to it.
How much human
energy is needed & used to make any product at all stages of
production? In the national
economy the GNP = Gross National Product includes all the waste that we make at
all stages, end product buyers pay for & ignore the toxins going into bioregion
waters, air food & soil. corporations are rarely open to report & never
responsible for damages form their toxic wastes to habitats, climate damage
& human health. With rare exceptions after year of fighting in courts of
law & government agencies.
Another cost
(damage) to nature is all the toxins released at all stages of production &
consumption. In logging for forest goods, wood & paper, have hi-impacts of
carbon emissions, & killing forests natural cooling effects & water
holding abilities of rainforest destroyed hating up the bioregion. Worse is slash
& burning forest for grazing-cattle for meat to kill & ship far to markets
of meat-eaters. While burnt & total logged (clear-cut) forests heat-up, destroying
animals habitats & ruin the watershed purity & quality, toward becoming
a desert, as in the Amazon rainforest now!
So how can a person,
family or business analyze & learn the TTC of whatever they make & use? Carbon Emission Costs (CEC) are now on
internet for many products & running motors & vehicles pollution. Even ÒemissionsÓ
will ignore the toxic effects to living organic healthy creatures !? But the
cost of production, transport & pollution are mostly ignored & maybe impossible
to learn?!