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It would be nice if /. gave us a link to the actual original article... anyhow, a bit of searching and here's a link to info on how they calculate "footprint"...

http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/footprint_basics_overview/

To calculate the date for Earth Overshoot Day, the group crunches UN data on thousands of economic sectors such as fisheries, forestry, transport and energy production.

Earth-warming greenhouse gas emissions, it said, are now the fastest-growing contributor to ecological overshoot, making up 60 percent of humanity's demands on nature -- what is called the ecological "footprint".

I've never even heard of this metric. Is this based on real science or climate activism?

Well, it's based on empirical data. ... Because, there's no double blind study where we instantiated multiple Earth's on January 1st and then removed all humans from one to use as the control variable....No, it's not truly falsifiable -- then again you don't have multiple runs at this.

Well, obviously, but falsifiability and such apply to theories, not empirical observations.

...(evidently you aren't). The part where you said "climate activism" means you're just going into confirmation bias here anyway so even though it won't help ... Even though it doesn't matter because you've clearly already made up your mind.

You need to get your internet mind-reading device recalibrated. You could have just posted the link (which wasn't in the article for some reason (a pet peeve of mine regarding science reporting)) without the snark: http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/public_data_package.

To calculate the date for Earth Overshoot Day, the group crunches UN data on thousands of economic sectors such as fisheries, forestry, transport and energy production.

Earth-warming greenhouse gas emissions, it said, are now the fastest-growing contributor to ecological overshoot, making up 60 percent of humanity's demands on nature -- what is called the ecological "footprint".

I've never even heard of this metric. Is this based on real science or climate activism?

Well, it's based on empirical data. You'll have to provide your personal definition of "real science" for me. Because, there's no double blind study where we instantiated multiple Earth's on January 1st and then removed all humans from one to use as the control variable. I can't believe I have to explain this but Slashdot is just getting more and more conservative lately so ... it's based on data from prior years and what is reported by country. No, it's not truly falsifiable -- then again you don't have multiple runs at this. No, nobody's actually measuring all the carbon in the air. No, nobody's actually testing that we've saturated the rate at which our resources are being replenished. We're making intelligent estimates. Well, those of us concerned with this stuff are (evidently you aren't).

The part where you said "climate activism" means you're just going into confirmation bias here anyway so even though it won't help, I'll do the very little googling required to find their their numbers here. Just for you. Even though it doesn't matter because you've clearly already made up your mind.

You forgot a LOT of surface here.
Land is also needed for energy, housing, wood production, ... Not just for food.
On average, 1 inhabitant of the United States has a footprint of 8 hectares (80 000 m^2, 20 acres)
We are currently using 1.5 earths.

You forgot a LOT of surface here.
Land is also needed for energy, housing, wood production, ... Not just for food.
On average, 1 inhabitant of the United States has a footprint of 8 hectares (80 000 m^2, 20 acres)
We are currently using 1.5 earths.

Here is an exerpt of an article I was writing called the "Sustainable Status of America" on why the ecological foot print is inflated, and what it really shows.

The way the ecological foot print works is that it calculates how big of an area of the planet each of us needs - in "global hectacres per capita". Here is a graph of the ecological foot print from many nations vs the human development index.

At first blush, this report would seem to refute my point - the USA is one of the least sustainable nations on the planet. However, taking a more complexed and detailed understanding unvails many interesting counterpoints. The first counterpoint I would like to point you to is the graph of footprint over time. What you can see is that the footprint of most nations goes down, while the HDI goes up. What this means is that we are on the right track, which is better than nothing. If we project out the lines, what we see is that we should be for the most part sustainable by 2050.

After looking at the ecological footprint, I quite like the way it measures impact. However, it has one huge, IMHO, design flaw. It considers CO2 to have a physical footprint in global hectacres per capita. For example, in the graph of Switzerland, you can see that most of the footprint is energy, I.E., CO2. If you were to ignore the CO2 requirement, you would find that Swizterland was actually sustainable (but barely). Worldwide, the carbon component of our footprint is over 54% of the foot print. The way CO2's footprint is being calculated is by taking into account the amount of CO2 captured by acres of biomass, such as forests. What this means is that it essentially calculates how big of a fuel farm we would need for the world using first generation biofuels. The results are rediculus for energy instensive countries such as the USA. This is because first generation biofuels are incredibly ineffecient - often less than 0.1% efficient at converting solar energy into useful power. A solar panel is 20% efficient. A recent IEEE report concluded that to power the world with switch-grass ethanol would require essentially the whole planet be converted into one big fuel farm. Meanwhile, solar panels essentially on our roofs could charge up all our electric cars and power our houses. This CO2 calculation pollutes the ecological footprint data with tangential information that depends on technical change.

The ecological footprint makes a good point. Our current mode of operation is unsustainable, but what it also makes clear is what our number one sustainablity priority should be: reducing CO2 emissions. Fortunately, thousands if not millions of my fellow capitalist pigs have responeded to the call. The solution, and this will be clear, is not to reduce our energy use but instead to develop new technologies to solve the problem. We have been told by environmentalists "we must change our behavior instead of wait for technological fantasy", but history has had other ideas. The whales were not saved from the whalers because activists told everyone to turn of the lights. The whales were saved because technologists and capitalsts drilled for oil. JD Rockefeller saved the whales, not Patrick Moore. CO2 will be stopped because higher fossil fuel prices are already pushing renewables - the solution is already happening, but you don't often hear about it. For example, wind power is growing at around 30% annually - a phenominal growth rate in the business world. The consequences of this growth are the colapse of off-peak electricity prices - which I hope will result in the shifting of industrial production and transportation "fuel" production to windy nights. Wind currently makes up 1.8% of our electricity. What that means is that in 15-20 years at the current growth rate, wind will make up all of our electricity production.

The methodology takes efficiency into account. For every type of land use and every country there are individual yield factors calculated so that comparisons can be made even though efficiency varies widely around the world. Here's what I'm looking at: http://www.footprintnetwork.org/download.php?id=4.

You do realise that the ecological footprint of North America is TWICE that of a European and about SIX times of someone living in Asia?

See bottom of this page:

http://www.footprintnetwork.org/gfn_sub.php?conten t=global_footprint

Double standards? Double USAGE you mean!

Maybe if those 200 million wanted to consume like Al Gore while having enough forest to buy carbon offsets. But there are plenty of countries with a perfectly good lifestyle that don't consume anywhere near as much as the average American, let alone the wealthiest. The United Kingdom is currently running at requiring just under 6ha per person. The planet has 11.2 billion hectares biologically sustainable. That's 1.8 billion people, all living at UK standards. Even US standards would sustain over 1 billion. http://www.footprintnetwork.org/gfn_sub.php?conten t=national_footprints.