Ecological Footprint

I went to this website > www.myfootprint.org and did the quiz to find out my ecological footprint. I was quite surprised at the results! I can't believe that my lifestyle needs 5.44 Earths. This is sad.. but I believe there is probably NO ONE in this world whose lifestyle needs only 1 Earth. The way we were raised and the current technological environment makes it impossible for us to live with only one Earth. With the present situation (depleting resources, natural disasters, etc.), I dare to say that we don't have an Earth anymore, it's only a 'half' Earth.

From my results, it can be seen that my carbon and housing footprints are lower than the average Australian. The food footprint is a bit too high if I see it from the graph, while goods and services footprint are just slightly higher. I've always thought that carbon footprint is the only thing that's important, so as long as you minimize the use of cars or anything polluting, you're doing your part. Surprisingly, there are still a lot of other factors that affect one's footprint, including the food that you eat. One way to reduce the food footprint is to buy and eat organic food, but the truth is it is more expensive. May be it's healthier and it reduces your footprint. But in Australia, people are economical, so a large percentage of the people would not buy organic food.

Probably a way for the government to reduce everyone's footprints is to reinforce people to use less private cars and energy, and subsidize people to eat healthier, organic food. This will be a 2-in-1 advantage for Australia as almost half of the population is suffering from obesity. Therefore, Australians can get healthy while reducing their footprints at the same time.