Our 'ecological footprint'

Just for once I will do a little bit of fisking -- on the Greenie preachment below, which appeared here, among other places

"Humanity's reliance on fossil fuels, the spread of cities, the destruction of natural habitats for farmland and the exploitation of the oceans are outstripping the planet's capacity to cope, the conservation group WWF said. They would The biggest culprits are residents of Australia, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, Kuwait and Sweden, who leave the biggest "ecological footprint," the World Wide Fund for Nature said in its regular Living Planet Report. China and India and Russia don't pollute, of course. Humans currently consume 20 per cent more natural resources than the Earth can produce, the report said. Huh? So where did the resources come from?. "We are spending nature's capital faster than it can regenerate," said WWF chief Claude Martin, launching the 40-page study. "We are running up an ecological debt which we won't be able to pay off unless governments restore the balance between our consumption of natural resources and the Earth's ability to renew them." He does not seem to have noticed that Saudi oil reserves keep increasing

But Fred Smith, president of the US-based Competitive Enterprise Institute and a former official of the US Environmental Protection Agency during the Nixon and Ford administrations, said he was skeptical. In a telephone interview, Smith claimed the WWF view is "static" and fails to take into account the benefits many people get from resource use. Wow! The opposition got only two sentences in

Use of fossil fuels such as coal, gas and oil increased by almost 700 per cent between 1961 and 2001, the study said. And the reserves have increased faster than consumption. Burning fossil fuels - in power plants and cars, for example - releases carbon dioxide, which experts say contributes to global warming. The planet is unable to keep pace and absorb the emissions, WWF said. What an outright lie! Carbon dioxide is plant food. It just makes trees and crops grow faster. The more there is around the more lushly they will grow

Populations of land, freshwater and marine species fell on average by 40 per cent between 1970 and 2000. The report cited urbanisation, forest clearance, pollution, overfishing and the introduction by humans of non-native animals, such as cats and rats, which often drive out indigenous species. Species counts are almost entirely guesswork "The question is how the world's entire population can live with the resources of one planet," said Jonathan Loh, one of the report's authors. We seem to be doing fine, with the prices for most natural resources continually dropping -- reflecting supply that keeps ahead of demand

The study, WWF's fifth since 1998, examined the "ecological footprint" Just a weird dreamed-up metaphor of the planet's entire population. Most of a person's footprint is caused by the space needed to absorb the waste from energy consumption, including carbon dioxide. WWF also measured the total area of cities, roads and other infrastructure and the space required to produce food and fibre - for clothing, for example. The land area "used" by each person seems to be what they are getting at. But that reflects availability. The inhabitants of Holland use only a fraction of the land that Australians do but still live well.

"We don't just live on local resources," so the footprint isn't confined to the country where consumers live, said Mathis Wacknagel, head of the Global Footprint Network, which includes WWF. Aha! They want to hide national differences by averaging! No wonder. Those national differences would reveal what a silly sermon their land-per-person story is. And if you think land is scarce, you should spend a few days driving across Australia from East to West. There is no sign of human life and not much sign of any life for 95% of the time (spinifex excepted, of course). It's not the amount of land that counts. It's what you do with it For example, Western demand for of Asia's palm oil and South America's soybeans has wrecked natural habitats in those regions, so the destruction is considered part of the footprint of importing nations. The same applies to Arab oil consumed in the United States. And planting wheat and grazing cattle sure has destroyed a lot of habitat too. Poison all wheat! Wipe out all cattle!

The findings are similar to those in WWF's 2002 report, which covered the period up to 1999. But the latest study contains more detailed data stretching to 2001. It shows the situation has changed little in most countries, and is now more worrying in fast-growing China and India. The world's 6.1 billion-strong population leaves a collective footprint of 13.5 billion hectares, or 2.2 hectares per person. To allow the earth to regenerate, the average should be no more than 1.8 hectares, said WWF. A totally made-up number. It depends on what you want to regenerate and to what extent.........

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has been a frequent critic of what it calls "environmental alarmism" from organisations like WWF. Smith said the footprint idea is wrongheaded. "It's sort of like saying, 'General Motors must be much more wasteful than the local laundromat because General Motors spends more resources.' Yes, but they are producing more product too," he told the AP. "The real question is not whether the United States is a wealthy place but rather whether it's producing more wealth than it's consuming. Obviously we are. We're using a lot of the world's resources but we're producing far more of the world's resources." Wow! The opposition gets a few more sentences in

Loh said governments, businesses and consumers should switch to energy efficient technology, such as solar power. Efficient? Solar is the least efficient of all if you count in all the costs "We can consume energy in a way that's harmful or in a way that's sustainable," he told reporters. The technologies are available to enable the world's population to live within the capacity of one planet." They sure are. We do so already

High oil prices may help focus their minds. "But it's not a question of how much oil is left," he said. "The question we should be asking is how much fossil fuel consumption the Earth can sustain. The Earth has a limited capacity."" Aha! So they DO know that oil is not running out. So now it is using oil that is bad! -- in some mysterious way. I guess it might produce more of that lovely carbon dioxide for plants to soak up. Greenies seem to totally ignore the fact that just PRODUCING carbon dioxide means nothing. It could perhaps be a problem if plants did not grab it to make themselves grow faster -- but they do. Greenies seem to think that any extra carbon dioxide produced just hangs around. Nobody told the plant kingdom that! Greenies really are pathetic. You would think that they of all people would have some clue about what plants do

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

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