Visualizing.org
DCL
There's a lot of talk here at Planet Green about personal environmental impact and how people can lighten their load on the earth. You can calculate your own footprint, and study up on ways to reduce it.
But when you look at that same question more broadly—what does the typical lifestyle of an entire society mean for its collective footprint? And what do we know about where the resources fueling that consumption come from? Is it domestic consumption? Import-export on an equal-exchange basis?
We've heard before that if everyone in the world consumed resources the way we do in the U.S., it would take five planets' worth of resources to support all of us.
It turns out that not only is consumption drastically different in rich and poor countries, but the impact on biodiversity is, too. Below is a graphic from visualizing.org, with a brief explanation of the data behind it:
if we look at the last 40 years, while wealthier country's ecological footprints have risen drastically —implying that they are using more ecological resources than before —their biodiversity (as measured by the Living Planet Index) has increased. At the same time, the biodiversity of poorer countries has plummeted.
Image: visualizing.org
