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Measuring Ecological Limits: The United States and the World

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by Peri Dworatzek

The science is clear: Our rate of economic activity is having disastrous impacts on the environment, starting with the climate so crucial to our survival. Economic activities require the use of natural resources and systematically entail pollution. Resources eventually get used up, as does the capacity of the planet to assimilate waste. We are reminded of Herman Daly’s long-running emphasis that the economy is a subsystem of the environment,

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Carbon Footprint Tramples Planetary Boundaries

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by Amelia Jaycen

The carbon footprint of an individual, organization, or country is the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) that must be produced to accommodate their choices: the types of transportation, heating and cooling, and diet they adopt and the manufacture and disposal of products they use. As a component of the total impact on the environment, called ecological footprint, a carbon footprint can be expressed as the amount of land or biocapacity required to absorb CO2 emissions.

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Steering Away from a Car-Centric Society

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by Mai Nguyen

Learning to drive scared me as a teenager. There was something terrifying about controlling a two-ton hunk of metal, and my drivers’ education teacher didn’t help by showing a graphic slideshow of injuries we could expect from a brutal car accident. This didn’t bother me much once I moved to the city; with buses, the metro, and bike or scooter shares, there are plenty of other ways to get around.

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