What I Love About myfootprint.org

Calculating your ecological footprint can be depressing business, particularly if you live in a large house in suburban South Florida, your nearest family member lives 1,400 miles away, and you have some Northern California peeps.

Practically the only thing I have going for me is that I’m a vegan and I don’t eat a lot of soy or processed food.

The well-meaning folks at stopglobalwarming.org could learn a thing or two from the well-meaning folks at Redefining Progress about how to calculate the individual’s impact on the planet. I feel like the former are so concerned with giving people tiny things to do that won’t really affect the way they live, when we all need to do big things and really change the way we live.

But that’s me.

An important caveat in the to-be-or-not-to-be-vegetarian debate, is that you can probably do almost as much damage to the planet as an herbivore as you can as a carnivore (and for a hilarious comparison, see Umbra’s: Soy You Want to be a Vegetarian?). Eating processed soy products from far, far away is nothing to be proud of, yet eating locally-produced, grass-fed beef that hasn’t been pumped with hormones, flavor enhancers, and color enhancers, then expensively packaged and shipped thousands of miles, is admirable.

Admirable, that is, if you don’t mind the slaughter part and you think cows are ours to use.

Here’s a detailed "Household Ecological Footprint Calculator," if the one at myfootprint.org is too general for you.