20050810
I am back from the Big Green Gathering, which was a tremendous success thanks to all the help from Harvey and Anne.
It was arranged that I would give one workshop but I but I actually gave 4 and the booth was effective with the fantastic posters produced by Harvey and Anne got some printing done of leaflettes and pages from our internet websites and some of my presentation materials. We need to get some of this information onto the Wiki Website and there will be some discussion about how to do that.
Many people were saying that they were really relieved that Sola Roof can provide a path to a sustainable future and there is great interest in the Bio Fuel from Mass Algae Culture systems that we propose to make integral with most Sola Roof projects. This would give our "living structures" a negative foot print - a footprint that would counteract the impact of others, who live a non sustainable lifestyle. I have just found some info on eco footprints:
The West's Big Feet (by Bill Moore of EVWorld) If you divided up all of the earth's arable land and productive ocean areas so that every man, woman and child received an equal share, and from this they would have to sustain their existence, how much would each receive?
According to the Global Footprint Network it's 1.8 hectares or 4.4 acres, some of it land, some of it water. Interestingly, that's exactly the "footprint" of the average Chinese citizen today. A person in India utilizes just 0.8 hectares or 2 acres, while a Japanese citizen uses 4.3, a Canadian is at 6.4, an Australian is 7.7. And we American's utilize the equivalent of 9.5 hectacres or nearly 24 acres per person.
But the U.S. isn't the most rapacious; it's the United Arab Emirates at 9.9. Perhaps the nation with the lowest global resource footprint is war-torn Afghanistan at a mere 0.3 hectares, followed by Somolia at 0.4.
If you're curious about your country's environmental footprint, you can download an Excel spreadsheet from here.