ecological footprint
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So tell us … what’s your dirty little environmental secret?
I know this is going to come as a shock to you all, but someone needs to speak the truth. It seems that environmentalists have a bit of a reputation for being holier-than-thou — even, dare I say it, evangelistic. In our zeal to save the planet, we both scare and bore our fellow citizens, […]
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Umbra on ecological footprints
Dear Umbra, I just took the Ecological Footprint Quiz, feeling rather confident that I’ve been doing my part to minimize my personal impact on environmental despoliation. But my results weren’t reassuring. My ecological footprint is nine acres, which is much better than the U.S. national average of 24 acres per person, but still twice what […]
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Umbra on environmental stress
Dear Umbra, I’m the poster child for a late-twentysomething environmentally responsible adult. I use less than 100 gallons of gas a year, less than 100 kilowatt-hours of electricity a month, less than 20 gallons of water per day, less than 100 therms of natural gas during the winter in Minnesota. I take my garbage out […]
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One man's quest to prove that bigger isn't better for the planet
Long before the special-effects wizards made Stuart Little into a silver-screen sensation, E.B. White’s diminutive hero held a hallowed spot in a storytelling tradition that ranges from Gulliver’s Travels and “Jack and the Beanstalk” to Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. The basic idea: Make the workaday world utterly fantastic by changing the scale. Or, most […]
