What the fuck does this chart mean lol
this post was submitted on 13 May 2026
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It says if everyone in the USA lived the way they already do, we'd need 5.1 Earths worth of resources, but if only everyone in India lived the way they do in the USA, we'd only need 0.8 Earths.
From this we can tell there are 6.375 times as many people living in the USA than in India.
It's a perfectly reasonable in every way!
Maybe a slight misunderstanding.... If everyone in the WORLD lived the way people do in the US then we need 5.1 earths. If everyone in the WORLD lived the way people do in India then we would need less. Makes sense to me.
Ok. But what's the bottom row with 'world' being 1.75?
Global consumption compared to what the Earth can regenerate.
Probably illustrating that our current situation isn't sustainable.
Earth overshoot day is the day each year we use more resources than the Earth regenerates in a year. Last year we used our yearly “budget” by July 24th.
In other words the way we live is unsustainable and killing our ability to live on this rock.
yeah this chart makes no fucking sense lol
everyone in the usa is already living like they already are?
i think there meant "if everyone lived like X residents" and each line in the chart replaces X?
oh but the worpd is 1.75 ? that doesn't make sense... should be 1? unless it's something about being sustainable
It means if all people on Earth lived using as many resources as they do in those countries we would need X times the amount of resources than Earth can provide.
I sure don't feel like I consume much in the US. I imagine the ultra rich and corpos skew the numbers a bit.
Having lived in the US for 8 years now, simply existing here causes more waste. E.g., packaging: many more layers and plastic; car centrism is another cause.
Also hearing how much food stuff (like left overs) my coworkers, friends, etc, throw out is insane.
Yet another example came to mind. I went to a baby shower a few yrs ago, as part of the decorations the parent had some really cute animal cutouts with a plywood back (good plywood). They where gonna throw those out, I rescued them and now they decorate my kid's wall
Cops, truck drivers, delivery drivers, avg Joes just idling their cars because reasons
None of these are big corpos, this is just yankee culture
Oh yes, big time, and in two ways : first, what they consume for themselves, and second, the excedent they make you and your neighbors consume (wrapping everything in plastic, selling stuff that traveled the globe because it's more profitable, etc.), shadowing or running out of business more local and sustainable alternatives.
The Ecological Footprint for the United States is 8.1 gha per person (in 2018) and global biocapacity is 1.6 gha per person (in 2018). Therefore, we would need (8.1/ 1.6) = 5.1 Earths if everyone lived like people living in the United States.
I had to hit the glossary, so sharing it here:
global hectare (gha)
Global hectares are the accounting unit used in Ecological Footprint and biocapacity accounts. These productivity-weighted, biologically productive hectares allow researchers to report both Earth’s (or a region’s) biocapacity and the demand placed on it (the Ecological Footprint).
A global hectare represents one hectare of biologically productive land with the world’s average biological productivity for a given year. Using this unit, rather than merely hectares, is necessary because different land types have different productivities. For example, one global hectare of cropland would occupy a smaller physical area than pasture land, which is typically less biologically productive. This means that typically more pasture would be required to provide the same biocapacity as one hectare of cropland.
Since global productivity varies slightly from year to year, the value of a global hectare also changes slightly over time.
Because global hectares are commensurable, they can be aggregated, enabling comparisons across activities, time, and regions. Note that areas with very low productivity, such as deserts, ice fields, or the open ocean, are excluded from the accounts.
Yeah, not convinced. For usa and chunks of Europe that's probably true but China produces so much green energy that even if we account for legacy tech that will be replaced in coming years it still wouldn't use that much.
Also considering the crippling poverty in places like Brazil and India, not to mention the casteism, this feels borderline ecofascist.
The solutions are already here. But the state wouldnt like it.
Switzerland 2.8, Germany 3.0. Sorry, but no. Overconsumption in Switzerland is higher by A WHOLE MAGNITUDE compared to Germany. Not because Swiss are less caring, just because the purchasing power is so much higher in Switzerland compared to Germany and enables higher consumption. It's being felt at EVERY level of society there. So much (perfectly working!) items of daily use are being thrown away or replaced there, it's insane. I'm a German who lived in Switzerland for 10 years. I can tell some crazy stories and the 2.8 vs. 3 earths are absolute bogus. I'd rather say if a all German world population consumes 3 earths, an all Swiss world population would comsume north of 5 worlds by my humble estimate.
What's up with Australia??
They are upside down so you need to do 1 /
Being Australian, I imagine it's because everything is so spread out with a lack of infrastructure to boot.
Massive inefficiencies across the board with high costs associated with things which would improve this metric. Its extremely difficult to reduce your impact here without significant cost, and that cost is out of reach of the typical Australian. Things that do have impact (solar/batteries/water systems/electric vehicles) are excessively expensive compared to the alternatives, and the median Australian wage is around 65k.
As an example I just had a battery priced for my house, government subsidy included is $25k. Its not practical for most people.
We colloquially call Australia BigMerica in the US, sorry I know they’re your neighbors:( Lots of suburbs create inefficiencies.