National Geographic News, Reporting Your World Daily

Monday, November 23, 2009

Photo: Balance Earth's "Eco Wealth" the Same Way as Finances, Group Says


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Members of the environmental group Earth First! hold hands during a Memorial Day gathering as they protest logging operations near Siskiyou National Forest in Oregon.

Rapid deforestation is just one of the factors that define humanity's "ecological footprint"—the amount of land and water area a population uses to produce the resources it consumes and to absorb its waste.

Today our ecological footprint is nearly 30 percent larger than what the planet can regenerate in a given year, according to an accounting tool designed to measure resource use.

Photograph by James P. Blair/NGS