"Endlessly Ours": A Dangerous Mindset in American Society

            Five and a half Earths. That’s how many Earths it would take to let everyone in the world live as selfishly as I do. I found this fact not only startling, but also repulsive on many levels. First and foremost, I look at myself as one of those people who can preach, but can never really follow their own environmentally friendly advice. Sure, I yell at people for littering my school and complain about cars’ emissions polluting my air—I admit, I have always had an active voice in my community. But when I saw my own ecological footprint, hypocrisy stared straight at me. Why can we always give advice, but never really take it for ourselves? I believe that the ecological footprint concept encourages optimism in the most pessimistic way possible. By showing people’s direct impact on the earth, they can put a measurement to the destruction or sustainability that they’ve created.

            No one likes hearing the truth; however, an ecological footprint needs to be blunt. Pessimism is an extremely valuable tool; ecological debtors are expected to see their damages to the environment along with little leeway for change. Instilled in the footprint’s owner’s mind is the idea of limited options; one can only have so many chances to turn around before the environmental destruction they are causing becomes permanent, or unchangeable. With this in mind, there are two solutions for the footprint’s owner: either follow the guidelines to a sustainable life, or live in an unsustainable world.            

            As if this “life vs. death of all mankind” question was not pessimistic enough, one can also use the option to see how happily and sustainably other nations live. Comparing the average American to the average Ethiopian is like comparing the day's light to the night’s darkness—they are polar opposites. Though this comparison seems like an interesting cultural awakening, it actually shows how far the industrial revolution has destroyed us as a society. Importing, exporting, shipping, driving, flying, manufacturing, sewing, modifying, etc., are all the culprits behind our dark ecological footprints. Unsustainably advancing our technologies and economic empires takes a major, nonrefundable toll on our precious planet. But yet, our greedy politicians and heartless corporations refuse to admit that their concoction of “happiness” is really the source of all of our problems. Like the saying goes, “the first step is admitting you have a problem.”

            In the end, there are only so many opportunities to solve our problems. Our citizens can easily adopt simple tasks such as recycling, installing energy efficient light bulbs, and saving water. These relatively straightforward ideas can be the beginning towards our great leap to a sustainable future. With ecological footprint calculations, our citizens can place an exact value of their personal lifestyle’s consequences. All the opportunities for change lie in our reach; we are ripened with the knowledge of universal sustainability. However, if we do not take heed to the warnings of our disastrous lifestyles now, our future generations will grow up with our same dangerous mindset: the world is endlessly ours.