This seemed off to me, so I calculated myecological footprint. Here are the results it gave for me living alone (I apologize for the all-caps, but it came that way. The bolding is my own):
CATEGORY GLOBAL HECTARES
FOOD 1.8
MOBILITY 0.1
SHELTER 0.6
GOODS/SERVICES 0.7
TOTAL FOOTPRINT 3.2
IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 8.8 GLOBAL HECTARES PER PERSON.
WORLDWIDE, THERE EXIST 1.8 BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCTIVE GLOBAL HECTARES PER PERSON.
IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 1.8 PLANETS.
Then I recalculated for if I lived in a household of six people. I kept all other variables the same, just changed the number of people:
CATEGORY GLOBAL HECTARES
FOOD 1.8
MOBILITY 0.1
SHELTER 0.2
GOODS/SERVICES 0.3
TOTAL FOOTPRINT 2.4
IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 8.8 GLOBAL HECTARES PER PERSON.
WORLDWIDE, THERE EXIST 1.8 BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCTIVE GLOBAL HECTARES PER PERSON.
IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 1.3 PLANETS.
"But six is really a bit much," you're saying. Okay, so let's do it for a household of two:
CATEGORY GLOBAL HECTARES
FOOD 1.8
MOBILITY 0.1
SHELTER 0.4
GOODS/SERVICES 0.5
TOTAL FOOTPRINT 2.8
IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 8.8 GLOBAL HECTARES PER PERSON.
WORLDWIDE, THERE EXIST 1.8 BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCTIVE GLOBAL HECTARES PER PERSON.
IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 1.6 PLANETS.
As you can see, the difference is really negligible. Already I'm only occupying about 1/3 of the average footprint. If I increased my household size to six, my footprint would shrink by only 0.8 hectares, which is only 9% of the average footprint in the country.
And that's with changing only the number of people - none of the other variables were touched. So that means I'm cramming six people into this 500 square foot, one-bedroom one-bathroom apartment. For a savings of only 9% of the national average. That hardly seems worth it, especially since I'm already 70% below the national average to start with!
But what if we did something more realistic. I have no idea how much space you'd need for six people, so I redid the calculations for 2 people in an 80-square-foot apartment. Why? Because that's the smallest apartment in this building that I think I could share happily with mi cielito. We're both introverts who need our space.
CATEGORY GLOBAL HECTARES
FOOD 1.8
MOBILITY 0.1
SHELTER 0.9
GOODS/SERVICES 1
TOTAL FOOTPRINT 3.8
IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 8.8 GLOBAL HECTARES PER PERSON.
WORLDWIDE, THERE EXIST 1.8 BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCTIVE GLOBAL HECTARES PER PERSON.
IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 2.1 PLANETS.
Not only is this higher than for if the two people lived in the 500 square foot apartment, but it's also higher than for my rating living alone. So it looks like the "problem", if there is one, isn't that people live alone, but that people who can afford to do so live with the amount of privacy we expect in our society.
But you know what? I'm not giving up my privacy. My privacy is the single greatest joy my home gives me. I'm childfree, carfree, vegetarian, and paying higher than average rent to live in a building with l33t new environmental features; and my ecological footprint reflects all that. I've done my part. If you want me to give up my privacy, work on getting everyone else's environmental footprints down low enough that mine even begins to approach the national average. Then we'll talk.
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