[reformed_democrat]

The average American's "ecological footprint" (the demands an individual endowed with average amounts of resources, i.e., land, water, food, fiber, waste assimilation and disposal, etc. puts on the environment) is about 12 acres

Where did they get this number?

[dfwgator]

Where did they get this number?

From out of their tuckuses.

[ichabod1]

How big is YOUR eco-footprint, pal?

[PeterPrinciple]

Where did they get this number:

Answer in the article:

While some may quibble with the method used, the math is irrefutable.

[Vigilanteman]

The average American's "ecological footprint" (the demands an individual endowed with average amounts of resources, i.e., land, water, food, fiber, waste assimilation and disposal, etc. puts on the environment) is about 12 acres.

By this analysis, Japan should be a third world hell-hole and it is acutally a very pleasant place to live or visit.

Singapore would be even worse and it is actually even more pleasant than Japan.

[nh1]

Where did they get this number?

That's easy, take the land area of the US 2,263,911,173 acres. Divide by how many people you think it should support to back up your agenda, say 200 million. That gives you 11.319 acres/person. Then just round it off to 12.

[westcoastwillieg]

If you read the article carefully and checked the references you would know where the 12 acres came from. Incidentally the author used 10 acres to calculate the 70 mil overpopulation. If you don’t think many of our large cities are overpopulated, I doubt that you’ve been to one lately.

“Can you think of any problem, in any area of human endeavor, on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases in population, locally, nationally, or globally?”

Words of wisdom from Albert A. Bartlett an emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder.