32 Acres here, 7.3 planets

I gotta tell you, it doesn't bother me at all that I live better than most people on the planet. I'm going to take advantage of what living in this rich nation has to offer, as long as I can.

I would think that most of us would live as high a lifestyle as possible, given available resources and personal wealth. I doubt that most people living in poor countries would act any differently, given the opportunity.

That's true. However, you cannot factor in the cost of disposing the old machine unless you're planning to keep your old machine forever or you're reasonably certain that the cost will decrease (in which case you can only factor in the deduction, not the entire value). As long as you are going to throw that machine away at some point in the future, for the purposes of the cost/benefit analysis you're throwing it away right now.

Large efficiency gains are rarely outweighed by other considerations for items lasting a decade or more.

~J

I'm a little dubious of the math here. I live in a 4 person house, we have energy conservation in place, it's got less than 1500 square feet, and that's still eating up 3.5 of my allocated 4.5 acres?

The fricking house was built in 1923, and has been redone with good insulation and a number of other ecological upgrades. How does it warrant 3.5 acres of land being used up?

I find it telling that this quiz only measures waste produced and transportation costs. If my energy usage was factored in, I'm sure I would need a planet just to myself, made entirely of coal and oil.

Yeah, that quiz does make a lot of assumptions, many of which are probably false. And mfb's absolutely right that 4.5 is a false standard. It is, however, going to become more and more important to lower our footprints as large countries like China and India gear up and start becoming even bigger polluters than we are. Eventually so many people are going to be living like we are now that it's going to affect everyone's quality of life. It's already starting, and it's going to get much worse before people like Teux wise up, if they ever do.

As for solar panels, yeah, they're not for everyone, that's true. But they kinda are for everyone in southern California, and for most of the people in the southwest US, which is all I was really thinking about at the time.

By the by, my score? 13.5 acres. Hey, I never said I wasn't part of the problem, just that the problem isn't solely or even primarily the fault of oil companies.

interesting, from copyright to enviroment...

Fixed this thread.