Daily Infographic: If Everyone Lived Like An American, How Many Earths Would We Need?
Ecological Footprints Tim De Chant, Per Square MileHint: It's a good thing not everyone lives like an American. You're probably already aware that Americans consume a disproportional amount of the world's stuff. You may even have bumped into some of the statistics: We make up 5 percent of the global population, but use 20 percent of the world's energy. We eat 15 percent of the world's meat. We produce 40 percent of the world's garbage. While those numbers do sound impressive, it can be hard to know what to make of them. OK, so we eat 10 billion animals and throw out 16 billion disposable diapers every year. So what? Today's infographic, by blogger and journalist Tim De Chant, gives the issue some meaningful context by asking, and then answering, the question, "what if everyone in the world lived like us?" To make the graphic, De Chant started with the...