National Network for Equitable Library Service

Ecological Footprint accounting, first introduced in the 1990s and continuously developed, continues to be the only metric that compares overall human demand on nature with what our planet can renew--its biocapacity--and distils this into one number: how many Earths we use. Our economy is running a Bernie Madoff-style Ponzi scheme with the planet. We use future resources to run the present, using more than Earth can replenish. Like any such scheme, this works for a limited time, followed by a crash. Avoiding ecological bankruptcy requires rigorous resource accounting--a challenging task, but doable with the right tools.