The idea of our ecological footprint has also been used to illustrate the limits of the planet’s carrying capacity. The idea is relatively simple. It compares human demands on nature with the biosphere’s ability to regenerate resources and provide services. A calculation is made to find out what acreage of land and sea is needed to fully sustain a given population. The calculation needs to include land for food and other resources as well as land to absorb pollutants produced by that population.
In this way it is possible to calculate the footprint of a city, a country or the whole world’s population. Incidentally, this work has demonstrated why densely populated cities can be incredibly wealthy – they have a massive footprint and without access through trade to vast tracts of land, they could not survive.
From this approach, there is a growing literature that highlights the conclusion that we have gone beyond the human carrying capacity of the environment by continuing with behaviours that are no longer appropriate for our circumstances.
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