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Articles on Ecological footprint

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The United Nations predicts the world will be home to nearly 10 billion people by 2050 – making global greenhouse emission cuts ever more urgent. NASA/Joshua Stevens

As Earth’s population heads to 10 billion, does anything Australians do on climate change matter?

To be clear, I’m not advocating compulsory population control, here or anywhere. But we do need to consider a future with billions more people, many of them aspiring to live as Australians do now.
Ecological economics focuses on sustainability and development, rather than the traditional economic concerts of efficiency and growth. thodonal88/Shutterstock

What is ‘ecological economics’ and why do we need to talk about it?

Ecological economics focuses on sustainability and development rather than efficiency and growth. Cities, as home to 70-80% of economic activity, are at the heart of the challenge of being sustainable.
Conspicuous consumption is one of the main ways that China-born migrants come to mirror Australian society. Nils Versemann/Shutterstock

Chinese migrants follow and add to Australian city dwellers’ giant ecological footprints

Australian cities are world-leading – in the worst sense – for resource use and greenhouse emissions. China-born residents have embraced these consumption patterns, which is bad news for the planet.
Our individual happiness, the quality of our relationships and community well-being are closely interconnected. Shutterstock/Rawpixel

Pursuing happiness: it’s mostly a matter of surviving well together

We now know that we cannot spend our way to happiness nor pursue it as an individual goal. It turns out that happiness is built on the foundations of good relationships and broad well-being.
The Earth is finite - so are there limits to growth? NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center/Flickr

Why uncontrolled climate change may be an ultimate limit to growth

“But who do you think’s right, Prof? The optimists or the pessimists?” At the end of my sustainability economics course in 2007, students were challenging me to end 20 years of professional fence-sitting…
Australia’s ecological footprint is unhealthy and unfair; it’s time to talk about it.

Putting a foot in it: an election that ignores ecology

As we ponder who will lead our next government we need to ask who will best deal with Australia’s overblown ecological footprint. It’s about seven global hectares per person, which is about the size of…
Australia’s ecological footprint has been downsized slightly, but the devil is in the details. Flickr/-AX-

Give up or gird the loins? Australia’s ecological footprint

Amidst all the heat and noise of the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development, the release of WWF’s Ecological Footprint analysis for Australia in May went largely unheralded in the general media…

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