HEEHEE. I just did this the other day. Mine is 8 acres, 1/3 of the average American, but almost twice what is available worldwide. I'd better work on it. I wish it would do something where you could estimate for your entire household, as that is how I think of our "impact". Also, I think there are some things I do to mitigate my impact which were not taken into account in the questions, but all in all, a very interesting quiz. Actually, what I would really like to do is go in and put in a bunch of different answers and see how it affects the outcome. What if I lived in an apartment in Tokyo, or on a farm in Venezuela? That would be fun....

Jeanne

7 acres here...if I could only give up meat....lol

23 Acres. BUT I think the site is inexact in my case. It asks what city has weather most like mine, but none were closer than 1000 miles away. I heat entirely with wood, and it's a 160 year old house, so amortizing construction cost makes it pretty cheap. Yes, I still have to cut wood off acreage behind the house, but I'm not burning fuel oil. Shouldn't that count for something?

And I'm farming salad greens and vegies. Much of my travel is deliveries of produce. Shouldn't that count against someone else's fuel bill as well as mine?

When we talk about what food we eat, I have to say I eat a lot of "foreign" callories. Midwestern flour. Sugar. Rice. But I eat little that is highly processed. (Okay, there's the chocolate...) Canned beans, occasionally, but no frozen pizza or TV dinners.

It think the main flaw of the quiz is that it doesn't fully address the petroleum issue. How many acres does a barrel of oil count as?

Dan

4.8 hectares (We need 1.9 planets if everyone was like me.)
A fun quiz though.
Eric in Japan

I'm a novice permaculturist moving into a new one-acre lot in midcoast Maine. Is there a nearby experienced permaculturist willing to have me visit and pick your brain or willing to make start-up suggestions, beyond what I read in Gaia's Garden online?

wow that's cool. 5 extra planets!!!
gues we better step up our efforts to occupy the moon. And Mars, and Venus, and Jupiter!
How have we all survived for so long? How can we go on? I feel so dirty, so irresponsible, so terrible. (Not really).
What kind of goofball formulae are these people using?? I suppose population control is one of the goals here. Let's sacrifice morality for the whales. That's a good idea.
Don't get me wrong; I am for sustainable development. Just not at this cost. What these folk need to be focusing on is training people on recycling and actually getting mass transportation implemented in an economically reasonable fashion. We could save billions by recycling all the junk we throw away. And we wouldn't have to throw nearly a much away if the manufacturers didn't package stuff the way they do.
Bottom line is, we don't need to go off the deep end and start suggesting I need to quit having kids b/c it may affect the earth in a thousand years. That's obsurd and awfully presumptious to make those kinds of predictions. What we need to do is get the main public just to do its small extra part and increase awareness.
It's kindof like these zero-emission vehicles. They are doing very little for our environment. If we want to make a real difference, we need to start replacing the old tractor-trailers and old pickup trucks that burn as much oil as gas. And the (should I say it?) school buses and public transportation buses that spew more pollutants in the air at each stop than 50 cars.
We need to focus where we can make a difference, rather than demanding the auto makers to spend billions on R&D to save a few points in emissions. It's called the law of diminshing returns. Let's be smart about this rather than expect everyone to conform to some eccentric lifestyle.

I'm familiar with this site. It's based on the mathematical formulas and assumptions of the programmers. Garbage in, garbage out. It is a good tool to get people thinking about their impact.

And I disagree with civilengr that population size doesn't play a role in environmental impact. It's not either/or. And it's not a matter of saying YOU should not have all the kids YOU WANT. But many people around the world would like to limit the size of their families, for a variety of reasons, economic, environmental, and just knowing what they can handle given their individual circumstances. Population stabilization doesn't mean everyone has to have the same number of children. But some limits need to be recognized. When women are given the choice many would prefer smaller families, so that each child can be better cared for. That doesn't mean some families can't handle more, but it does mean that some can handle LESS.

Many places in the world don't even have clean WATER for drinking and many of their children die of dysentery. Maybe they don't need other forms of birth control.

Americans are so spoiled rotten that they can't see beyond their computers, cellphones, IPODS, SUVs, chemical- and water-dependent lawns (for which we use drinking water).

This site was to remind you that there might be a bit of room for improvement on your part. When a person flies off on their broom because someone suggests that they might make a few changes to their lifestyle, it kind of makes other people wonder just what kind of lifestyle they have, doesn't it?

Sue

Belgianpup, I don't disagree that Americans are a bit spoiled. What I disagree with is the idea that it's land that's spoiling us, rather than measuring our consumption of petroleum or metal ores, or how much waste we produce.

Dan