Share space for waste
Philosophy
2021
CO2 is probably the currently most famous waste. But as we are dissipative structures the problem of waste is as old as we are.
Different wastes have had their time to shine and even if their stardom has faded like many child actors they are still around but not getting the attention they need. Pesticides (remember DDT?), nuclear waste, CFC and the icebergs of plastics still lingers as problems.
Since in a system everything is connected our ecosystems ability to absorb our waste is affected by removing elements, like trees, from it and adding unfamiliar elements, like plutonium, so to compute how to fairly distributing the amount of space for waste it will also include space needed for resources.
Thankfully people have been thinking about these complex issues and have calculated our human effect on ecosystem in the measure ecological footprint. Biocapacity provides the ecological limit, how much removal and adding our ecosystems can take and the ecological footprint how much we remove and add.
Our population growth the share of safe operating space have been decreasing and is around 1.6 hectares or 16 000 m2 but our footprint is increasing with us grabbing and adding to our extinction.
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