The problem with footprint calculators

I took the Global Footprint calculator from the Global Footprint Network.  I scored a horribly unsustainable but relatively low (for an American) 3.9, but only because my life is a little more minimalist than I'd care to admit.  I'm always a bit skeptical about these ecological footprint and carbon calculators.  Oh I like the general concept, and there is a need to reduce our global impact.  But it seems that the more dishonest calculators are programmed to reinforce a political agenda while the more honest calculators fall victim to global generalizations at the expense of the facts on the ground. 

For example, this footprint calculator valued the difference of a vegan vs. a pure carnivore at 0.8 earths (with 50% local food).  That's a pretty large gulf considering that a well rounded vegan diet requires the long distant import of a wide variety of vegetables...especially if you live in Tucson (A vegan friend of mine hated living in Tucson and found paradise in Portland, Oregon).  Of course global meat production is known for its inefficiencies.  A 2006 United Nation report, titled “Livestock’s Long Shadow,” calculated that the global beef production contributed to about 18% of the worlds green house gasses.  The report exaggerated a little in that it added in slash and burn clear cutting of the rainforest and the CO2 produced in fertilizer production, but it was still a damning report.  Based on that data beef can be viewed rather negatively, however, that was a global average.  The United States is very efficient in meat production...with the EPA estimating a global annual greenhouse contribution of 3-5%.  Within the US there is also a wide variety of efficiencies, from feed lot dairy steers to open range cattle.  I'd argue that rangeland forage and water are a renewable resources, and sustaining that system conserves and maximizes biodiversity.  So meat from these sources would have a very low footprint cost.  Of course I am looking at the extremes of the calculator (vegan vs. carnivore), but the gist of the calculator is that meat is always bad and vegan is always good, and that's simply not true.

X Diamond Ranch in the White Mountains

Another generalization within this calculator, and many others like it, is the view on energy costs.  Here the obsessive global mantra is that renewable is good and everything else is bad.  When electricity consumption is set to $466 a month the footprint impact of just that energy is 3.3 earths without renewable energy, but only 0.4 earths with renewable energy.  Now renewable energy can be a low cost alternative.  Minus the manufacturing costs and transport, once installed there is little addition impact.  As solar panels on roofs this would lower a person's impact, but that is not how we do renewable energy in this country.  No, we crisscross the wilderness with invasive weed spreading roads for bird slaughtering towers and clear cut acres upon acres for solar panels.  That energy is renewable, but it is about as far from green and minimizing your footprint as you can get.  

 

Ivanpah Solar Power Plant.  5 square miles of clear cut Mojave Desert

Now I know the point isn't accuracy at the individual level.  The point is to demonstrate that our lifestyle is not sustainable and that various parameters we all live by impact our unsustainability differently.  I get that, and I get that the general infrastructure and services of our nation make us unsustainable by default.  A calculator can be a good guide in understanding where we as individuals and we as a nation need to change to better our future, especially as we approach 10 billion people.  We do have to start somewhere and there are steps we can all take to reduce our global impact.  However, the calculator still needs to be relevant at the local level to be influential enough to convince people to change.  To do that the calculator needs to be very careful to avoid generalities that don't represent facts on the ground.