Ecological Footprint

According to the quiz, if everyone lived like me, we would need 6.3 earths. This is a horrible score, especially considering that that is a higher score than the average for people in the United States. I feel like the reason why I scored this way is because I eat meat everyday, I have a big house, and I drive frequently due to my far commute to school and work. Through exploring the scenarios, if I reduced my meat consumption by half, my impact would go down to 5.7 earths. If I purchased products with less packaging and that used 100% post-consumer recycled material, my impact would decline even further to 5.4 earths. I think my biggest problem is the fact that I live in a 3200 sq ft home. What the quiz doesn't realize though is the fact that I live in this house with my parents who are fairly elderly and I am rarely home. We don't use a lot of electronic appliances and much of the house is unused. Despite this, my ecological footprint would still be quite large. If everyone on earth lived like American citizens, we would not be able to have a very large population on earth. We would probably only be able to hold about 1 billion and a half people.