why one earth?

It's important for all 7 billion of us to live within one earth equivalence. We only have one planet.  Except for the Blue sky space billionaires, we're stuck here. 

One earth is all we have. More than one earth is unsustainable. 

We currently use about 1.7 earths overall.  The USA uses about 4-6 earths, Europe about half that.  This is unsustainable   Last time I checked we only have one of these 'earths'... somethings gotta give.  How can we adapt our current lifestyles to living within our means - one earth equivalence?

My applied ethos¹ is walking my talk. If I’m going to tell others that it’s best to live within one earth, the least I can do is live within one earth myself. It’s easy once my heart aligns with Gaia and once I understood the frailty of our current systems and structures and how utterly unsustainable they are.

One concept illustrating this is ‘earth overshoot day’: it’’s currently August 21 for the USA.
Earth Overshoot Day marks the date when we have used more from nature than our planet can renew in the entire year.²

1Applied ethics, ethos: principle-based ethical approaches often result in solutions to specific problems that are not universally accepted. (wikipedia definition)  2https://www.overshootday.org

measuring one earth equivalence

Let’s start with the definition of one earth: Every individual and country’s Ecological Footprint has a corresponding Planet Equivalent, or the number of Earths it would take to support humanity’s Footprint if everyone lived like that individual or average citizen of a given country. It is the ratio of an individual’s (or country’s per capita) Footprint to the per capita biological capacity available on Earth (1.72 gha in 2011). In 2011, the world average Ecological Footprint of 2.7 gha equals 1.54 Planet Equivalents.¹

To measure a one earth equivalence requires an ecological footprint calculation. A good introduction to the concept of ecofootprinting is Annie Leonard’s ‘Story of stuff’² .

An ecological footprint is the measure of how much area of bologically productive land and water an individual, population or activity requires to produce all the resources it consumes and to absorb the waste it generates,³ There were 12 billion hectares of biologically productive land and water on Earth in 2013. Dividing by the number of people alive in that year (7 billion) gives 1.72 global hectares per person. that’s about 4 acres per person ⁴ .
The more advanced Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method measures Food, Shelter, Mobility, Goods and Service. The official definition of LCA is governed by ISO14000 series. Since my firm used to provide ISO certification services, I was intimately familiar with the discipline and sheer complexity of it all. In a nutshell: LCA isquantitative approach that assesses a product or service’s impact on the environment throughout its life. LCA attempts to quantify what comes in and what goes out of a product from “cradle to grave,” including the energy and material associated with materials extraction, product manufacture and assembly, distribution, use and disposal and the environmental emissions that result. LCA applications are governed by the ISO 14040 series of standards. ⁵
But all of this is complex! It’s not intuitive. My ethos is that if I can’t understand it easily and intuitively, then there’s something wrong with the concept or how it’s being presented. In the words of Tom Hanks (‘A league of their own’): ‘It’s supposed to be hard, if it were easy, everyone would be doing it.’ So let’s make it easy!
The watts method is what I prefer (although I prefer using joules rather than watts). It’s easy and I’m lazy. We all know the wattage on a light bulb. If you multiply #watts by the hours it’s on you can get the total watts used over a time period. Same goes for food, transport, materials, etc. There’s plenty of conversion tables on-line⁶. You do the arithmetic.

Look up the conversion factors (7), put together your total watts used and then convert it into watts/person/day. If you are between 1,500-2,500 watts - Congratulations! You’re living the life of one earth and Gaia thanks you.

It’s also possible for an entire community to live a high standard, uber-modern lifestyle within one earth. 

One such community is Sieben Linden ecoVillage in Germany where 140 people live like millionaires. There was a case study done by the University of Kassel that documents their village as living within 1.2 earths:
“interconnections with the region were analyzed. In order to carry out an eco-balance, process chain modeling was used. The results of the eco-balance were compared with reference cases and evaluated according to a list of sustainable criteria that took into account ecological, social and regional economic aspects.
The first step was to collect empirical data regarding production and energy throughputs in all areas. The food process was monitored for one year, multiple interviews regarding mobility and individuals’ throughputs. “8

The country of Switzerland is taking it to a whole new level with their commitment to creating a 2,000 watt society.  This is the threshold for their being continuously self-sustainable (remember they're land-locked). 

1GFN https://www.footprintnetwork.org

2https://storyofstuff.org

3From GFN – https://www.footprintnetwork.org

4From GFN -https://www.footprintnetwork.org

5GFN Global Footprint Network https://www.footprintnetwork.org

6One conversion web site: https://www.convert-me.com/en/convert/power/watt.html?u=watt&v=1

7 https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.php?page=about_energy_conversion_calculator      8 research study of three German ecoVillages July 2001- December 2003. http://www.uni-kassel.de/einrichtungen/en/cesr/research/projects/finished/projects-before-2010.html