The Courier-Mail
By: Brian Williams
An international study has found that Australians have the fifth-largest individual ecological footprints in the world, up from sixth place two years ago.
It means national consumption has well outstripped the country's biological carrying capacity.
The World Wide Fund for Nature said in its biennial Living Planet Report that each Australian used more land and water than did British, Chinese, Russian and Indian citizens. It took 7.81ha to maintain the lifestyle of each Aussie, up from 6.76ha per person in 2006.
Only the United Arab Emirates, US, Kuwait and Denmark rated worse.
WWF Australia chief executive Greg Bourne said yesterday that industry and governments had to take urgent action to preserve Australia's remaining natural resources.
"We have the technology and capital to turn around our destructive excesses,'' Mr Bourne said. "The real question is, do we have the will?''
Energy-hungry practices that produced high carbon emissions, combined with cropping and grazing practices from Australia's large food-growing industries, contributed most to the ecological footprint. Despite the continent being inherently dry, the nation's water use was more than the global average.
Native species also continued to decline due to habitat loss and competition from feral animals and introduced plants.
"The unfolding disaster in the Murray-Darling Basin shows what happens when we continue to overdraw on the environment,'' Mr Bourne said.
WWF international director-general James Leape said the world was struggling with the consequences of over-valuing financial assets. Yet a more fundamental crisis loomed because environmental assets had been undervalued, he said.
The report showed that more than 75 per cent of the world's people lived in nations where consumption had outstripped biological capacity.
"Most of us are propping up our lifestyles and our economic growth by drawing, and increasingly overdrawing, on the ecological capital of other parts of the world,'' Mr Leape said.
Meanwhile, a new poll found Australians were seriously worried about climate change but many drew the line at catching the bus.
More than half of the respondents to the Australian National University phone poll conducted in September, before the financial meltdown, supported emissions trading and believed climate change posed a serious threat to their way of life.
Two-thirds said they would be prepared to accept a cut in living standards. More than half of those had cut car use for environmental reasons but most baulked at using public transport.