new favorite show

recently i've discovered the show 30 days on FX, and i think it's fantabulous. it follows people who volunteer to leave their comfort zones behind for 30 days and totally submerge themselves into another lifestyle or culture... ranging from health, religion, and sexuality, to fossil fuel consumption (so far.) the most recent episode garnered super-huge bonus points in my book by letting me see kirksville again, however briefly and from however far away. 2 city dwellers spent some quality time with the dancing rabbit community there learning to be as efficient as human beings can be, right down to driving corn oil burning cars and recycling their own poo. i got to see shots of western's smokehouse when the carnivore got desperately meat-starved in the vegan environment and shots of truman's campus when they went dumpster diving to reclaim lost treasures.

using a website that calculates your ecological footprint as how many earths would be needed to sustain us all if everyone lived like you did, the two went from using over 12 earths to using around 1.5. which is really cool, until you realize that even this group of people that try to be as self-sufficient and eco-friendly as possible (hello, totally off the grid AND they recycle their own waste) uses more of the earth's resources per person than we have. what does that say?

of course i don't do nearly as well as they do, and i ranked at around 2.8 earths (again, what would be needed to sustain earth's pop if everyone lived like me), but i'm nowhere near 12. if you'd like to see what your 'footprint' is like, and get some other good info on being a responsible earthling, go to www.myfootprint.org