Last week I talked about GOOD’s Harmony Ecosystem chart and its efforts to better the world on a micro and macro scale. It turns out GOOD is not the only organization concerned with putting global concerns into perspective.

The NewScientist site features Blueprint For A Better World. The Blueprint begs the question “Are we getting better or worse?” and seeks to answer it through a series of charts representing different global issues over time. Each chart includes a thumbs up or a thumbs down symbol indicating whether or not a situation has improved internationally.

Looking at the big picture, it seems as though quality of life is improving even in developing countries. Less people are dying young, during childbirth, or of infectious diseases. Food, water, and education are also becoming more accessible and hunger and poverty have lessened slightly. We can thank, in part, the numerous charitable organizations striving to improve life in substandard living conditions for the decline in death rates and the improvement in quality of life. It’s nice to know that international efforts that promote change are fostering change as well.

Where do you think the people of planet earth are getting thumbs down?

The environment of course! Surprise, surprise.

Guess what country has the largest ecological footprint?

It’s the United States (shocking!) with around 9.5 hectares per person of consumption (the chart also suggests that 2.1 hectares is a “fair share of the world’s natural resources”). While other countries are still harming the environment, the US is making a King Kong sized footprint. Where is Captain Planet when we need him?

Along the same lines, the amount of deforestation has increased and so has CO₂ emissions.

Although there are efforts attempting to slow down environmental decay, not enough people are jumping on the bandwagon. Is there a lack of hard evidence that people can personally interact with regarding climate change? Or are people more willing to support the humanitarian causes over the environmental?

Also on the thumbs-down list is war, military spending, displaced persons, and natural disasters joining the environment on the global to-do list of improvements.

My suggestion is look at these charts in relation to the Harmony Ecosystem. This way you can address each issue first on the Blueprint by seeing how much it has improved or worsened and then on the Harmony chart where you can browse through current up-to-date issues, links, organizations and information about said issue.

That’s your homework for today ladies and gents.

And now, some CP goodness:

Makes Cents (11)

This entry was posted on Friday, September 11th, 2009 at 1:00 pm and is filed under Green, Living, Money. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Tags: Blueprint For A Better World, Charity, Disease, Environment, Environmentalism, GOOD, Harmony Ecosystem, Humanitarianism, NewScience, Poverty, Romi Levine, Screw You Recession, volunteerism