One afternoon this past Summer, I was walking home from the bus stop feeling pretty amazing. The day was warm and the birds were out, including my favorite blue heron - the unofficial groundskeeper of The Boneyard Creek in Champaign. In terms of people though, I didn't see a soul - I had the whole park to myself. Being quite the daydreamer (and egalitarian), I started thinking: how much space does a human being have on this Earth? Given that two-thirds of our planet is open ocean, and that we can't make much use of deserts, glaciers and the like, we end up having an average of two hectares (twenty-four thousand square yards) of usable land for each peep.
Let's consider the thought experiment in which we each are the sole inhabitants of our two hectares* on which we can do whatever we please. Cultivate some crops, maybe grow some mangoes (or some kiwifruit - they are really yummy too). Raise a pet giraffe. Or go all out and have a pride of lions or an ambush of tigers (or maybe even some ligers!). Run around naked. Y'know, whatever works for you. One last thing: there are walls between each person's two hectare lot. These are HIGH! Higher than giraffes can reach. Higher than the Great Glass Elevator. High enough so the atmosphere over our land stays over our land and doesn't move over to our neighbor's area. So if we are responsible for our own isolated ecosystem, if we have to breathe in only our designated air, what is the likelihood of us polluting? Probably a lot less than if we're all free to roam around as we are now. The fact of the matter is that we don't live in our own little bubble. We share this planet so we can't be selfish and ruin things for others by hurting our Earth. We're all in this together.
*Obviously this idea is very oversimplified. For example, aquatic life is very important in maintaining balance too! So we can each have about four hectares of open ocean, which, although inaccessible, allow some atmospheric regulation (e.g. from plants and bacteria performing photosynthesis).
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