Human Footprint Part 9

Today, there are more than 550 animals listed as endangered or threatened in the United States because of our expanding footprint, they range from the mosquito eating gray bat to the grizzly bear. Each year, development drains 110,000 acres of wetlands, a unique ecosystem home to many species under threat. And our ever increasing demand for water also alters our landscape. The once mighty Colorado River now barely trickles into the sea. What does it mean if we lose a gray bad or a fish or a bear? Most of us will never see these creatures anyway. With so much to worry about in our own lives, why should we be concerned? Well, because they're important. Like us, they all have a role to play in the overall balance of things. The problem is we're only just starting to figure out what that role is. Take the gray bat, for example, it lives in riverside caves in the summer, and it eats up to a thousand mosquitos an hour every night. 

A thousand mosquitos that would otherwise breed more mosquitos. That little bat leaves a footprint, just like us. As we move forward step by step, it's easy to overlook the magnitude of our actions. But when we look back over our entire lives, we will have a surprising perspective of our human footprint. The potatoes are going to go through a pig farm as we did with the bananas. We've given some clothes already to some of the shelters as well as Salvation army. The aluminum cans are going back to a recycle. Ducks are going back to Arizona where they came from. The bread that we will eat utilizing a shot. We hope to get that away to shelters. The newspapers are going back to a recycling plant tomorrow. 

There are wine bottles which will go for recycled and same with the plastics. They get melted down and used in certain products such as park benches. So it's all recyclable. And then the final final reveal is all of those things put together. So your entire life consumption laid out in front of the house. We've been laying out some of the foods and materials we consume in our lives to build up a picture of our human footprint. We have also seen how far some of our everyday goods have traveled. We've seen what goes into a sneaker. What makes up a cell phone. We've seen part of what we accumulate in our homes. And all the clothes we wear in a lifetime. Now our couple are retired. Even though we can keep reasonably fit and healthy as we get older, we'll visit the doctor more. 

On average, we'll see our physician or go to the hospital 263 times. We'll have undergone surgery and waited in the emergency room. Been attacked by unknown viruses, complained about stress and suffered countless colds. We will have taken different medicines both prescribed and over the counter. We will have had many inoculations, and we will have swallowed thousands of pills. This many 37,320 of them in a lifetime. The oldest part of us is our brain, the black box of our life, containing all our memories, as we look back through an album of our lives, we are reminded of all the stages we have grown through. Even as we get older and wiser when we reflect on our lives, it's extraordinary how the numbers add up. 

All the things which we've never had time to take stock of. The 1700 people we have known the 62,433 miles we have walked. The 24 million images we will have seen. And the millions of sounds we will have heard. They give us the chance to think about our lives in material terms. All the milk we drink and everything that goes into making the diapers we wear for our first years. The eggs we eat. The oranges we peel. The bananas we devour. The beer we drink. The books we read. The soda we snap open. The showers we take. And the waste we throw away. We have laid out just a part of what we each go through in a lifetime. And assembled it in one place. 

It looks like this. We bring nothing into this world and we can take nothing out of it. But while we're here, we help transform it for better or worse. A life gone by in 415 million blinks of an eye. This is the legacy we will leave behind for those yet to come. This is our impact on Planet Earth. This is our human footprint.