I listen to Marketplace frequently when I’m in the shower in the morning, right before 07:00. They have several desks and it amuses me that they still use that phrase. While I care about the environment, I am definitely not a tree hugger. However, I am a geek so when they mentioned the Consumer Consequences GAME, I had to play. All right, all right, I used to be a die-hard gamer and I still like them now and again. So I went to the sustainability section of American Public Radio and found my way to Consumer Consequences. I couldn’t help myself, I had to play. It is a flash game, and I don’t especially like running flash any more than I absolutely must, but I made an exception.

The goal behind the Consumer Consequences game is simple–if everyone lived like you, how many Earth’s would be required to support 6.6 billion of you (or me). Frankly, I wouldn’t want to live on a planet with 6.6 billion of me, but that is another point altogether.

First you build your avatar, and they have a surprising array of models that you can customize. The eyes even blink you. I wonder if they use a Fibonacci sequence to determine when they blink. Hmm, sounds like a question for Data.

Second, you pick your neighbourhood style and answer 6 blocks of questions about you. These go from the size and type of housing, power and fossil fuel usage, amount of waste and recycling, transportation habits, food/meal habits and shopping style.

While you enter all of this information, it keeps a running tally of the number of Earth’s required to keep me moving. I’m an American, so I take more than others by definition, right? I was doing OK until it asked me about air travel. While I don’t travel much on a day-to-day basic, I do fly frequently enough. I entered 120 hours per year, and I suddenly went waaaaaay high on my stats. They say that I take 19 global acres just to support my air travel, which is over 4 times the global average total acreage requirement.

The picture in the background kept changing to look more and more like Maryland — near Washington, DC. Not a pretty sight.

So my final score is a 7.2, and less is better (or more as a unix geek would say). I do some very good things environmentally and organically too. I’d hate to see what some others do.

The moral here–we all can do better.

Update: This is on the Digg homepage now.