Weight of the World

I know it’s not good to dwell on impossible questions, however, there may be an answer to this one.  I don’t think it would be easy to get though, it would mean everyone being honest, no, really honest!!

So, What is the weight of the world?  Not its mass, that, according to google is:

mass of Earth = 5.9742 × 10²⁴ kilograms

What I was thinking about was the weight, and wondered if it was proportional to the amount of pressure we put on the earth:  Perhaps the harder we stand, the greater the weight on the world, no prizes for guessing I’ve been listening to Alastair McIntosh on MP3, somehow I managed to miss all three of his appearances this year at Greenbelt!

So what is the weight of the world?  Well if we all calculate our footprint, how heavy we are on earth’s resources, how many tons of fuel a year we use for starters add to that the food we consume and the weight of the rubbish we throw away, add all the figures together and give it a value in weight…

Ok, it’s an impossible question, however it is possible to do in terms of carbon, I tried this calculator, it’s quite worrying that I don’t think that we as a family use a great deal of resources, however we would still have to cut our footprint by two thirds to achieve the global target…