Is Your State Consuming More Than Nature Can Provide?

Our never-ending appetite for food, water, and energy is driving the environment into the ground.

Data Points is a new series where we explore the world of data visualization, information graphics, and cartography.

Get too far into financial debt and creditors come calling. Fall into debt with nature and the consequences can be even more distressing: Hotter temperatures, shrinking farmland, and dried up reservoirs are only a few of the problems we're grappling with as a result of overtaxing the environment.

Data from a new report by the Global Footprint Network looks at which American states are running into the red with Mother Nature through such activities as burning fossil fuels, overfishing, and chopping down forests.

Our analysis looks at each state's ecological capacity—the ability of its environment to provide the resources that the state's residents use everyday, per capita. The numbers take into account how many acres of forest,

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