The Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives has a new report on the ecological footprint of Canadians that’s worth at least a quick glance.
For those who aren’t familiar with the concept, the “ecological footprint” is a measure of the impact of a wide range of human activities—energy, food, clothing, shelter, you name it—put in terms of a common unit: the number of acres of global land required to produce (or recover from) the impacts of those activities. The methodology lets us compare, say, the lifestyle of a Northwesterner with a Norwegian or a Nigerian, on more-or-less equal footing. Unsurprisingly, folks in industrialized countries—those of us can afford cars, big houses, lots of stuff, and food that’s
high on the food chain—have a relatively large “footprint.”
What’s most interesting about the CCPA study is that it looked at the ecological footprint of Canadians at different income levels (see the chart). The trend isn’t too surprising: the folks at the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder have a smaller footprint than those towards the top. What is a bit unexpected, though, is the big jump in the footprint of the richest decile. Apparently, a high-income lifestyle really does result in a significantly larger impact on the planet.
Frequently, we hear that only wealthy nations are able to fix environmental problems. If you’re just scraping by, there’s no way you’ll bother to protect parks, or limit pollution; you’ve got bigger fish to fry. This argument is often trotted out to support rapid economic growth as a way of protecting the planet. (For the geeks out there—the concept that environmental impacts decline as the economy grows is called “the environmental Kuznets curve.”)
But to the extent that ecological footprint measures are an accurate gauge of environmental impact, the “environmental Kuznets curve” is something approaching bunk. Wealthier nations tend to have higher footprints per capita, as do wealthier individuals within a nation. Economic growth, by itself, just won’t save the planet. The key, as always, is to make sure the right sorts of things are growing—something that the market, all by itself, simply doesn’t do.
morgan
Yeah, but the environmental Kuznet’s curve speaks to the relationship between macro-economics and present-day impact. The idea is for it to explain economy wide impacts from production and consumption rather than mezzo-consumption impacts. For one thing, the folks in the upper portions of the economic ladder tend to drive & fund more technological innovation, which everyone benefits from. Today’s second hand vehicles and refrigerators are more efficient energy users than those of years back. If the economy were driven by my investment dollars, we might still be using vacuum tube radios. Still, I don’t believe that technology alone will support the sustainability revolution, though this is what some use the EKC to rationalize. I do think that technology trading/transfer is important and that some technological innovation is useful. And, I’m surprised that the Ecological Footprint among those income deciles isn’t more divergent. Maybe, it’s harder in Canadia to be a super consumer than it is here. If the Redefining Progress were as ambitious and effective as Mathis has been with the EF, maybe we could see the relationship between the Genuine Progress Indicator and environmental impact.
Clark Williams-Derry
Morgan-I too was surprised by the comparatively narrow footprint gap between by rich and poor. I’d have to look more closely at the details, though, to figure out why that is. I think that food looms large in the ecological footprint calculation, and there’s not the same, enormous difference between the poor and the rich in per-capita food impacts as there is for, say airplane, car, and home heating emissions.