Letting our feet do the talking
Last week I was asked to speak about green homes at a local housing forum. I thought it would be useful to put housing in context by showing a slide about the ecological footprint of people from different countries. I showed the footprint of a typical North American juxtaposed with the footprint of someone from Bangladesh. Needless to say, the North American’s footprint of 9.2 global hectares per capita looked positively gargantuan sitting next to Bangladesh’s ‘mini’ footprint of 0.6 global hectares per capita. I made a few comments about humanity’s ecological overshoot and pointed out that sadly the global average footprint is 2.7 global hectares per capita, while to be in balance with nature, this number should be 2.1 global hectares per capita. I ended this section of my talk by saying that we Canadians might want to look at homes that could reduce our footprint so that Bangladesh doesn’t need to subsidize our lifestyle so profoundly.
By the end of the day’s discussions and plenaries I realized that I hadn’t heard anything more about the ecological footprint which made me think my footprint diatribe had fallen on deaf ears. I was therefore very happy to hear the forum’s moderator remark in her wrap up comments that coincidentally her shoe size was ‘9′ just like her ecological footprint and that she would be going home to look at ways to fit into a size ‘2′ shoe! Since that day I have had a number of people who attended the forum thank me for introducing the concept of the ecological footprint.
These responses to the ecological footprint concept have started me thinking about the footprint as a means to communicate a complicated concept. The beauty of using this image as a metaphor for our impact on the earth is evidenced by its comprehensive, yet simple representation, and the fact that people can relate to it. The attractiveness of the footprint is made clearer still as we see it popping up in everyday conversations as well as in corporate and public policy documents. Ten years ago I would not have heard my local grocer speaking about the carbon footprint of his vegetables, but that is indeed what he speaks of.
To effect change in this world requires building a shared understanding of the challenge at hand. Maybe, just maybe my discussion of the ecological footprint helped to increase understanding about global resource depletion and the need for all of us to look for smaller shoes!
Alastair Moore lives in Vancouver and is an environmental consultant and co-founder of GreenWorks Building Supply. He wears size 11 shoes.