Uncategorized

• Published as “Neoliberal elite need a Christmas Carol-style conversion’

Scrooge’s awakening to humanitarian instincts and conversion to a spirit of generosity needs to be replicated at scale

Dr. Trevor Hancock

19 December 2023

693 words

It’s that time of year, when Charles Dickens’ story of Ebenezer Scrooge and the Cratchit family is everywhere. But it’s not just a charming story of how a mean old curmudgeon sees the light and becomes a kindly old gent and a generous benefactor to his employee, Bob Cratchit. It’s about the exploitation of the poor by the rich, and the appalling living and working conditions of the poor.

An article in The Guardian a couple of years ago quotes Dickens biographer Michael Slater to the effect that ‘A Christmas Carol’ is “Dickens’s reaction to the attitude of the government and many of the ruling classes in the 1840s … saying, if the poor couldn’t get work and couldn’t look after themselves, they’d have to go to the workhouses.” The article also quotes University of Cambridge Professor Robert Mayhew that the story is “a very seriously intended work of moral fiction”.

There are echoes of that same inhumane attitude to the poor around today, at a time when we find levels of inequality rising to levels not seen since the early 20^th century, the age of the plutocrats. According to the World Inequality Report (WIR) 2022, around 1900, globally, the ratio of the income of the top 10 percent and the bottom 50 percent was more than 16 to 1. By 1980 this had fallen to 8.5 to 1, but today it is back up to 15 to 1.

Inequalities in wealth distribution follow a similar pattern, which continues today. If we look at the top 1 percent globally, we see an extreme concentration of wealth and economic power: “between 1995 and 2021, the top 1 percent captured 38 percent of the global increment in wealth, while the bottom 50% captured a frightening [that is to say, frighteningly low] 2 percent”, the report notes.

While the level of inequality was less in Canada, we see the same pattern here. In 1900 the ratio of the income of the top 10 percent and the bottom 50 percent was a bit more than 3 to 1, dropping to 1.5 to 1 by 1980. But, notes the WIR, “income inequality in Canada has been rising significantly over the past 40 years”, and now sits at about 2.5 to 1.

The reasons for this are not hard to find: “income and wealth inequalities have been on the rise nearly everywhere since the 1980s, following a series of deregulation and liberalization programs which took different forms in different countries”;  in Canada, notes the WIR, it was due to a combination of “financialization, deregulation and lower taxes.”

This, of course, is the neoliberal revolution spearheaded by Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the USA. In the name of freedom, individual responsibility and the worship of wealth accumulation, neoliberalism rolled back the policies that had contributed to low levels of inequality.

But n an interview in Scientific American this month, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz was blunt: “Unfettered capitalism, unfettered innovation does not lead to the general well-being of our society . . . One can’t just leave it to the market”, he said. The authors of the WIR, were equally blunt: “addressing the challenges of the 21st century is not feasible without significant redistribution of income and wealth inequalities.”

Our modern-day Scrooges operate at a much larger scale. They are the neoliberal elite that runs many of our corporations, sit on their Boards and in many cases in Cabinet, and who support and are supported by the right-wing think tanks that peddle this neoliberal claptrap. And they are the billionaires who turn up at Davos and, most recently COP28. Of the 34 billionaires registered as delegates at COP28, an Oxfam analysis reported in The Guardian found, “at least a quarter . . . made their fortunes from highly polluting industries such as petrochemicals, mining and beef production.”

Scrooge’s awakening to humanitarian instincts and his conversion to a spirit of generosity needs to be replicated at scale among this neoliberal elite. Raher than putting profit and power first, they need to put people and planet first. That would be a desperately needed Christmas Carol for our times.

© Trevor Hancock, 2023

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

Single-family homes in suburban areas result in much higher home energy, transportation and infrastructure costs

Dr. Trevor Hancock

12 December 2023

700 words

Last week I looked at two major recommendations from the CHRM Consulting report on how to reduce our ecological footprint and create a One Planet Saanich and a One Planet Region; the need for energy efficiency and in particular energy-efficient transportation and reduced vehicle travel.

This week I continue this exploration by looking at key recommendations related to buildings. The next main recommendation is “In addition to energy efficiency and fuel switching we will make greater gains if we reduce the material intensity of our buildings, and ensure they are used more efficiently.”

Energy efficiency and fuel switching is already underway. As I noted last month, Saanich adopted BC’s Zero Carbon Step Code earlier this year and “does not recognize Renewable Natural Gas for compliance.” Another important initiative is the concept of ‘missing middle’ housing, which has been defined as “a range of house-scale buildings with multiple units – compatible in scale and form with detached single-family homes – located in a walkable neighbourhood”.

‘Missing middle’ housing lowers the ecological footprint in two main ways; at the level of the housing type, and at the level of urban form, a 2011 US EPA study noted. At the household level, the study stated, “the most striking difference is the variation in energy use between single-family detached homes and multi-family homes, due to the inherent efficiencies from more compact size and shared walls among units.”

The differences are dramatic: a single family dwelling (SFD) in a conventional suburban development uses 108 million BTUs for home energy use. But a multi-family dwelling in a transit-oriented development uses only 54 million BTUs for home energy. That is not just halving energy use, but household energy costs. The study added that using “moderate energy-efficient building technologies, such as those qualifying for Energy Star performance”, as well as ‘green automobiles’ could further reduce energy use, but not as much as housing location and type.

The data also reveal the second way in which missing middle housing is more sustainable; its transportation costs. A multi-family dwelling in a transit-oriented development uses only 41 million BTUs for transportation, whereas a single family dwelling (SFD) in a conventional suburban development uses 132 million BTUs, more than three times as much, in transportation energy.

The reasons are not hard to find. Low density urban sprawl makes transit unaffordable – there are simply not enough passengers to make it viable. At the same time, that low density, coupled with zoning that separates functions and street designs that are not well connected, make it hard to walk or even bike to key amentities and services. So most people, most of the time, have to drive to get anywhere – assuming they have a car. This is why the idea of more compact, more dense and walkable communities – the ‘15-minute community’ is gaining popularity.

Urban sprawl has other expensive inefficiencies baked in. The amount of infrastucture per household that has to be built and maintained is much greater for SFDs than for more dense urban forms. This makes it resource and energy inefficient and much more expensive per household.

A 2005 study by the Halifax Regional Municipality looked at service costs per household for 14 different services across eight different forms of urban settlement, from low density (1.2 people per acre) to high density (92 persons per acre). The differences in many cases are dramatic: Provision of roads varied from $1,053 to $26 per household, water from $425 to $42, sewers from $625 to $147, and policing and fire combined from $684 to $369. Overall servicing costs, including libraries, parks and recreation and other services amounted to $5,240 per household in low density areas, and to $1,416 in high density areas.

Clearly, on both economic and environmental grounds, sprawl must be actively discouraged and compact urban development and missing middle housing within existing urban areas encouraged. One way to do that, suggests a 2015 review of American experience in the Journal of Planning Literature, is “simply pricing public facilities properly”, a user-pays principle. If you want to build or live in low density, you have to pay the full lifetime cost of creating and maintaining that expensive infrastructure. That should help limit urban sprawl.

© Trevor Hancock, 2023

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

• Published as “We need smaller, more fuel-efficient cars, not more trucks and SUVs

Large SUVs and light trucks are vastly over-designed for the suburban market and very energy inefficient

Dr. Trevor Hancock

5 December 2023

701 words

Over the past few weeks I have dug into the details of Saanich’s ‘four planets’ ecological footprint (EF), as calculated by CHRM Consulting, while recognising this is an under-estimate, in that it does not account for our impact on biodiversity or the extent of our ‘toxics footprint’. This week, I start to look at the key recommmendations in the report for getting us to a ‘One Planet’ Saanich – which, of course, is also applicable to the whole region.

Given that our carbon emissions are a large part of our overall footprint, it makes sense that “an overarching priority for climate action is to minimize demand for energy and eliminate emissions from use of fossil fuels”, as the report states. It has always seemed to me that an important but often overlooked opportunity in that regard is to minimize energy demand by increasing efficiency, which some have argued is, in effect, our greatest new source of energy.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) calls energy efficiency the “first fuel” in the clean energy transition, providing “some of the quickest and most cost-effective CO₂ mitigation options while lowering energy bills and strengthening energy security”, and “the single largest measure to avoid energy demand in the Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario.” However, the IEA adds, “the pace of global energy intensity improvements had noticeably slowed in the second half of the last decade and virtually stalled during the first two years of Covid-19.” The good news is “efficiency progress has gained momentum, with annual energy intensity improvements expected to reach about 2% in 2022.”

A splendid – or actually, a terrible – example of inefficiency is the growth in sales of the large SUVs and light trucks we see everywhere, vastly over-designed for the suburban market and very energy inefficient. A report last month from the Global Fuel Economy Initiative (GFEI) reported “The growing market share and huge size of SUVs are undermining opportunities to mitigate the impact of vehicle improvements even with the growing shift to electric vehicles” (EVs).

Among other things they found globally SUVs are now 51 percent of the new car market, having largely squeezed out small and medium size cars, and that the average weight of a light duty vehicle “has reached an all-time high, exceeding 1.5 tonnes” meaning they require more materials, which increases their ecological footprint over and above their use of fossil fuels. Overall, they reported, “energy demand and CO₂ emissions could have fallen 30% more between 2010-2022 if vehicles had stayed the same size.”

The reason for this shift is pretty straightforward – SUVs are more profitable for the auto industry. The GVEI report notes they are “sold at a premium for proportionally lower manufacturing costs, which leads most of [the manufacturers] to resist and slow the transition to EVs.” But it clearly is not in the public interest to sell more and more, and larger and larger vehicles. It is way past time the government stepped in and mandated smaller vehicles – you don’t need a huge SUV or truck for commuting around the region.

In addition, it is time government stopped the crazy marketing of cars based on speed and/or the rugged great outdoors. The recent ban on a Toyota ad by the Advertising Standards Authority in the UK on the grounds that the ads ““condoned the use of vehicles in a manner that disregarded their impact on nature and the environment [and] had not been prepared with a sense of responsibility to society” sets an important precedent that Canada should follow.

But in addition to smaller, more energy efficient cars – and the GFEI also notes that “electric powertrains use three to six times less energy than internal combustion engine vehicles to travel the same distance” – the Saanich Ecofootprint report goes further, suggesting “we can have greater impact if we go beyond switching to electric vehicles and instead focus on reducing the demand for vehicle based travel.” 
That means stopping urban sprawl, densifying existing urban areas so they become more walkable, bikeable and livable, creating a better fit between where people live and where they work, using telecommuting  where appropriate, and creating good public transit, instead of wasting millions more dollars on flyovers for cars.

© Trevor Hancock, 2023

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

(Published as “We carry from birth a body-burden of toxic chemicals that we add to along the way”)

Decades of lax assessment coupled with the assumption that chemicals are innocent until proven guilty have left us and the ecosystem with a burden of toxins

Dr. Trevor Hancock

28 November 2023

700 words

Last week I noted the ecological footprint does not do a good job of including some forms of wastes. While biological wastes and materials going to landfill or recycling are accounted for, “Toxics and pollutants released from the human economy that cannot in any way be absorbed or broken down by biological processes . . . cannot be directly assigned an Ecological Footprint”, notes the Global Footprint Network. So on top of learning about and reducing our ecological footprint, we need to also understand and reduce what we might call our ‘toxics footprint’.

Unfortunately these pollutants include plastics, heavy metals such as mercury, and many synthetic chemicals, including pesticides, PCBs and PFAs (found in non-stick pans, fabrics, furnishings, shampoos and cleaning products), that were designed to be stable and not easily broken down by nature. Thus they are persistent – or in popular parlance, ‘forever chemicals’. We have known of their potential ecological and health impacts for decades – Rachel Carson, in her famous book ‘Silent Spring’, sounded a warning about pesticides way back in 1962 – more than 60 years ago.  

In the planetary boundaries framework they are part of one of the nine planetary boundary systems, the broader class of ‘novel entities’:  “new substances, new forms of existing substances and modified life forms” including “chemicals and other new types of engineered materials [read nano-particles] or organisms not previously known to the Earth system [read GMOs] as well as naturally occurring elements (for example, heavy metals) mobilized by [human] activities”

The big problem with these novel entities is two-fold: First, human activity disperses them widely around the planet and across ecosystems, contaminating many life-forms – a process know an eco-toxicity. Second, for some of these novel entities (in particular, persistent organic pollutants (POPs), heavy metals and nano-particles) nature – through a process known as bio-concentration – brings them together and concentrates them up the food chain.

And who sits at the top of those food chains? Us, making this process perhaps the most elegant and potent form of nature’s revenge on humanity that I can think of. But its not just us, its other predators too. Locally, we have seen high levels of POPs threaten the health of orca, while DDT nearly wiped out bald eagles and other raptors in the 1970s. We and they all carry from birth a body-burden of these chemicals, many of which are known to be toxic in various ways – and we add to that burden throughout our lives.

But even worse, in many cases we do not know what their toxic effects are, and we certainly don’t know what the effects of their multiple potential interactions are. This is hardly a new problem. An important 1979 report on ecotoxicity from the Canadian Environmental Advisory commented on “the unavoidable limits to scientific knowledge and the limitations of the classical scientific method, particularly as it relates to toxicology.”

Forty years later, nothing much has changed. In finding last year that the planetary boundary for novel entities had been transgressed, Linda Pearson and her colleagues noted “There are an estimated 350,000 chemicals (or mixtures of chemicals) on the global market. Nearly 70,000 have been registered in the past decade” – and many of those have been registered only in emerging economies, where chemicals management capacity is lower. Even where capacity is high, they note, such as the European Union, of 12,000 or so chemicals registered with the 10 year-old REACH program, 80 percent are yet to be assessed.

So what we have, in effect, is a decades long unauthorised experiment to find out what happens when we expose humans, other species and entire ecosystems to long-term contamination with multiple, low dose, persistent toxins and loose novel entities into our ecosystems.

This results from decades of lax assessment of these chemicals, coupled with the bizarre assumption that chemicals, like people, are innocent until proven guilty. All this has been facilitated by a chemical industry that has shown time and again that it will fight tooth and nail to keep its products on the market, and will always put its profits over the wellbeing of people and the planet.

That is our toxics footprint, and it is a dangerously unknown and shameful legacy.

© Trevor Hancock, 2023

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

• (Published as “Ecological footprint doesn’t include impact of methane, loss of biodiversity”

The way the ecological footprint is calculated means the estimate that Saanich’s is equivalent to four planets is an underestimate

Dr. Trevor Hancock

20 November 2023

700 words

Important though the ecological footprint is, the way it is calculated means the estimate that Saanich’s ecological footprint is equivalent to four planets is an underestimate. That is because a lot of different activities – energy use, food growing, materials for buildings, modes of transportation, waste disposal – are all expressed as a measure of land area used. It is a useful measure of our impact on the Earth, but it is incomplete, because not everything can be converted to an area of land.

We need to be aware of this, so we do not only focus on the footprint and neglect other important ways in which what we do in Saanich has a harmful impact on the local, regional and global ecosystems that sustain us and all life. 

So this week I want to explore the first two of three key areas of human impact not adequately captured by the ecological footprint, but that still need to be addressed if we are to become a One Planet Region. These map to the three global ecological crises described by the UN – climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.

The ecological footprint does not measure climate change or energy use per se, but measures carbon emissions and converts that into the area of land that would need to be planted in trees to absorb that amount of emissions. However, that does not work for methane – a short-lived but potent greenhouse gas – because it is not taken up and sequestered by nature. So the footprint does not account for methane, despite its global warming potential.

Back in 2009, researchers at the University of Limerick in Ireland estimated the impact of including methane in Ireland’s ecological footprint. They found that if the global warming potential of methane were included, Ireland’s footprint would be about 20 percent higher.    

This underestimate of the footprint assumes greater significance when we recognise that the amount of methane being released to the atmosphere is far greater than corporations and governments have been telling us. Gas systems leak at all points from extraction through transmission in pipelines to end use; if the gas is turned into LNG there are also leaks during the liquefaction and shipping stages.

The crucial question is how much they leak. A 2023 article in Environmental Research Letters reported that leakage of anywhere between 2 and 9 percent (depending on the timeframe used) still means that replacing coal with gas is beneficial. But that same article noted that leakage rates in the US can be as high as 66 percent, while the recent ‘Production Gap Report’ from, among others, the UN Environment Programme, notes that improved measurements of “methane leakage along the gas supply chain have substantially reduced the expected climate benefits of replacing coal with gas.”   

The second ecological crisis that is not included in an estimate of Saanich’s ecological footprint is the loss of biodiversity. The Global Footprint Network clearly states: “The Ecological Footprint is not an indicator of the state of biodiversity, and the impact of a particular activity or process on biodiversity does not directly affect the Ecological Footprint calculation for that activity.”

However, the Network adds, “the Ecological Footprint can be used as a large-scale indicator of the underlying drivers or pressures that cause biodiversity loss.” So we need to recognise both that a four (or more) planet footprint places an enormous strain on nature and also document all the ways in which we harm ecosystems and reduce biodiversity, whether it be damaging local streams and their salmon runs or eating a high-meat diet sourced in part from the conversion of the Amazon rainforest to pasture.

The third impact that is not well represented by the ecological footprint is our use and dispersal of toxic chemicals: “Toxics and pollutants released from the human economy that cannot in any way be absorbed or broken down by biological processes . . .  cannot be directly assigned an Ecological Footprint”, notes the Network.

Next week I will discuss the increasingly alarming toll of these chemicals on both human health and the health of other species and entire ecosystems, and what we need to do locally about that, as well as about methane emissions and biodiversity loss.

© Trevor Hancock, 2023

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

Obvious ways to reduce our ecological  footprint include switching to a low meat or “flexitarian” diet,  reducing food waste and creating compact, walkable “15-minute”  neighbourhoods

Dr. Trevor Hancock

14 November 2023

700 words

Over the past two weeks I have dug into the details of Saanich’s ‘four planets’ ecological footprint (EF), as calculated by CHRM Consulting. This week I look at the key recommmendations in the report for getting us to a ‘One Planet’ Saanich – which, of course, is also applicable to the whole region.

However, it is worth recalling that almost half (46 percent) of Saanich’s footprint is due to the activities of the federal and provincial governments, so while there is a lot that local governments and citizens can do to reduce our footprint, we also depend upon and must urge those governments to do their part.

The headlines from the report are:

• Our food consumption alone (24 percent of our EF) is equivalent to one planet, with 69 percent of that due to meat, fish, eggs and dairy consumption;
• Sixty two percent of the transport footprint (which is 17 percent of the EF) is due to light vehicles (mostly private) and 22 percent is attributable to air travel;
• Likewise, 62 percent of the buildings footprint (7 percent of the EF) is due to the energy used to operate our residential, commercial and institutional buildings; and finally
• Almost half the waste stream (which represents consumables and is 6 percent of the EF) is in the category of natural fiber textiles, rubber, and non-demolition wood waste and another quarter is paper, while 12 percent is plastic.

First, and understandably given the above, “an overarching priority for climate action is to minimize demand for energy and eliminate emissions from use of fossil fuels.” At a time when irresponsible political leaders are calling for a reduction or even elimination of the carbon tax, it is important to recognize that the tax is, as Minister Guilbeault stated a year ago, a tax on pollution. 

It is also important to recall that the ecological footprint does not include methane. But numerous reports and studies have shown that liquified natural gas (LNG) is not the ‘clean’ fuel it is marketed to be (nor is it ‘natural’). Indeed, once all the fugitive methane emissions from its extraction, transportation, liquefaction, further transportation and combustion are taken into account, it may be more damaging than coal. Which is why moves to prevent new gas heating installations in Nanaimo, Victoria and elsewhere make sense.

Given that the largest part of the footprint (after the federal and provincial governments’ share) comes from food and food waste, an obvious way to reduce our footprint is to switch to a low meat or ‘flexitarian’ diet, and to markedly reduce food waste at all stages along the supply chain. 

This should be coupled with federal and provincial initiatives to encourage and support sustainable agricultural practices, such as the recently announced Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership between the federal and provincial governments.

Also noteworthy is the second goal of the BC Ministry of Agriculture and Food’s Service plan, which includes reference to regenerative, low-carbon farming, although there is not a single mention in the plan of either organic or ecological farming. Locally, the Sandown Centre for Regenerative Agriculture in North Saanich points the way to “a thriving, climate change-resilient, sustainable local food system.”

With respect to making transportation more sustainable, the report states: “We can have greater impact if we go beyond switching to electric vehicles and instead focus on reducing the demand for vehicle-based travel.” Supportive policies include creating compact, walkable ’15-minute neighbourhoods’, promoting electric vehicle sharing, and creating the infrastructure for walking, biking and rolling.

When it comes to buildings, BC’s Step Code supports municipalities in gradually increasing the energy efficiency of buildings. Saanich, for example, adopted the Zero Carbon Step Code earlier this year and “does not recognize Renewable Natural Gas for compliance.” Other useful measures include building smaller, multi-family, higher density homes that are more affordable, use fewer materials and require less heating and cooling.

Finally, we can reduce consumption and waste by placing more focus on sharing, re-use and repair in addition to recycling, and by buying less ‘stuff’.

In addition to the measures identified in the report, there are other areas of action that are not captured in the way the ecological footprint is measured. I will explore them next week.

© Trevor Hancock, 2023

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

• Published as “Digging into our transportation, buildings and consumables footprint”

Transportation, the next largest component after food, accounts for 17 per cent of Saanich’s ecological footprint, and fossil fuel accounts for almost all of that

Dr. Trevor Hancock

7 November 2023

701 words

Last week I began digging into the details of Saanich’s ‘four planets’ ecological footprint (EF), as calculated by CHRM Consulting; the report is available on the District of Saanich website. I looked at our food consumption and associated food waste, which at 24 percent is the largest share of the EF (setting aside the 46 percent of the EF that is due to the local activities of the provincial and federal governments). This week, I will look at the other three main categories – transportation, buildings, and consumables and waste.

Transportation, the next largest component after food, accounts for 17 percent of Saanich’s footprint. Fossil fuel (gasoline, diesel, aviation and marine fuel) accounts for almost all of that, including the fuel used to operate vehicles (60 percent of the transportation footprint) and to extract, process and transport those fossil fuels (a further 28 percent of the transport EF). Another 10 percent of the footprint is the energy embodied in the materials used to construct all those vehicles, which includes the impacts of extraction and processing of those materials, with the remaining 2 percent being the land area taken up by roads and related infrastucture (except parking lots).

When we examine the EF by type of transportation, the largest contributor is light duty vehicles (cars, light trucks) at 62 percent, followed by air travel (22 percent), heavy duty vehicles (6 percent), off-road vehicles (4 percent) and BC Ferries and other watercraft (3 percent). The reason for all the focus on private vehicle use and flying is obvious.

The third main category in Saanich’s overall EF, at 7 percent of the total, is buildings, and most (62 percent) of the EF of buildings is due to the energy used to operate them; heating, cooling, lighting and so on. A further 19 percent of the EF of buildings is due to the materials and energy embodied in their construction (i.e. the land area needed to extract and process the materials. used in construction, as well as the energy used for extraction, processing and construction) while a further 13 percent is due to the energy used to extract, process and transport the fuels used in the ‘operating’ category. Finally, the remaining 6 percent of the EF of buildings is the land area on which they sit.

The report also tells us that 65 percent of the buildings footprint is attributable to residential buildings, with the rest due to a combination of commercial and institutional buildings.

The category of consumables and waste, which represent 6 percent of Saanich’s EF, is actually calculated based on what is disposed of annually, based on a 2022 regional waste audit. The assumption is that, on the one hand, “the majority of materials consumed are disposed within the year”, and on the other that the “steady flow of durable goods disposed every year [is] equivalent to the new durable goods supply entering the region.” It also includes liquid waste, but that constitutes only a tiny fraction of the consumables and waste footprint.

The distinction between embodied materials and embodied energy is also important in this category. Embodied materials – “the forest and crop areas needed to produce the disposed of materials such as paper, wood, and textiles” – make up 44 percent of the EF of consumables and waste, with almost all the rest (52 percent) being the embodied energy of those materials – “the emissions associated with producing the materials”,

Importantly, the emissions reported do not include methane emissions from landfill and sewage systems, since unlike carbon emissions, methane cannot be sequestered, so it cannot be converted to a land equivalent in order to calculate the ecological footprint. This is a useful reminder that, if anything, the EF underestimates the true impact of our activities.

The largest component of consumables – 44 percent – is ‘non-compostable organics’, of which about 80 percent is textiles; paper comes next at 24 percent, then plastic (12 percent) and household hygiene products (9 percent).

Next week, I will look at what all this means for local action. What should we focus on, where are the big wins, and what policy actions do we need, not just locally, but provincially and federally, to create a One Planet region.

© Trevor Hancock, 2023

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

• (Published as “We need to get our ecological footprint down to one planet”)

Over two-thirds of our food footprint is attributable to animal-based foods, which are much more energy and land-intensive

Dr. Trevor Hancock

31 October 2023

702 words

As I reported last week, CHRM Consulting has just completed an updated report on the ecological footprint of Saanich, which is available on the District of Saanich website. The report found Saanich’s footprint was equivalent to four planets’ worth of biocapacity each year, meaning we require four times more biologically productive land and water area than is available to us on a fair global basis.

Of that, almost half (46 percent) results from “senior government impacts”, including “infrastructure and services provided to citizens that are not captured at the local level”. We pay for them through our federal and provincial taxes, so they are not included in the consumption data used in the ecoCity Footprint Tool to calculate the local footprint.

The remaining 54 percent consists of the footprint associated with food (24 percent), transportation (17 percent), buildings (7 percent) and consumables and waste (6 percent). The report provides considerable detail on what makes up each component of the footprint, and what can be done to reduce our footprint, with the aim of getting to a One Planet footprint as soon as possible.

Our food consumption (and waste) is the largest component outside of senior government impacts. Since local data on food consumption was not available – it would need a special survey – national averages were used instead. Thus this report tells us about what our impact is and what would need to happen nationally, and presumably, for the most part, locally.

First, food accounts for 20 percent of what is known as our consumption-based greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions; that is, emissions anywhere in the world associated with the production, processing and distribution of the food we consume in Canada. Of that, only 9 percent of the emissions come from the transportation of food, meaning we need to focus mainly on what we eat, rather than where it comes from.

This is in fact an underestimate, as the way the footprint is calculated does not include methane, and we know farming is a major source of methane. The UN Environment Programmme reports agriculture accounts for about 40 percent of all human-linked methane emissions, mainly from livestock (manure and animal emissions – cow farts, to put it simply) but also from rice paddies. Moreover, because methane is a more potent GHG than CO₂ and only remains in the atmosphere for a decade or so, an increase or reduction in methane can have quite a rapid impact on global warming over the short term.

Overall, the footprint of our food consumption alone is equivalent to one planet, in part because of the amount of land needed to produce our food. As a recent article in Anthropocene Magazine noted, “Planet Earth is basically a farm . . . over half of all habitable land is used for agriculture.” More than half of the food footprint (54 percent) is due to our consumption of meat, fish and eggs, with a further 15 percent due to dairy consumption, meaning over two-thirds (69 percent) is attributable to animal-based foods, which are much more energy and land-intensive.

Moreover, the report notes, “In Canada, about half the food we produce is wasted”, with a significant part of that waste occurring in the supply chain. So not surprisingly, the report suggests: “We can achieve dramatic reduction in our footprint and emissions if we prioritize reducing food waste across the supply chain and also shift to low carbon food choices.”

But reducing the ecological footprint of our agrifood system is not simply a matter of changing what we eat and wasting less food. There are implications for the entire system of agriculture, as a recent article in PLOS Climate showed. The international team of researchers used a global food system model to examine how the agrifood system could actually remove CO₂ from the atmosphere. They conclude that while low-meat ‘flexitarian’ diets can contribute, the largest impacts will come from “hydrogen-powered fertilizer production, livestock feeds, organic and inorganic soil amendments, agroforestry, and sustainable seafood harvesting practices”, all of which we could and should do locally.

Next week I will look at what the report says about transportation, buildings, and consumables and waste, and what else it will take to get to a One Planet Saanich.

© Trevor Hancock, 2023

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

Some nations use nowhere near their fair share of the Earth’s biocapacity and resources, while others — such as Canada, with its nearly five-planet footprint — have far more

Dr. Trevor Hancock

23 October 2023

700 words

The concept of a One Planet region is very simple; we only have one planet, and thus need to live within its limits. That should have been been obvious all along, but never more so than since 1972, when two key books – ‘Only One Earth’ and ‘The Limits to Growth’ – were published for the First UN Conference on the Environment in Stockholm.

Back then, according to the Global Footprint Network, our collective global ecological footprint – the ecological assets that the world’s population requires to produce the natural resources it consumes and to absorb its waste, especially carbon emissions – was equivalent to just over one planet’s worth of annual biocapacity; today it is 1.75 planets.

But in utilising 1.75 planets’ worth of biocapacity we are “drawing down the resources of the planet faster than they can be regenerated”, as the Saanich report (see below) neatly puts it. As a result we have – not surprisingly – crossed six of the nine planetary boundaries for key natural systems that support life on Earth, and we are approaching two more.

Moreover, our overall global footprint hides inequalities. Some nations use nowhere near their fair share of the Earth’s biocapacity and resources, making it hard if not impossible to meet the basic needs of their citizens, while others – such as Canada, with its nearly 5-planets footprint – have far more.

But think for a moment about the implications of being a five-planet country. First, if the whole world lived the way we do, we would need four more planets. Second, if we continue to utilise five planet’s worth of biocapacity, we are in effect making it impossible for those who have less to get the biocapacity and resources they need in order to live lives of decent quality.

Third, reducing our footprint to one planet’s worth of biocapacity means an 80 percent reduction in our footprint. Happily, since over 60 percent of our footprint is our carbon footprint, getting to net-zero carbon emissions gets us a long way there. (However, we would still have a significant carbon footprint, since net-zero is not zero; it means we emit as much carbon as the Earth (or our technology) can re-absorb.)

I noted last week that the District of Saanich recently released the report by CHRM Consulting on Saanich’s ecological and carbon footprints in 2021. Saanich’s ecological footprint, which is probably representative of the Greater Victoria region as a whole, was equivalent to four planets. While this is a bit better than Canada’s five planets footprint, we’re still a long way from being a One Planet region, needing a 75 percent reduction in our footprint.

What the Saanich report shows us, in some detail, is what makes up our four-planet footprint, and what we need to do to reduce it. Unlike the top-down method used to calculate national footprints, the Saanich report uses the ecoCity Footprint Tool developed by Dr. Jennie Moore at the BC Institute of Technology in Vancouver. It uses local consumption-based data, where it is available, with national or provincial data extrapolated to the local level where needed.

Its advantage is that it “is aligned with the typical spheres, or categories, of municipal planning – buildings, transportation, waste and water” as well as food. The local footprint includes all the materials we use, the energy ‘embodied’, or used, in making those materials and the products we use, the energy we use to operate the various systems in our community (heating and ventilation, transportation and so on) and the built area we occupy or use. 

One of the most interesting findings is that 46 percent of the total ecological footprint for Saanich results from “senior government impacts”. These include “infrastructure and services provided to citizens that are not captured at the local level such as highways, military, health care, coast guard, administrative, etc.” that we pay through our federal and provincial taxes, so are not included in consumption data.

The remaining 54 percent consists of the footprint associated with food (24 percent), transportation (17 percent), buildings (7 percent) and consumables and waste (6 percent). Many of these components of the footprint can be influenced by local action, which is what I will look at next week.

© Trevor Hancock, 2023

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

• Published as “We need to get our ecological footprint down to one planet”

Canada’s ecological footprint, at around five planets, is one of the highest in the world.

Dr. Trevor Hancock

17 October 2023

702 words

The name of the small NGO that I founded and chair says it all: Conversations for a One Planet Region. We began in 2017 as a series of discussions about the idea of a One Planet Region – a Region with an ecological footprint equivalent to one planet’s worth of biocapacity. Our mission is very simple: To establish and maintain community-wide conversations on One Planet living and a One Planet Region.

But the reality is that our collective global ecological footprint is 1.75 planets. Moreover, in exceeding the Earth’s limits we have crossed six of the nine planetary boundaries for key natural systems that support life on Earth, and we are approaching two more.

Of course, high-income countries have higher footprints; Canada’s, at around 5 planets, is one of the highest footprints in the world. Which means that if the whole world lived the way we do, we would need four more planets – good luck with that! Reducing our footprint to one planet’s worth of biocapacity means an 80 percent reduction in our footprint; since over 60 percent of our total is our carbon footprint, the importance of the clean, green energy transition is obvious.

The ecological footprint can also be calculated locally, and as luck would have it, CHRM Consulting has just updated the 2015 report on Saanich’s ecological footprint for the District of Saanich; it is available on the District’s website.

Overall, Saanich’s ecological footprint in 2021 – which is probably representative of the Greater Victoria region as a whole – was equivalent to 4 planets, meaning the challenge of becoming a One Planet Region is a bit easier than the national challenge.  (This is probably because we have a milder climate and very little of our electricity is generated by fossil-fuels.)

But nonetheless, it still means we need a 75 percent reduction in our ecological footprint, and in a future column I will dive more deeply into this report and its implications. But for now, I want to discuss the links between a One Planet approach and bioregionalism, because it seems to me that we need to ground our One Planet work in local reality, a reality that fuses both the natural and the social worlds, and this is what bioregionalism offers.

A bioregional approach is intended to link us to the place we live and the local and global natural systems that keep us alive. In his 1985 book ‘Dwellers in the Land’, Kirkpatrick Sale suggests four reasons for such an approach (as summarized in a 2018 article by Daniel Wahl, one of the current champions of bioregionalism). First, it operates at a more human scale, where “the forces of government and society are still recognizable and comprehensible, where relations with others are still intimate, and where the effects of individual actions are visible.”

Second, it calls for a very different economy, one that “would seek first to maintain rather than use up the natural world, to adapt to the environment rather than try to exploit or manipulate it, to conserve not only the resources but also the relationships and systems of the natural world.” This is the sort of economy envisaged by Herman Daly as a steady state economy, or by Kate Raworth as a Doughnut economy.

Third, this would be a society based on a ‘bottom-up’ politics, with “all authority flowing upward incrementally from the smallest political unit to the largest” so that “nothing [is] done at a higher level than necessary”; the EU calls this the principle of subsidiarity. Finally, it is a society that is symbiotic – that is, characterised by a close, cooperative, or interdependent relationship (Merriam Webster Dictionary), “where families operate within neighbourhoods, neighbourhoods within communities, communities within cities, cities within regions, all on the basis of collaboration and exchange, cooperation and mutual benefit.”

If you want to learn more about bioregionalism, what it means for this region and how it connects to a One Planet region, come to lecture theatre C-103 of the David Strong Building at UVIc on Tuesday October 24th, 7.30 – 9 PM, where Joe Brewer – whom I wrote about last week – and a panel of local leaders will discuss a bioregional approach to the future of our shared region.

© Trevor Hancock, 2023

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy