Uncategorized

• Published as ‘The tobacco industry is lethal and needs to be stamped out’

The tobacco industry continues to produce and market its deadly products around the world, particularly in low- and middle-income countries

Dr. Trevor Hancock

9 January 2024

698 words

As I noted last week, it is not the case that the private sector automatically harms health. Indeed, in a wide variety of ways, the private sector are what I called the producers of health; they build our homes, grow our food, produce beneficial medicines, create good jobs and provide many other important deteminants of health.

As a public health physician, dedicated to protecting and enhancing the health of the population, I want to encourage activities that improve the health of the population – especially the health of the poorest, most disadvantaged and vulnerable populations. But even more important, I want to change or stop those private sector activities that harm health.

There are many ways in which the private sector harms health, and the World Health Organization (WHO) and others think of the harms as being either direct or indirect. Direct harm can be built in to the product itself – tobacco and guns are prime examples – or result from use or misuse of the product – think of alcohol, fossil fuels, fast and junk food or cars. In addition, direct harm can result from the extraction or manufacturing processes – the occupational and environmental health problems related to mining, for example.

Indirect harm comes from the way the private sector “influences the social, physical and cultural environments through business actions and societal engagements; for example, supply chains, labour conditions, product design and packaging, research funding, lobbying, preference shaping and others”, the WHO states.

By far the most egregious and offensive private sector activity that directly harms health is the tobacco industry. Tobacco is unique in both the scale of death and disease it causes and the fact that it does so when used exactly as intended. The WHO is clear and blunt: “The tobacco epidemic is one of the biggest public health threats the world has ever faced.” A 2014 article in the New England Journal of Medicine stated “If current smoking patterns persist, tobacco will kill about 1 billion people this century” – yes, that’s one billion!

In its July 2023 Fact Sheet, the WHO reported tobacco “kills up to half of its users who don’t quit”, about 7 million people each year, as well as a further “1.3 million non-smokers who are exposed to second-hand smoke.” That is over 8 million deaths a year, almost one-seventh of the roughly 60 million deaths globally. Added to that, of course, are the many years preceding death when tobacco-users experience a multitude of diseases and poor health.

So serious is the problem that tobacco was the basis of the WHO’s first ever global treaty, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, in 2003. Currently, 182 countries are Parties to the treaty, of which Canada is one; the Convention covers 90 percent of the world’s population.

The WHO has developed 6 practical, cost-effective initiatives to reduce demand for tobacco: Monitor tobacco use and prevention policies; protect people from tobacco use; offer help to quit tobacco use; warn about the dangers of tobacco; enforce bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship, and raise taxes on tobacco. As a result, the proportion of adults who smoke daily has fallen from 34 percent in 2000 to 23 percent in 2020, and most steeply in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), according to a recent report from Our World in Data.

And yet the tobacco industry continues to produce and market its deadly products around the world, particularly in LMICs, even though “smoking in the developing world has been shown to reinforce poverty as already deprived smokers spend less on healthcare, children’s education, food, and clothes”, notes a 2019 fact sheet from Action on Smoking and Health (ASH).

Moreover, ASH notes, “transnational tobacco companies have been shown to target women and children in developing countries”, adding that “adolescent smoking is also considerably higher in LMICs, over four times the level in the UK.”

“The tobacco industry is fighting to ensure the dangers of their products are concealed”, the WHO Fact Sheet stated. But we need to shine a spotlight on tobacco, because when you put it all together it is clear the tobacco industry is a truly lethal and evil industry that needs to be stamped out.

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

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 ‘Private-sector interests can undermine public health efforts’)

Too often there is a major conflict between public health and large segments of the private sector because they have two very different motivations

Dr. Trevor Hancock

2 January 2024

696 words

More than a quarter century ago I wrote an article called ‘Caveat Partner’ about the problematic aspects of public health creating partnerships with the private sector. More broadly, I was concerned with the adverse health impacts of many of the ways in which the private sector works; its products and services, the way it produces and markets them, and its indirect adverse effects on economic and social policy.

This was hardly a new problem; conflicts between the private sector and public health have been going on for at least 700 years. This was revealed in a fascinating book by the Italian historian Carlo Cipolla almost 50 years ago. He described the Boards of Health in the city-states of 15^th century Renaissance Italy, which had broad powers to regulate public gatherings, enforce quarantine laws, issue health passes, and carry out inspections.

Their efforts to fight the spread of plague through quarantine, fumigation and the embargoing of goods could have a dramatic impact upon trade due to declining exports, destruction of unfinished goods, unemployment, social unrest and even revolt.

As a result they were subject to severe pressure from the merchants, whose economic wellbeing was affected. Meanwhile, the Boards’ Health Officers complained about the ignorance of the populace, the disregard of their ordinances, the hostility of the merchants and the need to effect compromise between public wellbeing and economic necessity.

Four centuries later, as the 19th century public health movement struggled to overcome the health problems resulting from industrialization and urbanization, nothing much had changed. When their mercantile interests were threatened, many industrialists opposed legislation and regulation that directly affected them, such as child labour laws, laws relating to working conditions and legislation to control pollution. Sometimes they simply objected to raising and spending taxes on public works such as sewers, water works, and the like.

With this and much more history in my mind, I nonetheless began my 1998 article by stating “I see nothing inherently evil in the private sector, nor anything inherently wrong about partnership with the private sector. After all, the private sector grows my food, builds my house, creates employment and in a myriad of ways meets our basic and not-so-basic needs”.

But – and it’s a big but – only too often there is a major conflict between public health and large segments of the private sector because they have two very different motivations. “The motivation that underlies the private sector”, I wrote, “is very clear – profit. The motivation that underlies the health promotion sector is also very clear – better health for all and a narrowing of the health gap between rich and poor. These motivations are not necessarily incompatible, but nor are they necessarily compatible.”

So here we are, 700 years later, still struggling with the private sector. Now the World Health Organization (WHO) itself has begun to focus on the theme of what it calls the commercial determinants of health by establishing a new initiative on the economic and commercial determinants of health.

In a commentary in a special series on the commercial determinants in The Lancet in April this year, the WHO’s Director General, Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, was blunt: “many major risk factors for disease and injury, such as tobacco, alcohol, and ultra-processed foods, are major industries and profit-drivers for powerful transnational companies”; he could have added the fossil fuel and automobile industries and many others.

But WHO’s concerns are broader than these fairly obvious threats to public health. “When profits are threatened”, he added, “some companies and other actors with vested commercial interests deliberately undermine public health policies.” And beyond that, he also expressed a broader concern with the way the international system “supports the drive for ever-increasing profits and economic growth over the social, environmental, and health impacts of commercial products or practices.”

In his commentary, Dr. Ghebreyesus noted that in 2024 WHO would be organizing a Global Conference on the topic and would publish the first WHO Global Report on the Commercial Determinants of Health. So over the coming weeks, Iwill delve into the commercial determinants ofhealth, what WHO is doing and what is involved in addressing them in Canada, in BC and locally.

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

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 ‘Reflecting on 50 years in the service of good health, with more to come’

Dr. Trevor Hancock

22 December 2023

699 words

The end of the year is always a time for reflection, but more so this past year, which has been significant for me in four key ways.  First and foremost, I turned 75 – that’s three-quarters of a century, and that’s given me pause for thought – I really am getting old! –  as well as gratitude and celebration for having made it this far in fairly good health. Another very personal significant anniversary in 2023 was the celebration of 50 years of happy marriage, the bedrock of my existence.

I was born in October 1948, just a few months after the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) came into being and in the same year that the World Health Organization (WHO) was established. Both have shaped my life in important ways.  

Let’s start with the creation of the NHS. I have lived all my life in the era of universal health care, which has been a vast boon. Growing up, my family did not have to worry about whether we could afford health care. Unlike the USA, nobody was going bankrupt because of the cost of health care.

The benefits of universal health care became much more apparent to me as I went through medical school in London in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Indeed, another significant anniversary for me in 2023 is that it marks 50 years since I graduated from St. Bartholomew’s Hospital (Bart’s).

Bart’s itself just celebrated a significant milestone: 2023 was the 900^th anniversary of its founding in 1123. As you might imagine, with such an immense and weighty history, it was a very traditional place. Looking back, one of the key values I absorbed was that medicine is a vocation and a service; I don’t recall any discussion of the business of medicine.

Another key lesson I learned was from a professor of medicine who taught us that “the secret of medicine is masterly inactivity” and that the reason we went to medical school for six years was “to learn when to stop doing nothing”. Medicine was in many ways seen as an art, with scientific underpinnings.

So coming to Canada in 1975 was a bit of a shock. Universal health care across Canada had only been achieved in 1971 and was still new. I found myself in family practice in rural New Brunswick, in a fee-for-service system, having to see medicine as a business. I didn’t like it. I soon concluded that fee-for–service is a bad way to practice medicine, as it encourages seeing lots of people quickly and intervening often, since that is the most economically beneficial way to practice.

Within a couple of years I had moved to Toronto, where I became a salaried family physician working in a multi-disciplinary community health centre; we were two physicians working with a nurse practitioner, a health profession not generally welcomed by the medical establishment at the time; they were seen as professional and economic threats, as were midwives, another group I strongly support. However, I am happy to say, opinions in the profession seem to have shifted over time, with less support for fee-for service and more acceptance of midwives and nurse practitioners.

The other big 75^th anniversary was the establishment of the WHO. I became involved with WHO in 1986, when work I was doing as a public health physican in Toronto on the concepts of Healthy Cities and ‘healthy public policy’ (the creation of health-enhancing policies in non-health sectors) were taken up by the WHO as key elements of the emerging field of health promotion. By then, I had graduated from the field of medicine to the field of health.

As with my medical school, the ethos of WHO is one of service to humanity. I embraced its definition of health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing” and its goal of ‘Health for All’. The pursuit of health for all is a noble one, and I am glad to have been able to contribute in a variety of  small ways to that goal. It’s been a good way to lead my life thus far, and as I hope my columns show, I have not finished yet.

© 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 “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