There is no hesitation when Harvey Shear of the University of Toronto Mississauga is asked to explain why the concept of the “ecological footprint” has gained such a foothold in our imaginations over the past few years.
“Because it’s such an easy thing to recognize,” says the professor of geography. “Everyone knows that when you walk in the sand, you leave a footprint.”
The ecological footprint is a measurement of the impact we make on the surrounding environment by our use of energy and resources, a snapshot of how our lives and our lifestyles actually affect the planet. The beauty of it is that it is applicable to almost anything: a business, a municipality or a university campus.
“When people look at a 50-acre farm field and realize that the way it is being operated, with the water, fertilizer and resources being consumed that it is the equivalent of a 200-hectare property, they say, ‘Omigod, That’s a lot,’ ” says Shear.
A biologist by training, he is a former employee of Environment Canada and helped organize the Status of the Great Lakes conferences in 1998 in Buffalo and in 2004 in Toronto.
At both of those events, University of British Columbia Professor Bill Rees, the man who came up with the concept of the ecological footprint (along with his PhD student Mathis Wackernagel) stopped the show with his speeches.
“You know how it is with those luncheons, everyone is eating and you hear the clink of the utensils and you can’t hear the speaker,” says Shear. “When Bill Rees spoke, there was not a sound. People were literally enthralled.”
Rees is coming to Mississauga March 21 where he will be attending a number of campus events and then giving a public lecture at 7 p.m. in the Kaneff Centre on the myth of the sustainable city.
The Rees version of the inconvenient truth may not be attracting Al Gore-style media mania, but it has Mississauga’s small, dedicated green community all aglimmer. And TVO has already asked if they can come out to tape the presentation for their Big Ideas series.
“When I told my third-year undergrad class last year that he was coming in the fall, their eyes just lit up,” says Shear.
When the ecological footprint of the Great Lakes basin was calculated a few years ago by one of the graduate students, it turned out to be five-and-a-half times the actual size.
“We had a graphic made up of it and it covered about a third of North America,” says Shear. “That’s when you realize we really have to look at the lifestyles we lead.”
One of the real beauties of the footprint approach is that, once it has been calculated, it can be revisited periodically, to see if the impact is expanding or reducing.
Toronto has already calculated its footprint. Shear sits on the environmental strategic planning committee in Oakville, where he lives, that is working on developing one there.
Wouldn’t an environmental footprint project for Mississauga make excellent sense, in consort with the Healthy Cities Stewardship Protocol that the City, UTM, Peel Public Health and numerous other municipal entities are already engaged in?
That would really provide a living legacy for Professor Rees’ visit to our fair city.