POTS & PLANTS
/FOOTPRINTS IN TIME
by Peter W. Gribble
Last year there were inspiring signs to hang on a wall for sale in garden centres that read: “When walking in the woods: Shoot only cameras; leave only footprints; take only memories.”
Beautiful sentiments and sound advice.
Ancient footprints in Africa mark our ancestors’ passage.
Hominin, or near human footprints, go way back. One of the earliest is the Laetoli Footprint discovered by archaeologist Mary Leaky in 1976. Estimated to be 3.7 million years old, they answered the debate that bipedalism (walking upright on two legs) occurred first before the enlarged human brain evolved. The prints were probably made by an extinct Pliocene (5.33 – 2.58 million years ago) hominin species Australopithecus afarensis and someone who never likely got around to gardening.
Footprints reveal more than someone passing by, they can tell stories.
In September 2020, the Max Planck Institute reported the discovery in Saudi Arabia’s An-Nefud desert of hundreds of 120,000 year old fossilized Homo sapiens footprints alongside those of elephants, horses, hippos and other animals around an ancient dried-out lake. It was a time of lush grasslands in this now harsh, hyper-arid desert. While the footprints remain, no tools were found, hinting this band of humans – hunter-gathers, not pastoralists – may have been migrating out of Africa.
In 1996, the notion of footprints underwent a major pedicure and the stories footprints could tell were redefined. William Rees of the University of British Columbia and his doctoral student Mathis Wackernagel published their book, Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth. It described a method to measure humanity’s environmental impact on bio-available resources based on an ecological accounting system.
In 2003, Wackernagel founded the Global Footprint Network (GFN), an independent, non-profit think tank whose goal “is to create a future where all humans can live well, within the means of one planet Earth.”
Again, a lovely sentiment and eminently sensible – living within our means — but can Nature’s dynamic complexity and our place in it really be reduced to an accounting ledger?
The GFN issues two catchy pronouncements annually. How many earths does humanity’s footprint use each year, and; the Earth Overshoot Day (EOD), the day each year when we overshoot the environmental budget and go into ecological deficit. Their website currently estimates we are consuming at the rate of 1.5 earths meaning our demands are 50 percent more than what Earth’s ecosystems can renew in the same year. The EOD is the day when we reach that point of “drawing down local resource stocks and accumulate carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”
Even our footprints, and the detritus we leave behind, will eventually bow to Nature’s cycle of decay and regrowth.
How are these numbers determined? Fred Pearce writing for New Scientist, in November 2013 provided an excellent critique of the inadequacies of this lovely idea. His article, ”Admit it: we can’t measure our ecological footprint.” examined what turned out to be a rather limited measurement. “The footprint analysis does not really measure our overuse of the planet’s resources at all. If anything, it underestimates it.” It merely measures carbon dioxide and the area of land required as a carbon sink but not how these lands are managed or mismanaged.
Wackernagel replied to the critique, “Local ecosystem abuse is a significant problem [but] to make reliable adjustments would require data sets that do not exist.”
Pearce summarized, “Sadly, it (the footprint analysis) does not measure the things that most of us assumed it does – and the things we really need to know.”
Those footprints didn’t have much to tell. From poor modelling to more robust science.
Many of us suspected during the spring lockdown that polluting emissions were down. The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research has just confirmed it, reporting an unprecedented decline in carbon dioxide emissions during the first half of 2020. They claim the decline is larger than 2008’s financial crisis, the oil crisis of 1979, or even World War II. The numbers are remarkable: 8.8 percent less carbon dioxide was emitted than in the same period in 2019 – a total decrease of 1551 million tonnes.
The study is unique because of the analysis of meticulously collected near-real-time data. The greatest reduction of CO2 emissions was observed in the ground transportation sector (cars and trucks), which was down by 40 percent worldwide, largely due to wide-spread working from home.
There was a rebound when lockdowns were lifted in July but the authors stressed that although individual behavior is important: “The only valid strategy to stabilize the climate is a complete overhaul of the industry and commerce sector [and] reducing the carbon intensity of our global economy.”
What can we do on balconies in small apartments or small plots of land?
There is a lot we can do and we already know much of it. Eat everything on your plate to reduce food wastage. Reduce the amount you buy; reduce the amount you throw away. Freezers hold their chill better when they’re full but don’t block the fan at the back of the fridge. It’s a return to the practices of good husbandry our grandparents learned as children during the Great Depression in the 1930s.
Save your tea leaves and coffee grounds for acid-loving plants like blueberries, heathers, heaths, azaleas, rhododendrons and skimmia and mix them into the top inch of the soil. Compost your fall leaves to make an excellent soil amender for lawns and garden beds.
Crushed eggshells mixed into your soil offer up calcium and other micronutrients to your plants ... albeit slowly. To speed up the process grind the eggshells up fine with a mortar and pestle and keep them in a jar for an early spring application for roses and vegetable crops.
Walk, don’t drive. Ride a bicycle or take public transit. Stop using single-use plastics. Carry a collapsible bag instead of relying on (and now paying for) plastic ones.
It may sound trivial and silly but glitter, which does not degrade, is showing up in the global plastic debris. Some stores no longer carry it because of this. If you have to throw something, paper degradable confetti (preferably from recycled paper) is a better choice. Check before purchase though, some brands of confetti have glitter and sparkly bits mixed in it.
Test your soil for nitrogen levels. Nitrous oxide (N2O) is spiking due to the overuse of nitrogen fertilizers by intensive agriculture and is implicated in the destruction of the ozone layer. Inexpensive little kits are available to check the pH, nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium levels in your soil. Instead of chemical fertilizers, develop your own good soil by adding amenders. You can buy them in bags (like SeaSoil) or, if you have space, get a composter box and compost your own yard and kitchen waste.
Indoor tropical plants can also benefit from the once in a while boost of used tea leaves or used coffee grounds.
If you have the space in the garden, plant nitrogen-fixing plants, usually members of the legume family such as fall rye, clover and barley for the winter months and beyond. Nature has answers.
Even the surface of the moon bears evidence of our presence — or at least Buzz Aldrin’s.
Not commonly found in our gardening toolbox are our abilities to vote, protest and boycott. Vote for parties and politicians with sound ecological platforms. Protest and boycott not only corporations who pollute and mismanage the Earth’s resources, but countries planning to release radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean.
We are not helpless if we choose to act. Instead of doing this out of obligation, urgency or fear of the consequences; perform these practices with a sense of reverent responsibility towards Nature. We are part of her resources.
Our West End neighbourhood is blessed by English Bay and Stanley Park, one of the famous parks of the world. Strolling along the beach leaving footprints in the sand or following trails in the park, there are miracles and mysteries at our feet ... and up there in the sky.
For if the moon is out, there are footprints there too.
