Canada's rich create biggest ecological footprint

By Lara Hertel

TORONTO (Reuters Life!) - Canada's richest people may be bad for the environment, a new report suggests.

In a study linking income and consumption patterns with global warming, researchers from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives in Toronto found that higher-income Canadians created an ecological footprint that was 66 percent bigger than the average Canadian household.

"This study demonstrates the obvious fact that our impact on the environment is related to our consumption, and our consumption is related to income," Hugh Mackenzie, a co-author of the study, said in an interview.

The term ecological footprint refers to the human impact on the earth's natural resources.

It calculates how much productive land and sea is needed to provide resources, such as energy, water and raw materials, that humans use every day. It also takes into account emissions from gas, oil and coal and how much land is needed to absorb human waste, according to the conservation group WWF.

While rich Canadians created a footprint that is two-and-a-half times greater than Canada's poorest, Mackenzie was quick to add that the wealthy alone aren't to blame for environmental woes.

Rather, the findings point to the need to rethink environmental policies such as taxing emissions.

"If we introduce measures without looking at the drivers of emissions, then we run the risk of having policies that have a punitive effect on lower and middle income Canadians and we don't achieve anything," Mackenzie said.

The study found that housing and mobility accounted for the biggest portion of the ecological footprint of the wealthy, with air travel and driving among the biggest drivers of emissions.

But the food consumption footprint was almost identical across all income streams -- not surprising, Mackenzie said, given the nature of how people eat.

"Hamburger and filet mignon may come from different ends of the cow, but it's still the same cow," he explained.

The study also found that even the lowest-income Canadians created an ecological footprint several times bigger than those in poorer nations.

(Reporting by Lara Hertel; editing by Patricia Reaney)