The last storm in February, the snow on each side of the path was close to chest high. Instead of throwing the snow that high I started whacking it down. No more shovelling. With the recent warmer days and the rain, I can see the footprints in the white ice: me in my Sorrells, Salieri cat with the six toes, a few chippy feet and those of an errant chicken.

A caribou's footprint on the thinning ice - the scientists say - nowadays often ends in a wormhole from which only the antlers stick out.[1]

Footprints come in all sizes. The footprint of a tree, the salmon or a caribou. The footprint of a nation, a culture, technology.

Footprint - the mark of a boot in the soft earth, the trace of something important that was once present.

The Maine Turnpike Authority wants to widen the turnpike through Portland up to the Falmouth spur to accomodate more automobiles. Ten miles and six billion dollars.

Every mile we drive contributes to the melting of the icecaps and the warming of the planet. Everything else - the caribou, the lichen, the seals, the web of life our way of life destroys - priceless.

Footprints wear a path and the bent grass bounds a domain. How far the Roman aqueduct moved water and how far their camels carried grain, how far Stratcom targets missiles and from how far spring flowers are flown to bloom in our homes - those are the footprints of nations. Thin ice, dissolving plankton and vanishing species mark our planetary footprint.

The first great political economists - Malthus, Mill, Ricardo - recognized the ultimate source of wealth as the land and the sun. The surface of our planet, the land, as a giant solar collector. Photosynthesis transforms the sunlight into sugars, fixing the CO2 into chemical sugars, sugars that we store, eat and burn for energy.

Over geological time periods the earth built up reserves of oil - fossilized plants and sugars. Modern technology burns 400 years accumulation of that fossile energy in a single hour. Our footprint extends into time. What will we eat when the oil runs out?

Footprints are impressions in time. We are using geological eons worth of oil - produced over eons by sunlight and photosynthesis. The engines of our economy can't get enough energy to maintain increasing marginal productivity and growth. The current economic meltdown is peak oil - the depletion of easily exploited fossil energy reserves.

Our heavy footprint stomps species out of existence. Maine has chosen to exterminate the Atlantic salmon so that Florida Power and Light can run its hydroelectric dams as cheaply as possible.

iPod - powered by the web of life.

At a large scale too much of a good thing is toxic.

Two-thirds of the water used in US goes for irrigation - a practice that depletes ancient aquifers and builds up salts in soil, leaving them unsuitable for agriculture.

The guano is gone. Half the nitrogen used to grow crops worldwide is produced artificially from fossil sources by the Haber-Bosch process - we are eating our capital. Even the turkey shit and sawdust is overcommitted. Biomass that never returns to the soil.

The planet loses 100 thousand km2 of agricultural land every year to salinization and desertification.

The failure of functioning aqueducts to deliver water contributed to the decline of Rome's population from 1 million to tens of thousands. The success of the 400 year old acequia system in the Southwest shows that long term sustainability depends on community control of economic resources within a limited footprint.

The footprint of food from our industrial food system

Hannaford
Shaws
Whole Foods

is nearly 20 times that of food from the local farmer's market and averages 8 acres per person. The industrialization of our lives has rapidly increased the average per person footprint of an American to 30 acres.

In 1995 the four largest supermarket chains controlled 1/4 of all food sales; by 2000 their footprint covered half of all food sales. Those supermarket chains all carry the same processed foodstuffs made by the same manufacturers wih the same contaminated wheat gluten and mad cow. Their power is such that the so-called "our government" will not regulate them. "Our government" shines their shoes.

The global footprint of industry spreads disease. Hemlock blight was unknown in Maine until it was found in the Garden Center at Wal-Mart. Because rather than source their trees from local nurseries, Wal-Mart sought out the cheapest trees irrespective of quality and community impact.

Concentrated wealth and power - largely in the strange person called the corporation - extends the footprint of the haves over the have-nots and increases inequality. We take food from the hungry to make jet fuel to give a minute or two to the wealthy.

Malthus thought that humans should enjoy a glass of wine with their dinner.

But we can't trust the meat, the spinach or the wine from the supermarkets or big box stores. The footprint is too big and too far away. And the so-called "our government" is primarily interested in increasing the profits of people like Wal-Mart, Dominion Bank and General Dynamics.

Instead of centralized systems

Hannaford
The Roman aqueduct
Stratcom

we need a decentralized, localized agriculture, society and technology that does not depend on fossil energy. A decentralized, localized agriculture, society and technology with a footprint that starts and ends within sight.

Not in a wormhole.

In my corner of Maine there are far too many feet wearing far too many brands of footwear.

Too many feet.
Branded.
Stomping.

Growth is inevitable says the conventional wisdom. We wonder how to invest, how to cut taxes, how to stimulate business and the economy but there is nowhere to extend our footprint.

We overuse the present. We overuse the fossil past. We overuse the future.

Ten miles and six billion dollars.

The only smart growth is shrinking.

[1] Kolbert - "Field Notes From A Catastrophe"