The ecological footprint remains a misleading metric of global sustainability.

In this Formal Comment, Blomqvist et al. note that the main points of their Perspective, “Does the Shoe Fit? Real versus Imagined Ecological Footprints,” are robust to Rees and Wackernagel's response, “The Shoe Fits, but the Footprint is Larger than Earth.”

Does the shoe fit? Real versus imagined ecological footprints.

The global overshoot indicated by Ecological Footprint calculations consists entirely of an unreliable reframing of human carbon emissions and none of the five other land-use categories—cropland, grazing land, built-up land, fishing grounds, and forests. The Ecological Footprint is therefore “so misleading as to preclude its use in any serious science or policy context,” argue Blomqvist et al. in this perspective.