According to the Australian Conservation Foundation’s resource consumption atlas, the ecological footprint of the average Canberran is 9 per cent larger than the national average. The city’s inner north – which see itself as a bit of an arty latte intelligentsia belt – has a whopping ecological footprint of just under 9 hectares a person. The national average is around six hectares. Can we just remind you that Wellington is fretting about 2.4 hectares? In the United States, the New York state university city of Ithaca has already cut its ecological footprint by 40 per cent, and is designing future urban development as “eco-villages’’ with community vegetable gardens and fruit trees. Rest assured, these eco-suburbs won’t look anything like the sprawling developments of Gungahlin, Forde or Harrison.

Canberra is a city that loves shopping for white goods, with installation of dishwashers more than doubling in the last 10 years. Almost 70 per cent of Canberra homes have a dishwasher compared to 53 per cent in Victoria (the second highest) and 38 per cent in Western Australia. But only 28 per cent of those comfortable Canberra homes with dishwashers use these appliances more than once a week, so why have one installed at all? Could this be a capital case of what Swiss philosopher Alain de Botton called “status anxiety’’?

So what’s being done to lower Canberra’s ecological footprint? The big sustainability issues facing the city are urban sprawl, lack of an adequate public transport system, persisting water and energy use inefficiencies, car-driven urban planning and loss of wildlife habitat and landscape-scale urban green space to poorly designed housing developments. Add climate change to this mix as an over-riding and urgent concern, and you’ve got a city in ecological crisis.

Meanwhile, the ACT government – and that’s all parties, including the Liberals and ACT Greens – seem to dream on with pie-in-the sky notions of nominating this wasteful, resource-eating city as a United Nations Biosphere or a World Heritage city. What next? Will there be politically grandiose plans to declare Canberra a Gift to the Earth?

There is a glimmer of hope. The people behind the Corinbank music and arts festival (we hear they’re know as Rat Patrol) have shown its possible to run a zero waste event without getting all lemon-lipped and hair-shirted. They’ve gone the whole eco-hog with biodiesel power, composting toilets, recycled seating and carbon offsets for travel. Any chance of a Corinbank or Rat Patrol Party getting up in time for the next ACT election? That might shake things up a treat.

While other cities around Australia are tackling big environmental issues, Canberra seems to be sweating the small stuff. Are residents demanding better public transport, organising protest rallies and petitions for light rail or better bike paths? No, they’re demanding the government do something about a concrete-bordered square of browned-off lawn in Kingston’s café precinct. The government has refused to pay for watering the lawn and wants to charge local business owners an annual upkeep fee of $10,000. It also wants to replace the lawn with native grasses, but around 400 people have signed a petition calling for the government to keep the lawn. It seems they don’t want “spiky’’ native plants. The ACT Greens – silent on many pressing local environmental issues – have rushed to comment on this one, declaring “ it’s just not good enough to stop watering the lawn over the hot summer months while we wait for the government to make up its mind as to the site’s future.’’ They claim letting the grass die is a government tactic ‘’to pre-empt the decision to move the grass permanently.’’ Whatever that means, but like Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce, I’m hearing the distinct tinkle of wind chimes.

Let’s look at a bigger picture. There’s a drought across the Murray-Darling Basin, with recent satellite data showing there’s been a loss of 200,000 gigalitres of water, or the equivalent of 400 Sydney Harbours, from the river channel, runoff and groundwater systems over the last nine years. The CSIRO has estimated if current climate trends persist, water availability in the Murrumbidgee catchment (that includes Canberra) will decrease by 30 per cent by over the next 20 years. That means any Murrumbidgee catchment city’s love affair with latte-belt lawns is over. Say hello to drought-tolerant spiky native plants and better water urban water management.

It the city’s residents want to see a bit of greenery while sipping a de-caff soy latte in Kingston, why be such a passive bunch of whingers? Break out the shovels and get cracking with some guerrilla gardening. Thumb your noses at the government and its bland policies on urban beautification.

Meanwhile, how about a bigger grassroots campaign on the issue of the city’s unsustainable sprawl? How about getting a bit more bolshie about the government’s crazy multi-million dollar plan to cut down healthy street trees? How about challenging the process that allows sprawling housing developments? Or an aggressive public campaign to flush out any links between developers and political donations?

Last Friday was World Environment Day, but you wouldn’t have known that in Canberra. There was diddly happening in the way of public events and big environmental clean-up campaigns. It was a day to buy firecrackers for the long weekend, and bugger the air pollution, carbon emissions, and torment inflicted on wildlife and domestic pets by setting off things that go ba-boom in the night. Meanwhile in Wellington, people were having a different kind of fun. They were flocking (pardon the bad pun) to a biodiversity sing-along, recording their best imitations of local forest bird calls, which were then streamed as a sound sculpture in one of the city’s public art galleries. So, which city has the better claim to be nominated as a UN Biosphere – a place where people are doing their best to blend the urban and natural environments and leave a lighter footprint on the Earth.