Reply to the first systematic response by the Global Footprint Network to criticism: A real debate finally?

•We respond to a reaction of the Global Footprint Network on our 8-point criticism.•We comment upon an associated debate in this journal.•Participants agree that the footprint is incomplete in environmental impacts.•Footprint countries rankings are unreliable and sensitive to debatable assumptions.•For the main, energy part of footprints a better indicator exists: CO2-e emissions.

We respond to a reaction of the Global Footprint Network/GFN on our 8-point criticism of the ecological footprint. We also refer to, and comment on, an associated debate in this journal between Giampietro and Saltelli (2014a, 2014b), on the one hand, and Goldfinger et al. (2014), on the other. We conclude that criticism on the footprint is accumulating and coherent across the various studies and disciplines and among the different authors. This was the first time that Wackernagel/GFN systematically responded to our criticisms. Hence, our response contains several original elements and the resulting exchange can be seen to add value to the existing literature. It ultimately allows readers to better make up their mind about the different viewpoints on the ecological footprint.