Baby steps towards a smaller footprint
So, you’ve decided you want to lead a greener life? That’s great! As someone who also cares about the planet and the living conditions we are creating for our future generations (of humans and other sentient beings) I sincerely thank you.
This posting should help you to better understand how our everyday choices and habits affect what we generally call “ecological and carbon footprints”.
The ecological footprint is a measure of human demand on the Earth’s ecological capacity to regenerate. It is a way to compare the amount of natural resources (such as clean water, food supplies, sinks for carbon dioxide, etc.) needed to replenish the resources a human population consumes, plus the resources needed to absorb that population’s waste. For example, in 2006, humanity’s total ecological footprint was estimated at 1.4 planet Earths- in other words, in that year, humans used ecological services and resources 1.4 times as fast as the planet could renew them. You can read more about ecological footprint at http://www.footprintnetwork.org.
Most recently, due to the pressing need to deal with global climate change, we’ve been talking a lot about a spinoff from the ecological footprint: the carbon footprint.
Source: footprintnetwork.org
The term carbon footprint is generally used to refer to the total amount of greenhouse gases that a person, organization, event or product emits during a certain period of time. While there are other types of greenhouse gases besides carbon dioxide (CO2), our carbon footprint it is often expressed in pounds of CO2 emitted per year.
Our carbon footprint is a fraction of our overall ecological footprint- an important one these days, considering that global climate change is the most critical environmental predicament we currently face. Thus, in this post, I specifically focus on ways to reduce our carbon footprint.
According to the World Bank estimates for the year 2002, an average North American produces 20 tons of CO2 equivalent per year; five times more than the global average carbon footprint per person! That’s a lot, especially considering that the U.S. is the third most populous nation in the world, with about 309 million inhabitants. Now think about that: an American emits about double of the amount of COs emitted by a Brit or a German and four times more than a Swedish person! To make things even grimmer and not greener population growth rate in the U.S. is one of the highest among industrialized countries: almost 1% per year.
National Carbon Dioxide Emissions per Capita. Source: World Bank
One good way to start improving our “greenness” is to make an assessment of our carbon footprint. This is much like the assessment one would make when starting a new weight management program- that whole (painful) calorie calculation one must go through in order to establish how much exercise to do and how much food to eat.
Nowadays, there are several online tools to help you calculate your footprint. Carbon footprint calculators use information you enter about your life and habits to estimate your carbon footprint, but because these calculations are based on approximations and averages there is much room for variation among calculators. In fact, some carbon calculators can be seriously misleading, especially when offered by someone with an agenda, such as aviation emissions calculators provided by some carbon offsetting companies. After some research online, I would recommend the following calculators: www.resurgence.org/education/carbon-calculator.html, www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/calculators/, www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/ind_calculator.html.
While you may get somewhat different results from different calculators, the process of estimating your carbon footprint should at least help you to better understand your emissions and identify where there is room for improvement. For instance, I fly a lot more than what I would like to- about 20-25K miles per year which amounts to about 10K lbs of CO2 per year. Unfortunately, that is just part of my life right now and I can’t really change that. So, I try to offset those emissions by being very efficient in other sectors of my life. I avoid driving as much as possible, eat mostly vegetarian meals, take super short showers and avoid using air-conditioning and heating by dressing properly. I waste almost nothing in my home. I try to reduce and reuse containers as much as humanly possible, make new dishes with leftovers and try as hard as I can to buy less and less stuff.
Here are a few tips on how to reduce your carbon emissions by changing some habits in your daily life, as prescribed by Mindy Pennybacker-Wallace, author of Do One Green Thing: Saving the Earth through Simple, Everyday Choices:
- In the winter, keep the thermostat between 60 and 68 degrees F; saves 1,416 lbs of CO2/ year (electric) or 1,920 lbs of CO2/ year (gas)
- Recycle all household paper, plastic and glass; saves 1,000 lbs of CO2/ year
- Wash four out of every five loads of laundry in cold water; saves 864 lbs of CO2/ year
- In warm months, set the air-conditioner to 78 degrees F or above; saves 726 lbs of CO2/ year
- Forego red meat one day a week; saves 557 lbs of CO2/ year
- Replace five incandedescent bulbs with CFLs or LEDs; saves 500 lbs of CO2/ year
- Cut daily shower time from eight minutes to five; saves 513 lbs of CO2/ year
- Drive 10 fewer miles per week; saves 340 lbs of CO2/ year
- Plug the TV and cable box into a power strip and turn it off when not in use; saves 240 lbs of CO2/ year
- Hang-dry one load of laundry per week; saves 229 lbs of CO2/ year.
Blogger Kimberly Crandell also offered a good posting on how to reduce our carbon footprint through small changes in your everyday routine. She offered great calculations and comparative analysis that may be very useful for you when designing your “carbon emission diet”. Her figures are presented in the table above.
Last, but certainly not least, it is very important that we all get more involved in the policy discussions associated with global climate change. While we should all be making an effort to reduce our individual emissions, we are also responsible for making sure companies and societies are also doing their part.
One way to do this is through the use of our “consumers’ power”. Let’s exercise the freedom we talk so much about by supporting companies and industries that are good for us in the long run. Let’s be mindful of the products we buy and companies we choose to give our business to. Check out the Good Guide http://www.goodguide.com/ for rating on how healthy, safe and green are the products you usually purchase. You can download their application for your cell phone. If you have an iPhone, you can download their app with a bar code scanner function; if not, you can use their text function. Read more about it at http://www.goodguide.com/about/mobile.
Another way to get more involved in the fight against global warming is to educate ourselves about the proposals that exist out there to deal with the problem. We’ve have all heard about the Kyoto protocol, but do we really know what it is all about? You can read more about the Kyoto protocol and what it actually entails at http://ec.europa.eu/environment/climat/kyoto.htm, http://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol/items/2830.php, http://www.kyotousa.org, or even at Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol . You should also educate yourself about the many climate change policy variants and caveats, such as the cap-and-trade approach, baselines and credit programs or carbon offset programs. Read, learn and talk about it with your friends and family.
Once you understand all the different policy proposals to combat climate change, think about them when choosing your governor, senator and representatives in the next elections. How do your candidates intend to address climate change within their states and at national level? Are they planning to support policies that set strict carbon emission reduction goals? Are they in favor of investing in green technology? Are they willing to turn “oil money” down to support large scale utility projects based on wind farms and solar energy? States are broke and because of that many politicians, especially those running for governor are not willing to stand up for effective climate change policies that may represent higher initial costs for their state’s economy. Rather than proposing strong long-term solutions for the economic and environmental crises we currently face, many candidates are campaigning on platforms that consist of “temporary patches”, compromises to increase states’ economic growth that will certainly came back to haunt us in five or ten years. So, do your homework. Register to vote, study your candidates’ proposals and on November 2nd, come out and vote for climate change solutions.
Now, you may be thinking, “well, she has not addressed the fact that global climate change is a controversial topic and that some people say it is not actually happening or that it is not caused by human actions”. For that my answer is very simple: get in the loop, my friend.
Climate change is a fact. We can choose to deal with it, or perish in 50 some years from now. The whole hullabaloo around the veracity of climate change- including all the recent turmoil with the emails private e-mails stolen from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, and the problems with the predictions about the timeline for the melting of the Himalayan glaciers- are nothing but distractions. It is sand thrown on our eyes by individuals who have a lot of money at stake; people who have billions and billions of dollars invested in high-carbon- emission-dependent industries, and who know that finding alternative ways to make their money in a sustainable way will represent a cut in their immediate profits! But hopefully you know all that already, and you are not asking this question…
These small, individual changes may seem insignificant to some people, but I am convinced that if we do our part and set the example, others will follow us! All we need to do is to get started. Make changes in your routine and talk to others about it. Get seriously involved in the climate change debate. Baby steps will take us where we need to get. Baby talk won’t!
11 Responses to “Baby steps towards a smaller footprint”
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The blog 'EARTHactually' was started by a group of young scientists, teachers and activists who study the state of our planet and ways to live in harmony with it. Our mission is to create a lively forum for the discussion of all things Earth related without censoring, editing or peer-review.
Hi,
I am arranging a new green campaign for the stationers I work at and I wondered if I could use the photo of the tree in footprint silloette?
Do you have the copyrite and an hi res image?
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