Liu Ning, a engineer, has been riding his bike to work along the waterfront for the past year during the morning commute in San Francisco, California. (Tony Avelar/ Special to the Christian Sceince Monitor)
Treading lightly: How to gauge my carbon footprint?
First, find out how big it is by using a free online calculator.
By The EDITORS OF E MAGAZINE | September 26, 2008 edition
Q: How can I measure – and then reduce – my overall “carbon footprint”? What are the major areas of one’s daily life that one measures?
– Andy Fusco, Passaic, N.J.
A: With global warming dominating so many headlines today, it’s no surprise that many of us are looking to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases our activities produce.
By assessing how much pollution each of your individual actions generates – be it setting your thermostat, shopping for groceries, commuting to work, or flying somewhere for vacation – you can begin to see how changing a few habits here and there may significantly reduce your overall carbon footprint. A number of free online carbon footprint calculators can help you figure out where to start.
One of the best, in our opinion, is the University of California at Berkeley’s Cool Climate Calculator. The free Web-based tool takes into account daily driving mileage and grocery and electricity expenses, among other factors, to assign a carbon score. Users can then compare their scores to similar households across the 28 largest urban areas in the United States. Some of the results are surprising. For example, residents of ecoaware San Francisco tend to have bigger carbon footprints than those in more conservative Tampa, Fla. The reason: San Francisco has a higher cost of living as well as colder, wetter winters (requiring more fossil-fuel-derived heat).
Another great carbon footprint calculator is available at EarthLab.com, an online “climate crisis community” that has partnered with Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection and other high-profile groups, companies, and celebrities. Users take a three-minute survey and receive a carbon footprint score, which they can update as they work to reduce their impact. The site provides some 150 lifestyle-change suggestions to cut carbon emissions – from hanging out your clothes to dry to sending postcards instead of letters to taking the bike instead of the car to work a few days a week.
“Our calculator is an important first step in educating people about where they are,” says Anna Rising, EarthLab’s executive director, “then raising their awareness about what they can do to make easy, simple changes that will lower their score and positively impact the planet.
“Our goal isn’t about convincing you to buy a hybrid or retrofit your house with solar panels,” Ms. Rising adds. “Our goal is to introduce you to easy, simple ways that you as an individual can reduce your carbon footprint.”
Other green groups and corporations, including CarbonFootprint.com, CarbonCounter.org, Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy, and British oil giant BP, among others, also offer carbon calculators on their websites. CarbonFund.org lets you assess your carbon footprint – and then offers you ways to offset such emissions by investing in clean energy initiatives.
Got an environmental question? Write: EarthTalk, c/o E – The Environmental Magazine, Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881. You can also contact them via e-mail at: earthtalk@emagazine.com.
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Comments
2. Christina Gerhardt | 09.27.08
San Francisco does NOT require fossil fuel driven heating.
I have lived there for over twenty years and sweaters and
tea do just fine in fighting off the chill. Recently, our
landlady had the windows redone, which made for a better
seal and kept the warmth in.
Now, if NYC apartments would have heat gauges, so that tenants
of apartments did not “gauge” the temperature by opening their
windows to let off excess heat as most people I seem to know do,
imagine how much the carbon foot print, not only of the individuals,
but of the nation would be decreased.
3. Peter O’Brien | 09.27.08
Does anyone know of a carbon footprint calculator for individual products? I am trying to find, for example, the carbon footprint of a single PET water bottle.
4. steve | 09.27.08
If the soccer moms would stop driving Sally and Johnny to their soccer practices and games that are within a 3 mile radius of home, and instead walked (heavens forbid) or road bikes, they’d be doing themselves and the planet some good. As a youth soccer coach, I crack up with how my players are shuttled around in the family van or SUV. No wonder so many kids rely on their coaches to get them in shape - today’s baby boomer moms and dads think for some reason kids need to be driven everywhere. When I came up (I’m 54), my parents got me a bike and that’s how I got to my baseball and soccer practices. My how times have changed…..
5. trudy | 09.27.08
The Berkeley calculator does not work for RI. It is pretty primitive as well, the menus do not respond to typing in one letter.
6. Steve | 09.28.08
Compared with world CO2 footprint, we not only need to take a lead but do something drastically. As a nation, we are only 5% of world population and only 7% of land yet we product 20% of pollution (not including all the Chinese goods we consume and don’t include that CO2 emission as part of our consumption). And by the way we do have the latest technology, money (even after considering the latest Wall Street crisis) to do something. But when we have leadership that refuse to acknowledge that global warming is due to humans and even after accepting that fact, has the view that we will take steps only when India and China agree to do the same. (India with its 1.1 billion population produce 5.3% pollution, China with its 1.3 billion produce 18% pollution). Lets hope the next leadership respect human life over profits, as much as I love our capitalist country.
FYI. I feel strongly about it and do my share. We are a family of 5 with 21% Co2 to the US average of 44% with same family size. But we still have a long way to match the global 8% so our family will continue finding ways to cut our CO2 emission.
Peace.
7. Mike | 09.29.08
And what would you do if you discovered that reducing your carbon footprint actually adversely affects the rate of growth of plants for food and trees for shade, thereby reducing the amount of food available for endangered species and other animals, even humans?
It turns out that that’s exactly what scientific studies are finding.
Contrary to the tenets of Al Gore’s global warming religion, carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant and no empirical scientific evidence exists to support the claim that more of it in the atmosphere causes dangerous global warming. The entire human-caused global warming hypothesis, as well as all the global warming computer models, is based upon this demonstrably false claim.
Instead, CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas that is absolutely necessary for all life on Earth. All mammals exhale it and all plants inhale it. Uncontested studies have shown that increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have significantly increased the rate of growth of plants and reduced the amount of water that plants need to grow.
See http://www.co2science.org/education/reports/extinction/mr1ch2.php for details.
Think twice before you consider reducing your carbon footprint just for the sake of reducing your emissions of carbon dioxide. You could be harming the very world you think that you are helping.
8. Ted Sappington | 09.29.08
There has been no warming in the last decade. A fact:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23411799-7583,00.html
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1. Robert Whitlock | 09.26.08
A lot of people making a lot of seemingly small changes can add up to produce a relatively large effect.
This conversation (about human caused global warming and climate disruption) should be central in today’s society. Yet our mainstream corporate political, media and business leaders are not doing enough to further the debate. Not enough action is being taken to ameliorate the harms that have been, and continue to be, done. I saw a story that global carbon output has increased by nearly 3% in the past year. That’s the wrong direction.
The USA must take the lead on this. Moving toward a green economy is a must if we care about quality of life. The transition can also be used to promote sustainable economic activity in the face of looming economic problems.
The Christian Science Monitor is likely a diamond in the rough of today’s media environment. Thanks for reporting and the website looks good.
bert