by Julia Schrenkler
Member since:
August 31, 2005

What is your carbon footprint?

March 27, 2006 03:12 PM EST (Updated: March 28, 2006 09:29 AM EST)
views: 846 | rating: 9.2/10 (6 votes) | comments: 25

First, what is a carbon footprint?  You can get 1,890,000 search results off Google for carbon footprint but that won't help us here. Wikipedia's entry rather dryly states:

Carbon footprint is a measure of the amount of carbon dioxide or CO2 emitted through the combustion of fossil fuels; in the case of an organization, business or enterprise, as part of their everyday operations; in the case of an individual or household, as part of their daily lives; or a product or commodity in reaching market.

Thorough as that definition is, I'm sure I'm not the only who glazed over reading it. How about this:

What you do and what you use adds up to the amount of carbon dioxide - a greenhouse gas - you create.

Do you drive? What do you drive? The size of your carbon footprint changes depending on how you answer those two questions. Since we don't really want to share carbon dioxide, as in golf you want your carbon footprint size to be smaller than the average. BP's carbon footprint calculator notes that the U.S. average is 18.58 tons per year. Sounds reasonable? That is about double the U.K. average, and (again courtesy BP) could fill about 4 1/2 Olympic swimming pools.

To find your carbon footprint, try one of these basic calculators:

BP carbon footprint calculator
carbonfootprint.com
climatecrisis.net carbon calculator

Or any number of others that range in detail and sophistication. Some sites are as simple as estimating the number of miles you drive and knowing how many cars you own, others practically require a geeked out calculator and a year's worth of energy bills. Please feel free to share other calculators, I'm interested to see which ones people find effective.

Please share: What is your carbon footprint? How will you reduce your carbon footprint? Is it as dramatic as selling the car or as quick as writing a check for a carbon offset?

____________________
Julia Schrenkler
American Public Media Interactive Producer

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Comments: 25

Cat Givens Mar 28, 2006, 8:15am EST
1,600 lbs per year auto
0 lbs per year air
NaN lbs per year home.
my carbon footprint is much smaller than average.

This is using jsut the climatecrisis.net site, as I could not access the others.
Julia, I enjoyed your article and wonder what is your footprint?
Julia Schrenkler Mar 28, 2006, 9:24am EST
I'll double check those links, Cathy, and update them if necessary.

According to BP, our household uses 11 tonnes per year. I'm sure a lot of that has to do with the fact that although we have multiple vehicles I use the metro transit to commute and the main car has lower than avg miles/year, since most of our driving is within a small circle of the city. The rest is pretty basic stuff, like not leaving too much running. I certainly do have some bad habits I could kick, and I'm guessing we could dramatically lower the footprint with a smaller space and more efficient appliances.
Julia Schrenkler Mar 28, 2006, 9:39am EST
Earlier today I found myfootprint.org but haven't taken that one yet...
Virginia Marin Mar 29, 2006, 1:33pm EST
According to BP my Carbon Footprint is 8 which is lower than the U.S. average of 18.58.Thank you for this article. I have seen the ad on TV asking about a Carbon Footprint, but did not really know what they were talking about, specifically.
Ron Hall Mar 29, 2006, 2:01pm EST
I came up with a 7 in the BP questionnaire. It was much better than another I tried that lumped in those who commute "less than 10 miles per day" with those who walk to work(!). I had a little difficulty saying what fuel source our building has (we're connected to the central heating system in St Paul - which I think burns natural gas, so that's what I selected). What am I going to do differently? Let's see, I walk to work, shower with a friend and almost never fly. I'll try not to leave lights on, even during depression season.
Jennifer Hodge Mar 29, 2006, 2:07pm EST
My carbon footprint is 9. This was an edifying exercise. Thank you for posting it. I definitely could do better by riding my bike to the grocery store and recycling more than I do.

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Jennifer is the Associate Editor of Gather.
0000-bladegrip-0000 Mar 29, 2006, 2:39pm EST
Mine was 79....I guess I win
George Corneliussen Mar 29, 2006, 3:09pm EST
Ours came in at 14. What are the chances of a calulator that would translate usage into dollars and cents. Even though we are concerned about the environment, we are equally motivated by saving cash by using less.
We just got our February combined gas heat and electric utility bill. The total was $145. For a Cincinnati winter month, that's pretty good. Most of those savings came from conservation based on saving money. Natural gas prices here are up almost 70% from last year.
RJ Blain Mar 29, 2006, 3:19pm EST
I came in at about 7. I don't know what the heating is in our building, though. I could do my next apartment better. (And my rating will go down when I move, we're required by the landlord to recycle rather than throw stuff out. :) And I know the new place will be electric! Woo!
Julia Schrenkler Mar 30, 2006, 9:04am EST
Seeing these below-the-nat'l-avg and single-digit numbers gives me hope!

I wonder how our values tie to our carbon footprint. Whether out of being cheap (*grin*) or investing in the land by planting trees, it seems our current beliefs inform the choices that actually make a big difference.

Should our society set carbon goals based off of values instead of merely trying to reduce numbers? It seems to me that is working to good effect based on individuals here. For example, no matter how hard I try I can't wrap my head around the idea of carbon offsets. Instead of just writing a check to one of these organizations and considering your family at carbon footprint of zero, why not have one day of the week be car-free and support the carbon reducing projects?!
Bert B. Mar 30, 2006, 11:07am EST
I got a 20 with the BP calculator. I think the main contributor was airline travel. My wife is in the Africa tourism business, and travels there at least twice a year on business, plus a lot of shorter local flights.
Also, we are in our early retirement years, and are doing quite a bit of personal air travel, both locally and internationaly. With uncertainties about dollar value and health, we feel we have to "make hay while the sun shines." That will decline in a few years, but at the moment, we are above the average.
Frank J. Mar 30, 2006, 11:10am EST
Can't we just find more uses for C02? Plants seem to make good use of it, and we're smarter than plants.
Julia Schrenkler Mar 30, 2006, 11:11am EST
Bert makes a good point - flying dramatically increases a carbon footprint but fast!
Julia Schrenkler Mar 30, 2006, 11:15am EST
One would *think* we're smarter than plants. Maybe my memory is failing me, but wasn't there a Canadian study that tried to harness or vent C02 to a greenhouse space?

(Sorry Frank, we crossed comments...)
Bert B. Mar 30, 2006, 10:53pm EST
The problem is, forests, which are great processors of CO2 are being destroyed at an alarming rate. We are losing the ability to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. And then there is the problem of the huge quantities of methane frozen in the bottom of the oceans and in the arctic tundra. Methane as a much worse greenhouse gas than CO2. If the oceans and the tundra continue to warm, the ecosphere may reach a "tipping point" where a small increase in temperature will cause vast releases of greenhouse gases. Nobody knows if that will happen, so I guess we should just go ahead with what we are doing...can't do anything about it anyway. Let's just continue to "study" it for twenty or thirty or fifty more years, and then if it turns to s**t, well, God will take care of us....
Julia Schrenkler Apr 3, 2006, 2:27pm EDT
Bert, Liz, (and all!) do you think projections or simulations that show us what would happen could "hit home" with the general population?

BTW Bert I remembered hearing that the Arctic sea ice is decreasing at a rate of 9% every ten years, so I fired up another topic Watching the ice (caps) melt...
Julia Schrenkler Apr 7, 2006, 8:51am EDT
That's really interesting Liz. In terms of time, there's always been someone shouting the dire prediction the sky is falling or the earth is going to go up in flames. Why would global warming be any different?

Can it be we're the frog in slowly warming water, only we're turning up the heat ourselves?

When you speak of the arts, I have to wonder if there doesn't need to be some sort of organization around that. Art shows, contests, performance packages that highlight this theme *could* reach out, but who is willing to step up to organize it? Is there someone doing this now?
much smaller than any average smaller twin engine jet commutrer plane. much.

L.
Steve Petersen Apr 9, 2006, 11:17pm EDT
16 tonnes CO2 per year (the average in the USA is 18.58 tonnes per year).

I used the BP calculator.
George Hoguet Apr 19, 2006, 9:17am EDT
9 tons year. I use my company's calculator at www.nativeenergy.com, but realize that it doesn't include my CO2 impact of buyng (or not buying) locally-produced food. I'm beginning to focus on buying local, and also just got a bike to cut back my car use.
Wynn Martin Apr 26, 2006, 7:06pm EDT
Thanks for the article about carbon footprints. My husband and I are spending the year living on a boat, so this raised an interesting question. We have no house. Our Prius is in storage, though we did drive it for 1 week (400 miles) while home in March. Our boat is small, a Rosborough 246, so we are living in about 200 sq. ft of space. We will travel about 6500 miles over the course of the year, traveling about 200 miles per week. We have travelled 3,000 miles on 896 gallons of gas. Using the footprint calculator, we are at about 2,300, but we were assigned an additional 6,000 ft. in "residual" carbon -- based on averages used by the typical household in the UK. Not a fair measure but I get the concept. I don't know how to calculate electrical but we do tap into the grid when at a marina. That's about 60% of the time. When anchoring out, we will occasionally use a generator but primarily rely on ship power (batteries). It feels like this yields a fairly light footprint. What do you think?
Jonathon D. C. May 21, 2006, 7:20pm EDT
Wow: George, I really like the www.nativeenergy.com web site and all of the tools it provides for consumers... energy offsets, alternative energy investments, it all looks great and I was previously unaware of this resource. Many thanks for sharing!
chris b. Jul 9, 2007, 4:02pm EDT
Mine is 40, awesome!! It must be my Chevy Tahoe that gets 12mpg, or maybe its all the red meat and vitamin D milk I drink everyday. Or it could be my 56-inch TV I leave on for my dog ALL DAY (She watches FOX news). To bad they didnt let me add my boat, I could have broke 50. Damn. You people are all MORONS, but don't worry, according to Al "Getting me Super Rich from the global warming Hoax" Gore, we'll all be dead in ten years anyhow, Its all Bush's fault right? Idiots

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