President Obama is going to propose in Copenhagen next week that the United States cut its carbon emissions 17 percent by 2020.
I got to wondering what my personal role in our country’s achieving that goal might be. Many online carbon footprint calculators are available; this one calculates your carbon footprint and allows you to store the information for later reference. A perfect option for measuring personal progress.
The calculation has two components: the primary footprint (house, fuel, plane trips, overall energy usage, etc.) and the secondary footprint (food choices, clothing, furniture, other purchases, etc.). We have direct control over our primary footprint and indirect control over our secondary footprint.
My carbon footprint is 8.60 tons of CO2 per year. The average carbon footprint in this country is 20.40 tons per year. The average for other industrial nations is 11 tons. That seemed like an accomplishment to be proud of until I read that the average carbon footprint worldwide is 4 tons.
According to this website, my personal goal should be to decrease my carbon footprint to two tons per year! That’s a decrease of about 75 percent. That’s what needs to happen if we’re really going to address global climate change.
Based on my answers to the questions, I guessed I should take fewer flights, buy less new clothing and consider tucking my money under my mattress, rather than using banking institutions.
In an effort to be more scientific, I returned to the calculator to see what goals I might realistically set for myself. The site also offers plenty of specific data about what contributes to a hefty carbon footprint, with information about appliances, light bulbs, water usage and more. Recalculating my footprint for my new, theoretical self was more fun.
I added a person to my now theoretical household, creating a household of two, rather than one. I then projected modest savings in monthly electric and gas bills–enough that I could expect to be routinely drying clothes on the drying rack and probably keeping the thermostat at about 60 degrees in the winter. Those two cuts reduced my overall footprint by nearly two tons.
The first time around, I’d called myself a vegetarian, since I’m closer to being one than to being either a fish eater or a meat eater. In the second round, I opted not to overreach to become a vegan, though I’m sure it would have helped a lot.
Flying is a big contributor (huge!) to the problem. Although I’d heard and read this many times, taking the test and then retaking it with fictitious data drove home the point. Decreasing my number of cross-country trips from three to one per year, and adding one train trip per year to New York City (to meet my sister there, rather than flying to Montana) decreased my carbon footprint by another 1.35 tons.
I saved a little more here and there by projecting changes like buying no food with any packaging at all and by imagining my household with zero waste production. So much for my flexibility around the “no packaging rule”? And, could I really never throw anything out? Never?
Tucking my money under my mattress would save me another .40 tons!
Even with these changes–most of which seem pretty tough to me–I only managed to decrease my carbon footprint to 4.54 tons per year.
Leaving my 2009 data stored in my account, I decided to chip away at making some further changes in 2010. I can do a better job with this. I’m sure we’ll hear in the next couple of weeks more detail about how the country as a whole will meet its goal of 17 percent in 10 years. Certainly, setting and meeting a goal of decreasing my own carbon footprint even 10 percent in the coming year would help a tiny bit.
What’s your carbon footprint? Is it a number we each should get to know? I think so. Knowing it, and what comprises it, demysticizes it and makes changing it seem possible.
Knowing it makes part of the problem of global climate change mine to address.
