PASS THE GREENS PLEASE, GREENHOUSE GASSES THAT IS!

A carbon footprint is the amount of greenhouse gases that are produced to support everyday human activities such as transportation, energy consumption and the production of food and goods to be consumed.  Carbon footprints are expressed in tons of CO2 in which are emitted into the atmosphere.

To find out how much my household and my fathers household (he lives on Maui with my brothers) I went to Nature Conservancy website. Here I was asked a serious of questions ranging from our driving habits, preferences in food and even recycling habits. My results were astounding.

For my apartment in Kalamazoo which houses my three roommate’s and I our total greenhouse gas emissions are 120 tons of carbon dioxide per year. WOW! This serves to be greater than that of the U.S national average by 10 tons and more than five times the world average. Ways in which would have helped in reducing my households carbon footprint would have been choosing to recycle, walking to class or riding the bus, and convincing my roommate’s that an organic vegetarian lifestyle is better( as I buy almost all organic and was raised vegetarian). These small changes would have reduced our carbon footprint by an estimated 35 tons per year. I found this to be quite shocking, because I never knew that such small changes in our daily routine could have such an impact on our earth.

Our Carbon Footprint Without Cutbacks :(

 For the second household in my study was my fathers house in Maui, Hawaii. Here he lives with his wife and my three younger brothers. Due to his increased awareness for the environment this household is much lower than that of the national average by almost 40 tons per year. I believe this households carbon footprint is lower because my dad is the head of a vegetarian,bike-riding, compost loving, tree hugging lifestyle.My father is an avid flyer who takes on average 15 to 20 long trips every year for his job(owns an investment firm). 

HIppies Rule- Peace Love and Happiness!

After comparing the two household I thought it would be interesting to look at that of the carbon emitted by each country to as to which was contributing most and which one the least. My expectation was that the United States and China would take the lead in the most CO2 emissions. I was shocked to see that although my expectations for the U.S was correct, China is in fact in a much better global position. It is scary to think that if all other countries lived like the United States we would need over five earths to sustain our practices!