Dear EarthTalk: How can I measure—and then improve—my overall “carbon footprint?” What are the major areas of one’s daily life that one measures?
-- Andy Fusco, Passaic, NJ

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 can significantly reduce your overall carbon footprint. Luckily for those of us who want to see how we measure up, there are a number of free online carbon footprint calculators to help figure out just where to start changing.

One of the best 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, which users can compare to similar households across the 28 largest urban areas in the U.S. Some of the results are surprising. For example, residents of eco-aware San Francisco tend to have bigger carbon footprints than those in more conservative Tampa, Florida. The reason: San Francisco has a higher cost of living and 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 to spread the word that individual actions can make a difference in the fight against global warming. Users just take a three-minute survey and get back a carbon footprint score, which they can save and update as they work to reduce their impact. The site provides some 150 lifestyle change suggestions that will cut carbon emissions—from hanging 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, then raising their awareness about what they can do to make easy, simple changes that will lower their score and positively impact the planet,” says Anna Rising, EarthLab’s executive director. “Our goal isn’t about convincing you to buy a hybrid or retrofit your house with solar panels; 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. And CarbonFund.org even allows you to assess your carbon footprint—and then offers you the ability to offset such emissions by investing in clean energy initiatives.

CONTACTS: Cool Climate Calculator, http://bie.berkeley.edu/calculator.html; EarthLab, www.earthlab.com; CarbonFootprint.com, www.carbonfootprint.com; CarbonCounter.org, www.carboncounter.org; Conservation International, www.conservation.org; The Nature Conservancy, www.nature.org; BP, www.bp.com.

EarthTalk is produced by E/The Environmental Magazine. GOT AN ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTION? Send it to: EarthTalk, c/o E/The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; submit it at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/thisweek/, or e-mail: earthtalk@emagazine.com. Read past columns at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php.

3 Comments

1. 1. cba2m3 10:03 AM 9/25/08

   Bigger than yours!

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2. 2. elautin 02:02 PM 9/25/08

   Does your carbon footprint matter? It would be great to have no global warming and to minimize human contribution to global warming. Unfortunately the increase in human contribution is probably inevitable. The first world, about 1/5 of the population uses a disproportionate share of resources and creates a disproportionate share of pollution. As the rest of the world increases its share, which they will and which they are reasonably entitled to do--China is bringing one coal fired and highly polluting power plant on line every week --what we do will make little difference. Does your carbon footprint matter? Only minimally so. Solution? Population control, new technology, and again population control!

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3. 3. Nathaniel in reply to elautin 01:28 PM 9/26/08

   elautin, The problem with population control is that it interferes with people's reproductive rights. It's an interesting thing that people assume that just because they have reproductive organs, this gives them the right to reproduce. But with that aside, the government can only encourage people to reproduce less. My suggestion is tax benefits for only having one or two children which are completely revoked if you have three or more children. This would discourage people from just pumping out kids. As it is now, people get more money for having more kids. While this is admirable, it does not help control the population... in fact, it helps make it increase in size. More specifically, it encourages the increase of the population of the poor and/or uneducated.
   
   There would also need to be a second part to the population control strategy, government funded voluntary sterilization (sounds like some Nazi stuff doesn't it?). Perhaps even giving people money to get "fixed". Free vasectomies for everyone! All of it would be completely voluntary. On top of that, no one would be penalized or punished for not doing complying, they would only cease to receive the benefits of complying. That way, no one's reproductive rights are trampled in the process.
   
   A lot of the world's problems are caused by the fact that our population is far too high for us to sustain ourselves with our current technology. Or rather, we have the technology to sustain everyone... but it's expensive and would require we change the infrastructure of several aspects of our current society. Population control on the other hand, is something we could start working on now.
   
   "Kids, help control the human population, have your parents spayed or neutered."

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