As much as I would have liked to go to Paris, I couldn’t attend the United Nations COP21 climate conference where nations agreed to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Parties attending the conference agreed to set a goal of limiting global warming to less than two degrees Centigrade compared to pre-industrial levels. They will pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees which will require zero emissions sometime between 2030 and 2050.
Does this seem as overwhelming to you as it does to me? Could I possibly make any difference? What impact is my existence having? I decided to find out. It’s actually not that hard. There are numerous sites online to help you determine your own carbon footprint. There’s even one for kids at PBSKids. Most of the calculators have simple questionnaires. There are four major areas covered.
1 Home and energy source: How many people live under how many square feet? Your electric bill will help you here, so have it handy. Also be prepared to be shocked by how great an effect lowering the heat or raising the a/c one degree can have!
2 Food: What you eat and where it comes from. You’ll be asked what foods you eat, including beef, pork, fish, poultry, eggs and dairy, and asked how frequently you eat them. Some calculators will ask where your hamburger was raised, were your tomatoes were grown. Were they purchased at Publix? Lower carbon emissions result if your food is not trucked over long distances.
3 Transportation: What kind of a car do you drive? What is the mileage? Do you carpool? Bike? Take the bus? Carpooling daily to work is great, but even once a week to church or to a meeting once a month can add up.
4 Do you recycle? Reuse? Reduce? This one surprised me. I thought I was doing a good job filling the recycle bin every week and carrying my cloth bags to shopping venues. A calculator challenged me. Do I shop for pleasure, for therapy, or just to replace as needed?
If I were ever convinced that I am not contributing to the release of excess CO2, this checklist helped put me in my place. As someone who wants to contribute to solving, not contributing to the problems of the world, I need to be aware of how I shop, dress, drive and live and I must consider every act an ethical choice. The slow leak in my irrigation system rightly weighed on my mind, not because I have a water bill (I don’t, since I’m on a well), but because I was wasting our most valuable resource. The personal decision to pay $310 to locate, much less correct the leak, was part of my commitment to change the world by tweaking the way I live.
I urge you, my friends, to check out your own carbon footprint and see where you can tweak your life to make a small, but effective difference for the sake of this beautiful world we’ve been given. One of several good calculators can be accessed at www.nature.org/greenliving/carboncalculator.
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