What's A/My Carbon Footprint?

What's all this about a carbon footprint anyhow? It sounds like what you leave behind after you've walked through a campfire ring. Not exactly, but it does involve fire and its byproducts.

Most of the energy we use comes from burning hydrocarbons: gasoline for vehicles and various power tools, heating oil, jet fuel if you fly anywhere. Even the majority of electricity in the United States is generated by burning coal or some sort of carbon-based fuel (Wikipedia has a neat graphic showing the percentages of source fuels used to generate electrical power here). The process of combusting these fuels produces the much-talked about carbon dioxide (CO₂), that depending on which side you lean to is either warming the planet into oblivion, or not.

I don't intend to come down on one side or the other of the global warming debate, there's plenty of reading material out there on that. But I do have an opinion about using any sort of resource, and that opinion is that you are farthest ahead if you don't use any more than is necessary and that what you use, you use efficiently. Based on that philosophy, the less fuel I burn to get where I'm going, get my lawn mowed, keep warm, keep cool, and so on, the better. It's cheaper that way too.

Naturally, I was very interested in an article in the current (March 2009) National Geographic Magazine by Peter Miller, It Starts At Home. This article, along with giving all of the interesting general facts about carbon footprint, contains an account of the author's attempt (and he convinced two neighbors to try as well) to reduce his family's carbon footprint to 80% below the average for the U.S. As Peter Miller states, this equated to, "... a daily diet of only 30 pounds of CO₂."

How did they do?

Their results, Peter Miller says, "... were looking pretty good, in fact, when we crossed the finish line on August 1. Compared with the previous July, we slashed electricity use by 70 percent, natural gas by 40 percent, and reduced our driving to half the national average. In terms of CO2, we trimmed our emissions to an average of 70.5 pounds a day, which, though twice as much as we'd targeted as our goal, was still half the national average."

I have carried backpacks weighing in the range of 30 pounds over some miles and can't fathom producing 30 pounds of CO₂ a day, let alone 70.5 pounds. And those are both less than the national average.

So how can you figure out what your carbon footprint is? Of course everyone's favorite search engine turns up plenty of possibilities, but I thought this online calculator was easy to use and informative.

Note: You need to collect some data on your electric, natural gas or heating oil, and automobile fuel usage before you can use this.

I felt pretty good about the answers it gave me because they turned out to be below the national and even regional averages for where I live. And I feel good not so much because I am pumping less CO₂ into the biosphere, but because it means I'm paying less than most people on my energy budget. Hear that noise; it's me squeaking as I walk away.

Peter Miller, "It Starts At Home" National Geographic Magazine
Carbon Footprint, "Carbon Footprint Calculator" Carbon Footprint
Wikipedia, "Electricity Generation" Wikipedia