My Carbon Footprint

After taking the quiz on www.myfootprint.org, I discovered that my carbon footprint isn't too bad.. At least, I don't think so. In the form of earths, if everyone on the planet lived as I do, then we would need 3.06 Earths. It's..not that good, but..it could be worse, I think. Looking through the different forms for the result of the quiz, I found that, by consumption category, comparing to the country average, my footprint is waaaaaaaaaaaay low. Especially in the food category, which might be from the fact that I'm a vegetarian, and I like to look for and try to buy foods that have some sort of organic label. 3.06 Earths is pretty insane, though. That's a lotta earth we're talking about.. But, at least it's not 4.0, right? Right.

The largest category for my footprint turned out to be my Carbon Footprint, and then after that was the Goods and Services Footprint. The factors to cause this were probably because I don't really think of all the energy saving items I could get my mom to buy, or look out for myself when shopping. Things that could help the environment by, like, using a reuseable water bottle, instead of always using plastic ones over and over. Or maybe walking or riding my bike more instead of getting rides with mom. Actually, I have to pat myself on the back for how often I walk places and ride my bike now. I use to get rides in the car EVERYWHERE. It really does make an impact, I would hope.

Reading over the methodology behind the quiz, I tried to identify which three weaknesses I was assigned to talk about on here. Well... It's sort of hard to find them. But, one that I think might be a weakness, is how the quiz might not be completely accurate. It really only will provide an estimate, since it isn't 'flexible enough to account for all possible lifestyles and circumstances'. What if there was that tiny part they missed out on, that could end up making a HUGE difference to my footprint? I'm not sure if that is a weakness..but I would consider it to be one.

Also, there is a part where the question is asked 'I have a fairly green lifestyle but the quiz shows that it is unsustainable. Why is this so?' I think that might be sort of discouraging to see results for whoever submitted that question. What if then they were upset and thought all that they thought they were doing was green, turned out to be horrible for the environment, or not as effective as they thought? It could be a strength, though, having that question and answer out there. Then that person could change their ways, or add even more green changes to their lifestyle. It's a good, or bad outcome, I suppose.

The difference between a country's per capita ecological footprint and a country's total ecological footprint, and why is it important to consider both.. Hm. Well.. To remind myself, GDP stand for gross domestic product as the total value of all the goods and services produced in a country over a year. And per capita GDP is GDP divided by the country's total population. Seeing as a country's ecological footprint total takes in the account of each category that makes it up.. I guess the difference would be that the total ecological footprint takes up everything into mind, while the per capita is taking it in mind, but then dividing it over all the people in that country. It is probably important to consider both because it's safer to take a look and analyze each outcome. It would be good to know the country's footprint as a whole, and then the country's average number. I hope that made as much sense typed out as it did in my head.

A few 'Tragedy of the Commons' examples...

Tragedy of the commons. I never heard of this term before this week in AP Environmental Science. I felt sort of out of the loop, not having a clue what it meant, but then it made sense to me. Sort of thinking of it like a 'common tragedy' helped me out too. Well, I couldn't really come up with any examples on my own..so I had to do a little research online. Google, of course, helped out a lot.

One of the more modern commons I found had to do with car pollution. Some of the negative outcomes from car pollution include congestion, carbon emissions, and traffic accidents. Like, and I found this one explanation over Wikipedia (Yes, I like Wikipedia, sue me) which was.. Think of it as if every time 'Person A' gets in a car, it becomes more likely that 'Person Z' -and millions of others- will suffer in each of those areas. That. Sucks. There are so many Americans who drive everywhere nowadays.. Just think of how much pollution is clouding up the air, forcing soot and dust over the roads, and doing horrible other things to our atmosphere and world. It's sort of scary, I think.

Another example is the seemingly unstoppable human population growth, that most likely will soon lead to overpopulation in the world. I'm guessing the day we won't have much more capacity to fit in all the humans on earth isn't that far away. I always hear about how crowded China is, and how, I think, the families are only permitted two or three children each. I guess that's a good solution to help fix the problem..but it still doesn't end up like a 'win win' idea. It would just lead to unsatisfied parents, who wish for a bigger family to raise, and have a future with. All sad stuff. Yep.

Uhm, since I realized just now how long this entry is, I guess I should start to end it. So, those are just two of the many examples I found and had taken an interest in. At least now I know what the term 'tragedy of the commons' means.  :]