I was very surprised to see how high my carbon footprint was, especially from the amount of traveling I did. I think, in my general area the carbon footprint was so high because most of the people in my neighborhood leave their lights on in their house before they leave for the day, which usually means they'll be gone for several hours of the day. I also do this sometimes but I should stop to reduce my carbon footprint, I think other people can also stop doing things like leaving the water running and using their cars to travel places that are close to reduce fossil fuel emissions.

Many of us are probably used to eating meat, dairy, eggs and other animal products quite frequently, if not every day. What a lot of us don't know (or choose to ignore) is the horrors that go on inside the meat/animal product industry. The animals in them are subjected to short, tortuous lives, with many living cramped together and in inhumane conditions. In addition to all of that, it is horrible to the environment, with factory farming being one of the leading cause of greenhouse gases worldwide.Eating less meat could help to reduce our carbon emissions as a group effort, and would help the environment and the animals as well.

As a student who has lots of activities to do in and outside of school, I can’t always use public transportation. This is one of my personal reasons for my high carbon footprint, as I’m sure it is for many other students. A way for our cities to combat this is by making it more accessible. Instead of me having to walk a mile to the correct bus stop and then walking two more to get to where I need to be, it is majorly inconvenient. Also, when I have used public transportation to get to where I need to go, I am often late. If cities can implement a way to make more specific public transport, that would help this issue. I understand that this wouldn't be easy and is risky if people don’t end up using it, but with a good amount of promotion, it can work.

The fact that the carbon footprint survey asked us where we live got me thinking. Where should our actions and next steps be focused? Nobody can really help where they live, and I doubt that anyone is going to uproot their lives just to reduce their carbon footprint. And while humans leave a very large carbon footprint, I think reduction efforts should be focused in places that can implement those changes. It wouldn't make sense for us to focus our efforts in a rural countryside where everyone already lives frugally, but it also wouldn't make sense to pour all of the effort into a place like New York City that is already super industrialized. If we did that, we would be putting in a lot of effort without a lot of reward. Instead, if we focus on more suburban neighborhoods and towns, that amount of effort could really change things. I learned through my survey that most of my carbon footprint comes from transportation. I can't exactly help transportation because I can't drive and live in a big city, but for people who CAN help it, they should, not by completely cutting all individual transportation, but by giving a friend a ride to work, or taking the subway on Fridays. Stop focusing on the big picture. If you do that, you'll get tunnel vision. Focus on the little ways you can help and do everything you can. Not doing so is the same philosophy as saying "Oh, darn, I only have 45 minutes to work out today instead of an hour. I guess I'm better off just not working out at all." It's always better to do something, even if it's half-assed, because half-assing something is still doing it. So, focus on the little ways to reduce carbon footprint, and know that every little thing done has the potential to make a big difference.

After I completed the I2Sea carbon footprint calculator, I became more aware of the things I mindlessly do daily that really impact it. For the most part my carbon footprint was lower than the average in my area, but my transportation levels were a prominent outlier. I didn't expect them to be that high, but it makes sense since I recently took a big trip to Japan and Korea over my spring break that included a 11 hour plane ride one way. If it not were for that trip, I think the levels would have been lower. My home, food and purchase levels were drastically lower than the average. However, my purchases were ten times lower than the average calculations. So I think this calculator is pretty accurate since it separates the carbon footprint levels into sections or certain parts in our lives, but at the same time one thing like my trip can kinda throw it all off.

I believe that traveling is a great way to make connections and experience cultures all over the world. However, traveling is often bad for the environment, especially when done a lot. I propose that people should try to make the switch to electric vehicles instead of gasoline vehicles and they should try to be mindful of the environment when traveling.

Individuals should not be able to own private planes because carbon emissions from that are the highest and I don't want to discourage people from traveling because it is a good thing for culture but people could watch what they do in other countries and how they treat the environment

To me these two words are often merged into one word which is not right. Sometimes wants are even mistaken as needs. As a conservative person, it confuses me when people seem to buy things they want when it is really a waste of money. This belief that wants are a need are even fueling causes of climate change like fast fashion where people want to and buy the cheaply made products. If these clothes were really a need then we would go to places like thrift stores more often because they would sell the clothes we needed for much cheaper.

Rampant consumerism is a very large issue in the world today. Many people feel like they always need the newest and trendiest thing, but having those things does more harm than good. What we often don’t realize is that buying new products like clothes, makeup, and other commodities hurts our environment. Due to things like international shipping, the materials used to create the products, and how they were created, harmful gas emissions are driven up. Also, oftentimes these products are thrown away when the person feels like they don’t need them anymore, and because people don’t always dispose of their waste properly, thousands of tons of discarded products end up in landfills, creating a cycle of environmental harm that cannot be undone, unless people make large-scale changes to their consumer habits. These changes could be thrifting clothes more instead of shopping fast fashion, or choosing to shop from more eco-friendly brands.

Instead of transportation we need to create communites that are more encourging to walking and biking. Though electric cars can solve part of the problem the main problem is how our communites are built to revolve around cars. My highest contributer to my carbon footprint was the transportation section this is since everyone relys on cars so much since not all communies have stores close to their communtiy so they need cars to drive to get basic nesesistys. A community centerd towards walking and biking would have all the nesary stores and food very close to or within the town. This would encourage peopel to walk since it would not be an imense amount of effort. As well as helping our planet biking and walking helps people loose weight inturn leading to a more healthy society.

Many people don’t realize that throwing away food also means wasting all the energy it took to grow, ship, and store it. When food ends up in landfills, it rots and releases methane—a gas that’s way worse for the environment than carbon dioxide. In the Article" Food Waste and Climate Footprint," I learned that if food waste were a country, it would be the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases after the U.S. and China. I started focusing on this in my everyday life, while doing this I learned that “best by” dates aren’t always accurate, so I don’t throw stuff out just because the label says so. Cutting food waste isn't a hard problem to fix it just means we have to be more aware.

Did  you know 28% of the U.S co2 emmisons come from transportation. Alot of people abuse their ablity to drive somewhere because it's more convient, and can get us from place to place faster, but as we know the earth is dying due to us. We learned in an edpuzzle in class that if we put the earth existents in a 24hour spectrum we've only been on the  earth for 4 seconds, and we've already caused thousands of animal to go exist, and ecosystems to be destroyed. The Industrial Revolution, became the power house to rise in greenhouse emmsions. and ever since the average global amount of co2 has increased drastically in the past 40 years. so instead getting car to go to the park, maybe you should run or ride bike, to save the eath step by step.