Students from around the world calculated their class mean and standard deviations for their footprints and posted them on our world map.
Do you see differences across the globe? If so, why do you think those differences exist?
Did you use the calculator to try to reduce your footprint down to the average from a citizen of another country? What changes would you have to make to lower your footprint in this way? Are you going to try and take some of these actions in your daily life?
Student Footprints >
Air Conditioning Environmental Impact
I used http://environment.nationalgeographic.c … al-impact/ to help educate myself more on these impacts. When fossil fuels are burned to provide electricity to homes and other places, we have learned that it adds large amounts of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere. "Air conditioner use in the U.S. results in an average of about 100 million tons of CO2 emissions from power plants every year." If people used air conditioners less in warm weather and used hand held fans or ice packs to keep cool, it could help our environment and lessen our average carbon footprint.
I definitely agree. People who use an Air Conditioner to cool their entire house (especially large houses) use so much energy and this releases tons of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere. Instead of wasting tons of energy to cool your whole house just open the windows, this will help to reduce your carbon footprint and live a more sustainable life.
Yes! I agree. I think we need to make sure to not have the A/C on when we are not using it. We should be able to have A/C but make sure to turn it off when we aren't using it. Even though it takes up a lot of energy, we need it to keep cool during the scorching heat of the summer.