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 >
Science and the Environment
I learned that my carbon footprint is heavily influenced because of my transportation strategies, I take a car everywhere I got, and I've traveled a lot in the past few years. Because I live in the United States, my carbon footprint is way higher than if I were to live in France or Luxembourg because they all have walking cities, and huge transportation isn't needed as much. The United States is the world's second largest emitter to greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases are all compounds and can stand on their own. This allows them to absorb heat because of their moving and keep heat in the atmosphere. They have a lopsided shape because they are all polar covalent bonds. Climate change is a change in climate pattern, the difference between climate change and global warming is that global warming just has to do with temperatures, while climate change also has to do with the side effects of the rising temperatures in the atmosphere. They are all related because greenhouse gases are why climate change is a thing, and your carbon footprint creates more greenhouse gases.