Over the past few days, I have learned a lot about my carbon footprint, greenhouse gases, and climate change. When calculating my carbon footprint I learned that the biggest contributor to my carbon footprint is transportation because it causes direct emissions. In the article, "More stuff = more climate change?" (Ivanova, et. al., 2017) direct emissions are explained as emissions directly released when the product is used, like from the tailpipe of a car. This puts greenhouse gases directly into the atmosphere and activities such as driving and flying in planes a lot have a big impact on your carbon footprint. The production of these heat-trapping gases causes climate change, which is changes in climate over long periods of time. Greenhouse gases make polar covalent bonds, which make the compounds lopsided and able to move around. This allows them to absorb a wider range of infrared energy waves, overall causing more heat to be trapped in the atmosphere. Non-greenhouse gases have the opposite effect, they are more of a flat shape and do not change form so they let heat out of the atmosphere. However, although CO2 makes up 0.04% of the atmosphere, according to the article "How Exactly Does Carbon Dioxide Cause Global Warming?" (Fecht, 2021) even low levels of these greenhouse gases can make a large difference in Earth's climate. There are many things we can do to reduce our carbon footprints, such as buying second-hand clothing, eating more locally grown fruits and vegetables and less beef, using public transportation more often as well as walking or riding your bike places, and not using electricity when not necessary. All of these topics are related because greenhouse gases contribute to climate change and it is important for people to be aware of their carbon footprints because we are all contributing to climate change and it is affecting all of us.