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.
Over the past three days, I have learned in class and from articles, that buying more things can dramatically increase your carbon footprint and add greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Fast fashion, eating beef, and burning gas for heat are all contributors to your carbon footprint. Colder places and busy cities have a bigger carbon footprint than walkable cities with warmer climates. This is because in cold places, people need to burn more gas and wood to keep warm, these places also have more people driving, releasing more carbon into the atmosphere. The places in Europe with the biggest carbon footprint include the United Kingdom and Luxembourg. Whereas the most climate friendly are Spain and France (Ivanova et al., 2017). Greenhouse gasses trap heat in the atmosphere, keeping the Earth warm. Non-greenhouse gasses release heat from the atmosphere and are non-polar covalent molecules. When greenhouse gasses trap heat on Earth, it makes the climate hotter. Carbon Dioxide, a greenhouse gas, acts like a cap, trapping most of the heat that Earth would have put into space. According to my classmate's carbon footprint calculations, traveling by airplane can make a huge negative impact to your footprint. I've learned that making decisions like getting an electric car and including LED lights in your home are all sustainable things that will help the atmosphere.