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 >
Human Impact on Climate Change
Climate change has always been natural, but with the industrialization of Western society, humans have definitely contributed to it in a more harmful way, as shown in Paul J. Crutzen’s paper The “Anthropocene”. Most people in the world nowadays drive cars, which has substantially increased CO2 emissions in the past 75 years. I think people should try to use more public transportation if they life in cities (eg. buses, trains) instead of using cars, or buy electric cars. If accessible, more people should start riding bikes, because they give off no emissions.
I agree with this post because it concludes that even though climate change is not preventable, we as humans have not only not made a big step into trying to reduce carbon input, but we have also contributed to making the problem worse. To reduce our carbon emission, using bikes for our transportation could help reduce our individual carbon release (versus using cars, which release carbon in the form of carbon dioxide to produce gas for the car to run on). One does not have to change their whole lifestyle overnight, but taking little steps to reduce carbon emission into the atmosphere can make a big difference.