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 >
Plane: the biggest contributor
My carbon footprint is 29,942 kg, a lot more than the average of my region 9,727kg. However, 27,942kg of my carbon footprint belongs to transportation. The largest contributor of all is my four trips from China and back to the U.S. each year. For the future, I personally would fly less, but it doesn't stop the whole world population from doing it.
In the New York Times article "Your Biggest Carbon Sin May Be Air Travel", the author described the actions Europe and the U.S. have taken to deal with this problem. One of the solutions is to add the price of carbon allowances into plane tickets. Each plane ticket would charge about $5 more. People who can afford a long flight plane ticket could definitely afford the extra $5, but I believe this is not a long-term solution because the number of people who pollute the environment would not decrease. The $5 might be used to conduct carbon sequestration, a remedial method to take our carbon emission out of the atmosphere. What we need is not remedy, but prevention and raise in environmental awareness.