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 >
Red Meat
I know, I know red meat no way. In a study of people who ate the most red meat tended to die younger, and to die more often from cardiovascular disease and cancer. These people also tended to weigh more, exercise less, smoke tobacco more, and drink more alcohol than healthier people in the study. There has been a correlation to not only red meat to health but also the carbon footprint. Reduction of red meat is more affected than driving better as mentioned in my other post.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/2203 … -footprint
I would agree that being "unhealthy" tends to be more of a lifestyle rather that one characteristic of a person. Relating this to carbon footprint, I wonder if people living in a unhealthy lifestyle of their own, might not be able to think about how they affect the unhealthy earth, in terms of the persons carbon foot print.
Hello, fernandog_usa,
It is true that red meat has various health risks and concern. Interestingly, because red meat consumption is so high in the USA, cows and other red meat animals may be injected with growth hormones to meet up with this high demand. This, of course, contributes the detrimental effects red meat can have on human health. I agree with your point about red meat's correlation to the carbon footprint. In a recent study from greeneatz.com, livestock farming produces 20% to 50% of man-made greenhouse gas emissions. Of this, lamb production emits 39.2 kilos of carbon annually and beef production emits 27.0 kilos of carbon annually. These are truly astounding numbers. However, as humans of the millennial age armed with the power of the internet, we can conduct research to help limit this massive carbon dioxide emissions. This same website stated that we can reduce our carbon footprints by a quarter by cutting down on our beef and lamb consumption, scaled to various people's rates. No quantitative data on the rate of carbon decrease is found. Nevertheless, it puts into perspective how much carbon we emit, in ways some of us may not even realize. Hopefully, we can realize the hazards of excessive red meat consumption and find an alternative, healthier, and more environmentally friendly source of meat.