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 >
Bay Area Roads
So I am a teenager living in the Bay Area I usually take the bus or bike to my school. I don't have my parents drive me often. When I bike, the roads always smell like exhaust fumes. I am always stuck in traffic when I use the bus. And when I go to San Francisco, there is almost always heavy traffic. I would think that until electric cars become cheaper, more people should take public transit like BART or Muni or even carpool. What would anyone think of this idea?
great idea!
I think that your idea is great, but for people who have an emergency or for places without public transits, you will need a car...
The problem with BART is that the trains need to be cleaned. Less people take BART because of the grumpy people and poor conditions.
I agree with you if more people carpool we will have a smaller overall carbon release. The only problem is when there is a crash the casualties will be much higher
I agree that utilizing public transportation is very beneficial for the environment, and also for the people biking around cities. One way to provide an incentive for people to start using public transportation more could be raising gas tax which could also encourage people to buy electric cars. It isn't a perfect solution, but it could make a difference. Furthermore, on the point about BART being unpleasant and discouraging because of its cleanliness, I agree that more people would use it if it was more appealing. The issue here is that BART is a very hard service to ensure cleanliness on because of its fairly widespread use and many many trains. However, if we could find a way to make BART more pleasant for people, this would definitely attract the public and make a significant dent in the number of fossil fuels coming from cars on the road.
I totally agree with you! because when people share and use the same energy at once it makes the environment healthier and healthier by making small changes like this. Other ways we can do this is for example, instead of spending time in heavy amounts traffic trying to commute to work from home, It is most best to use public transportation or even try and work out a carpool with a colleague