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 >
Reducing Carbon Dioxide Emissions
It is important we reduce our emissions on carbon dioxide immediately.
Carbon dioxide is a major factor in climate change, as it causes heat to reflect back onto the Earth. Hotter temperatures are melting glaciers, which is causing rising sea levels. Higher levels mean many coastal cities will be swallowed up, by the rise of water. This will cause trillions amount of damage, as well as leaving many homeless.
Hotter temperatures also cause our oceans to take in more CO₂, causing ocean acidification. This causes many of the organisms in the ocean who rely on calcium carbonate skeletons (ex. krill, clam, urchins), will die. This tips the balance of food webs, and ecosystems, causing catastrophic issues.
Not only do animals get impacted, humans too! The hotter temperatures are causing living conditions for plants and crops to be not met. This means less food for livestock, also impacting our meat supply. This can lead to war, through the shortage of food. Lack of food can also impact our health, and overall well being.
To conclude, carbon dioxide can cause many devastating impacts on the planet. If we address it now, we can stop all of these things from happening!
I agree that we are causing a huge butterfly effect with small things such as driving a car because it leads to global warming which leads to melting glaciers, which leads to rising sea levels, which leads to dying trees, which leads to more CO2, which is a positive feedback loop and it just goes through this cycle over and over again.