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 >
The impact of our energy use and solutions
One of the predominant aspects of the cause of climate change is our high demand for energy use. When we use and generate energy, fossil fuels are burned from the power plants. This causes large amounts of greenhouse gases to be released into the atmosphere, which causes global warming, but it can also result in air pollution which affects human health. A good and impactful solution to this is renewable energy. Renewable energy is the energy that is collected from renewable resources, including solar energy and wind power. I think it is important that Bishop O'Dowd uses solar panels to power the school because as a high school, we tend to use a lot of energy that could be very dangerous towards our climate. Although buying/using renewable energy can be expensive, it positively impacts the future of our earth and should be highly considered.