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 >
Carbon Affects Turtles, too
Polar Bears and Coral reefs are not the only organisms that are being affected by climate change and global warming. As the polar ice melts, the water rises. This causes turtles to lose them nesting ground and beaches are flooding. As stated in "Global Warming And Sea Turtles" https://www.seeturtles.org/global-warming, the increase in temperature causes storms that destroying and flooding nests with sea turtle eggs inside. The increasing temperatures also heat up the sand, which decreases the hatching rate of the hurtles. This means that their population is decreasing due to warmer sand caused by carbon in our atmosphere. The warmer oceans are also impacting the turtles. Turtles use ocean currents to travel and find food. As the water increases in temperature, the ocean currents shift and their prey starts to migrate in a different pattern, which causes a lack in food distribution among the turtles (less food). Carbon affects the atmosphere, which affects the ocea ns, and then affects sea life like turtles. We might not be able to fix it, but we have to keep Global warming and climate change from hurting more organisms.
It is terrible that we are affecting some of the most incredible species with our carelessness and our need for convenience. If we would just take a little more time or put in a little more effort as a human race we could potentially fix our mistakes and save a lot of species.