Enter your username and password below

Not registered yet?   Forgotten your password?

Student Footprints

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 >

Solar energy

josipzeba

Allright,  so we're talking about the amount of carbon dioxide that's bad for our atmosphere,  and indeed we must work on it,  but what about preserving our planet for future generations? I mean,  we use alot of electricity,  but where does it come from? We all know that it's coming from power plants,  which are oftenly hydro power plants which destroy flora and fauna in a certain area,  depending on the size of the power plant. We also use nuclear power plants,  extremely dangerous if a malfunction happens. Humans have witnessed 2 large-scale disasters allready,  why ask for more if the energy of the sun is free to use and we could use it in households,  and factories. We have also seen the concept of electric cars which are environment friendly. So why hurt our mother Earth if we don't have to!?

hodin

there are a lot of companies invested in continuing to burn fossil fuels, and are thus resistant to modern energy solutions, like wind, solar and geothermal energy.  It is up to your generation to bring the real global change towards truly renewable energy.

josipzeba

I allready am using solar panels for hot water, but not sadly not the whole household since it costs too much for me and my parents to afford. Also my country is falling back on stations herewhere you could charge your electric car so we don't own one,  but we do use a car which spends only 3.5 liters of gas per 100 km. I hope that I will alongside others in my generation help the world regenerate and become sustainable.

hodin

The electric cars solution is a great one (and your fuel economy is very good!), but the one problem with electric cars is that people don't think about where that electricity comes from.  If the electricity in your town or region is generated by fossil fuels, it is not really different (in terms of CO2 emissions) from burning gas directly in your car.  In places in the US where electricity comes largely from hydropower (such as in Washington state), that results in low emissions, but as you point out in your original post, hydropower comes with other environmental problems of habitat loss & transformation.

Ultimately, though, building electric car infrastructure seems like a good idea to me.  Batteries will become more efficient, and eventually -- when we start to build more wind/solar/geothermal/tidal energy production plants -- the electricity in those cars can be more truly considered sustainable.

josipzeba

I completely agree with you,  that's why I stated that we first need to replace these power plants which are environmental unfriendly with environmentaly friendly power plants,  so we could have the whole world at our,  well lets call it a goal,  of 1000 kilos of CO2. When we solve the question of power plants our home and transportation averages will be minimum. And we will also lower our food and purchases averages too since they need energy to be produced too. So in my opinion replacing the energy sources is the main goal in lowering CO2 emitions!

hodin

yes it's good to have ambitious goals, and the good thing about the 1000 kg goal you describe is that *all* progress towards that goal is beneficial.

6 posts
You must be logged in in order to post.

Board footer

Powered by FluxBB

This site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Privacy
Terms