Are there aspects of your daily life that you know contribute to your carbon footprint but you are unwilling to compromise to change them? In other words, what about your life is “off the table” when it comes to carbon emissions? It's OK to admit it- we all have these cherished behaviors!
Off the Table? >
The Issue with Transportation
My carbon footprint was pretty high, in fact it is probably higher than the calculator says it is due to all of the electronics I have in my home. Besides lights and electricity the biggest reason why I had such a large footprint was transportation. This is because of two factors. The first being that I drive 45 minutes to get to ballet four times a week, which all adds up to be quite a bit of traveling. The second being that my family went on an 8,250 mile long road trip this year. The problem with these factors is that I have no control over them. I couldn't control the fact that I had to go on the trip or the fact that I had to get to ballet somehow. We can't do much about traveling if its a family decision to go. Its not like I can easily walk or bike to ballet. In the past I have tried to fix this issue by carpooling, but the habit never sticks. Even if it does it can still be to difficult to organize. And some of the more high tech options to lower my carbon footprint in the Transportation category are just completely unrealistic for me. Transportation is off the table so the only other option to lower my footprint is to lower the other aspects of it. If I can't lower transportation maybe I can lower my use of electricity instead. That just goes to show that if for some reason you can't find a reasonable way to decrease your foot print in one category there is most likely another category that you can decrease your footprint in.
I definitely think that if you need to go somewhere and you are in a reasonable walking distance, then you should avoid driving there. My carbon footprint was very high in transportation also, so I think I need to cut back on traveling to places by car or others way of transportation if I can.
alot of people think that taking planes are really bad for your carbon footprint, but they are alot more efficient then cars the (adverage mpg of a car is 25 compared to 100 miles per gallon per person) so if you flew those 8250 miles in a plane instead you would have burned less fuel.
If you really want to lower your carbon footprint, I would suggest that you carpool with some of your friends that are in your ballet class.