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 >
Footprint of Travel
So a few weeks ago I calculated my carbon footprint, and it was massive. I honestly couldn't believe how many resources I use. It also showed me how privileged I am to have the ability to uses these resources. However, probably about 85-90% of my usages was from air travel. I normally don't travel too often, but this year I did. I visited family, went to a camp on the east coast, went on vacation, did a science trip in Montana, etc. The bar for travel shot up when I inputted the number of miles that I flew this year. I am honestly quite ashamed of this. I of course do not fly as much most years, and I know that these flights would have happened with or without me. However, I feel like I am still partially responsible for this, since I support these companies. I also think that lots of money and resources should be given to the research for cleaner energy products, especially for practices such as air travel.
I would also like to add that a regular plane, a 747, uses about a gallon of fuel per second which adds up to about 36,000 gallons for a ten hour trip. Therefore, since I flew about 30 hours the past year, the planes I was on used about 1.08 million gallons of fuel. This is crazy and definitely contributes to the belief that we will run out of oil in the next 8 years.