When I calculated my carbon footprint, I found that mine was slightly lower than the average Californian. However, I found that my footprint was significantly lower than the average Americans of 20 metric tons! The average carbon footprint for the entire world is ½ the amount of mine! I believe that this is because most middle class Americans use air travel than other countries. Some of my classmates had more than 6 flights, which greatly contributed to their carbon footprints. My “transportation footprint” alone acted as ½ of my footprint, and was double the average. My “home footprint” was also only slightly less than the standard. I never realized how many lightbulbs I used in my house, and never cared to check what kind.
However, I my “food footprint” was 5 times less than the average. Because my family has mostly cut out beef and pork from our diets, and we regularly eat vegetarian meals, we have greatly reduced our carbon footprint. Raising cattle requires large amounts of land, which is heavily fertilized and releases nitrous oxide. Nitrous oxide increases the wa rming potential by almost 300 times as carbon dioxide.  The methane produced has a warming potential of almost 25 times over a 100-year period.
I have also made a conscious effort to reduce my “purchases footprint,” and the results definitely showed this. Just because I rarely buy large quantities of new clothing and try to buy items with less packaging, my “purchases footprint” was approximately 6 times lower than the average Californian. Overall, I was happy to find that I am producing less carbon dioxide than the average American, but I  am still disappointed to see how much I was contributing to climate change. I hope to be more aware of this and try to change it in the future.
Sources:
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/2203 … -footprint
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 … 120658.htm