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 >
How does Carbon Footprint have anything to do with Global Warming?
A Carbon Footprint, is the amount of Carbon emitted by a person. In the Atmosphere, there are a limited amount of Carbon. This Carbon Lets heat from the sun come through to warm the Earth. Then the heat reflects off of the earth and goes back up to space. The carbon in the atmosphere only lets some of the heat through to balance out the temperature of the Earth and keep it warm. What humans are doing, is increasing the amount of Carbon in the atmosphere. Another way to think of it, is let's say that the carbon in the atmosphere is a population. The population has a limited carrying capacity. That carrying capacity is perfect, and we don't want it to go lower or higher. We humans, are increasing that carrying capacity and increasing the population of the carbon in the atmosphere. That is bad because we don't want the population to decrease, because the earth will freeze. We also don't want the population to increase, because it will melt the earth.