 Carbon footprint calculators are great for many reasons. They can help teach individuals what their daily lifestyle costs the environment, especially as it applies to global warming. A carbon footprint calculator can open the eyes of people who are unaware of how unsustainable their way of life can be. Recent statistics show that the average American emits more than 20 tons of carbon into the atmosphere.
But for a true environmentalist, a carbon footprint calculator isn’t enough. After all, carbon footprint calculators are limited. Most carbon footprint calculators are designed to be quick, simple, and entertaining. Many aspects of a person’s life may be left out of a carbon footprint calculator, yielding a less-than-accurate result. For example, most calculators do not take gardening into account, or eating local and/or organic food.
Other factors are more difficult to include, such as public services like police, roads, libraries, the government, and the military. Hypothetically, every American should take some ownership over the emissions produced by our military, since it would be unfair to ask someone who enlists in military service to take on both the responsibility of defending or protecting our country and the carbon footprint of a fighter jet. Likewise, a personal carbon footprint calculator doesn’t add such public services into the equation.
A person who visits the library frequently would, undoubtedly, have a different carbon footprint equation than a person who never goes to the library. Additionally, an individual who is frequently sick and in need of tests, treatments, or medications would presumably possess a larger carbon footprint than someone who is generally healthy.
A class at MIT recently estimated the carbon emissions of a variety of Americans, and the evidence is shameful, if not downright scary: the average American contributes more than twice as much greenhouse gases as the global average. Take a moment to consider what this means: the United States contains less than 5% of the global population, yet our 5% emits more than double the greenhouse gases than the rest of the world population.
To make the magnitude of their findings even more disturbing, consider the lengths that the MIT class took to make it accurate, including the “rebound effect.” The “rebound effect” takes into account what individuals do with the surplus they gain after reducing their environmental impact. Take, for example, an individual who purchases a hybrid car instead of a gas guzzler. That person then has excess money from government tax credits offered to hybrid vehicle buyers and money saved from reduced gasoline. If this person takes all of the extra cash and buys a jet-setting trip around the globe, the environmental benefits of the hybrid choice is negated by their greenhouse gas-heavy vacation.
The people at MIT took that into consideration, along with other aspects of life that are left out of carbon footprint calculators. The result? We Americans still emit greenhouse gases at a rate more than double the world average. A carbon footprint calculator is a useful too, but when you commit to an eco-friendly lifestyle, it’s just the first stepping stone.
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