Ecological Footprints
Miranda Helms, Earth & Enviromental Science Honors, 1st
What is an ecological footprint? & The 5 Factors That Affect It
An ecological footprints shows you how much CO2 you have used in categories such as home energy use, driving & flying, diet, and recycling.
The 5 factors are:
-house size
-car size
-number of people in your home
-diet
number of miles each person drives
National & World Ecological Footprints.
Compared to the national ecological footprint, mine is very low. The nailtional ecological footprint is 110 tons/yr, but on the other hand, the world's ecological footprint is only 22 tons/yr.
Factors That Effect Your Ecolgical Footprint
Your footprint could vary due to many factors. For example, I live in a house with 3 bedrooms, and 4 people live there, with 2 mid-sized cars, but if I moved to an apartment in Massachusetts with the same amount of people, but downgraded my car, my ecological footprint would change dramatically. You have to take many factors into consideration such as your house size, car size, how many miles you drive, how much you recycle, and how many energy efficent appliences you have.
What You Can Do To Reduce Your CO2 Emissions
There are many ways to help reduce your prudction of CO2. For example, you can start recycling, you can tranfer all your light bulbs to energy efficent ones, eat more organic food, dipose of compost, and use energy efficent appliences.
Pros & Cons of Making Those Changes
There are always pros and cons to everything we do. Sometimes theres more pros than cons, or it could be the other way around. But making these changes to your home or your lifestyle has a balanced list of pros and cons. Making the switches in the paragraph above could mean that we are helping the enviroment by producing less CO2, but can also mean that all the changing will be expensive. Also, making these changes can mean you saving money in the long run, but as stated before, it would be a lot of cash out of your pocket up front. So, this "big switch" to help your ecological footprint has many pros and cons.
Short Term Effect of These Changes
Some short term changes that would result from this change would be less energy for us to use, and a lot of money out of your pocket.
Long Term Effects of These Changes
Some long term changes that would come from this change would be it helps the enviroment, and you can potentially save money.
A Surprising Fact About Climate Change
It surprises me that we make so much CO2 without knowing it, and this potientally is hurting our enviroment and causing our climate to change. We have to make some changes!