Here’s the test to calculate your carbon footprint:
I confess: I failed.
My “personal impact” is rated “much larger than average.” That seems to be because I drive an ordinary half-ton pickup truck more than 12,000 miles per year, occasionally travel by air, and have not cut off my utilities entirely. To be specific, there are three people living in my home and my average monthly electric bills run $200-250. Since I live in the country, that figure represents my total utilities. I rely on electricity for everything (air conditioning, heat, and power to pump water from the well). The utility bill can spike significantly higher in cold months and run quite a bit lower in fall and spring.
How can I reduce that enormous impact?
Let’s start with reducing my driving to the average of 12,000 miles per year. I’m still “much larger than average.”
Let’s then cut my air travel to a single roundtrip flight to
Perhaps I should reduce my electric bill to less than $200 per month, probably meaning I can count on indoor temperatures of 80 degrees in the summer and about 60 degrees in the winter. Finally, my score drops to a mere “larger than average.”
Sigh. Let’s trade the truck for a Chevy Malibu (which is virtually useless in the country). Maybe I can occasionally borrow a friend’s truck to go buy feed and run up his carbon impact instead. Well . . . no, I’m still scoring “larger than average.”
Okay, give up the one flight to
Still “larger than average.”
What’s left? I have given up all air travel, I sweat and shiver at home, and I drive an average amount in an average car.
Two options: I can either turn off the air and heat altogether to lower my electric bills further, or I can take in a boarder to boost the number of persons living in my home. At last, I’m average!
To get from there to “below average,” I would need to decrease my total utility bills to under $100 per month, or take in a family a five, increasing my household population to 8. Of course, we would all have to ride in the
If I did all that, maybe it would constitute my little part to help offset the enormous carbon footprint of the inconvenient sponsor of this inconvenient and absurd little test. That is, after all, the point – isn’t it?
