NationStates Jolt Archive

http://www.carbonfootprint.com/

Mine is 9. About a year ago it was 15. I'm reducing my carbon footprint by growing more of my own food, driving less, and I moved into a smaller place that is more energy efficient. I also got a car that gets much better gas mileage.

What is your carbon footprint? Do you think you can reduce it? Do you think you should have to?*



*not have to in a government's gonna take your car way, but in a uh... it would be responsible to do so way.

Whatever mine is, I'm sure it's not big enough.

5.3 woohoo for being a poor college kid. I <3 the environment with my poorness. :D

5.3 woohoo for being a poor college kid. I <3 the environment with my poorness. :D

:eek: Mine is 9 with 4 people.... I wonder if it's just me or my whole family :confused:

According to the site average in my country is 20...

20.3 tonnes. I can't believe that I've still managed to be under the average for an American (albeit by a whisker). I was sure all that air travel was going to cost me.

Edit: I had another go, this time entering in the info as if it was a few years ago. I was <5 tonnes. Sorry world!

A final edit: It's surprisingly cheap to offset all of that waste. One might say suspiciously cheap.

I don't give a crap about my Carbon foot print. Its all a load of crap anyway.

I'm on the second page, house energy usage.

I buy propane by weight. That isn't an option.

Giving up now. :(

My carbon footprint is small, the biggest part of it is the power this computer uses. That's all I want to know. I might get back to it later.

2.94 tonnes in a 1-person household. I could do better if I had land to grow some produce, or better access to organic/local produce, or didn't go out for martinis as often as I do. I fail to understand how Americans average over 20. What the hell are my neighbors all doing?

EDIT: And kudos to you, Smunkee, for getting that footprint down to 9 from 15. :)

EDIT 2: And in reference to the OP "do you think you should have to?" question: Well, personally, having gotten that number, I feel less pressured about it than I did before, but in general, I do think people should take some responsibility for being less wasteful of resources.

:eek: Mine is 9 with 4 people.... I wonder if it's just me or my whole family :confused:

According to the "Why?" button on page two, if you enter "4 people" it gives you the usage per person. To calculate footprint for a whole household, enter "1 person" regardless of how many of you there are.

OK, you probably wred that, but it's worth mentioning for anyone who might be confused.

(IIRC, last year we had a thread about this but the calculator was different. Comparisons with different calculators probably aren't valid ... did you do this one twice, using what you would have put in if you were doing it last year?)

I fail to understand how Americans average over 20. What the hell are my neighbors all doing?

If past threads on this subject are any guide, at least some of them are deliberately wasting all the resources they can lay hands on. It makes 'em feel big I think.

Isnt it intresting that thay choose the most harmless gas in the pollution spectrum to scare you all with, the one that will not only do the least damage if realsed in mass but the one that might also make the crops/plant life grow bigger and better, if you want to worry about the junk thrown into the enviroment maybe you all should worry about the stuff thay get payed to thrown into water supplys (Floride, just being the most popular industral pollutant to be added to drinking water) but i guess thay have gult tripped most of you into thinking your the problem with the world so thay can scam you into limiting the way you live and taxing you into the ground, good luck with your slide into a third world lively hood.

Isnt it intresting that thay choose the most harmless gas in the pollution spectrum to scare you all with, the one that will not only do the least damage if realsed in mass but the one that might also make the crops/plant life grow bigger and better, if you want to worry about the junk thrown into the enviroment maybe you all should worry about the stuff thay get payed to thrown into water supplys (Floride, just being the most popular industral pollutant to be added to drinking water) but i guess thay have gult tripped most of you into thinking your the problem with the world so thay can scam you into limiting the way you live and taxing you into the ground, good luck with your slide into a third world lively hood.

Danger! Will Robinson! Danger! Troll ahoy!

:eek: Mine is 9 with 4 people.... I wonder if it's just me or my whole family :confused:

According to the site average in my country is 20...

Oh, I forgot to mention that its 5.3 with an apt of 3.

I gave up when it refused to accept "a lot, bitch" as an answer for how many miles I travel by subway.
The subway system isn't there so that you can think about how long the tunnels are, it is there to provide an almost idiot-proof way of getting your drunk ass from Point A to a place in the general vicinity of Point B. Hopefully.
Or at least somewhere closer to Point B than Point A itself was.

20.8 and i will likely double it after college.

2.317 for just me, but it should be a bit lower since nearly 100% of the electricity I use is hydroelectricity.

20.8 and i will likely double it after college.

Impressive. Driving to the mailbox? Leaving all the lights on when you go to bed or leave a room?

Switching to gas-fired generator?

The secondary footprint (last page before calculation) really ought not to default to all the lowest values.

The choices "I don't even have a bank acount" or "I use the standard range of financial services" (no in-between??) makes .4 tonne difference! I'm closer to the "no bank account" but I'll leave it on the higher value to account for my propane usage which I couldn't calculate.

House 1.837
Flights 0
Car 0
Motorbike 0
Bus & Rail 0.060
Secondary 1.331

Total 3.2

I could cut that most easily by replacing this monster with a laptop. Perhaps I will.

Oh, I forgot to mention that its 5.3 with an apt of 3.

If you entered 3 for the number of people in your apartment, the result is per person.

Total 9.806

Meh, I don't really understand what this number is suppose to mean or whether it should be higher or lower. I use electricity in my apartment which comes from a coal plant. So for power consumption, should I select coal or electricity or both? And when it asks you about your car, it only counts mpg, but not how much pollution goes into the manufacture of automobiles(which is often more than the car will produce in its lifetime especially for hybrid cars because they have two engines). And it didn't ask me how many Asian products I own. Nearly 3/4 of my appliances are Japanese products that were probably shipped over to America on a giant freighter that used at least a hundred thousand times the gas the truck that brought tomatoes to my local market used.

I plan on raising this number in the future. I would like to travel more and use more power for myself in order to enjoy a generally more active and wealthy lifestyle.

Total 9.806

Meh, I don't really understand what this number is suppose to mean or whether it should be higher or lower.

It is tons of CO2 per year. Actual carbon is very nearly one-third of that weight.

I use electricity in my apartment which comes from a coal plant. So for power consumption, should I select coal or electricity or both?

The 'leccy. Presumably some folks still heat their house with coal. Unscrubbed coal fires stink and poison people. It's pretty unacceptable anywhere!

And when it asks you about your car, it only counts mpg, but not how much pollution goes into the manufacture of automobiles(which is often more than the car will produce in its lifetime especially for hybrid cars because they have two engines). And it didn't ask me how many Asian products I own. Nearly 3/4 of my appliances are Japanese products that were probably shipped over to America on a giant freighter that used at least a hundred thousand times the gas the truck that brought tomatoes to my local market used.

The price of foreign made stuff in walmart is enough to show that isn't so. Big ships burn bunker oil, it comes from crude oil and is subject to the same prices.

Globalization wouldn't work for anything but IT (no transport involved) but that shipping is a very cheap way to move anything. On the Secondary page it is somewhat taken into account with the "locally produced food" option.

Otherwise, all your points are good. The test taken no account of how big a house one has (and how new, or of what materials) or of how OFTEN one buys a new car. Nor of green credits, planting your own trees or the source of electricity except by nation.

The test is flawed, but it's better than the one we did about a year ago.

Impressive. Driving to the mailbox? Leaving all the lights on when you go to bed or leave a room?

Switching to gas-fired generator?

like my home frigid during the summer and this si Texas. a few times i will leave my 47" plasma on for a few days because i forgot to turn it off. I drive an SUV, this is the country that uses coal fire power plants.

Mine is 6.5 (UK avg. is 9.8). Flying really punishes me, 2.8 comes from flights and 3 comes from eating out. The rest comes from deep desire to conserve the precious resources of our planet for future generations and reconnect with nature... fuck yeah...

But seriously, just what exactly do the Americans get up to? I can't actually think what you'd do to generate 20 tons of CO2 emissions for every single person in the nation, except sit there setting fire to barrels of crude, whist cackling hysterically and masturbating to the thought of melting ice sheets...

EDIT - Did this test again, as realised you can be more accurate than I thought with flights and transport...

House 0.430
Flights 2.571
Car 0.000
Motorbike 0.000
Bus & Rail 0.642
Secondary 2.345

Total 5.988


Yay, greener than I thought. I am so wonderful I should marry myself...

* hatches evil plan to build a private jet that will burn pure whale oil, be built from metal sourced from a mine in the rainforest and have finest leopard skin seats... And I'll fly it to work every day *

I have absolutely no idea where to find out any of the figures...hahaha.

One problem: for the flights and public transport, they seem give you the total CO2 pumped for the trip rather than per head. Is that a bit unfair like that? Because if another person took the flight with me and the entire, say 2t impact, then we'd share and it would be 1t per head.

It is tons of CO2 per year.

Which makes me wonder why it is called a footprint test. A footprint test is supposed to tell you how many planet earths we would need to support humanity if everyone lived like you - which means that any number > 1 means you are a bad person ;)

I have absolutely no idea where to find out any of the figures...hahaha.

One problem: for the flights and public transport, they seem give you the total CO2 pumped for the trip rather than per head. Is that a bit unfair like that? Because if another person took the flight with me and the entire, say 2t impact, then we'd share and it would be 1t per head.

I was rather surprised at the low figure for my train usage.
"National rail" was the closest thing to the electric trains I use.
I like to travel off-peak, and not having fixed work hours, I do.
Sometimes I have a whole carriage to myself, that carriage probably weighs a hundred tons. Just to move little old me and my bicycle.

I bet they based the usage figures for trains and buses on them being full.

Which makes me wonder why it is called a footprint test. A footprint test is supposed to tell you how many planet earths we would need to support humanity if everyone lived like you - which means that any number > 1 means you are a bad person ;)

Heh, I just ASSUMED it was tons of CO2, because the figure seemed about right on the first page I calculated.

I got lucky, and you are right: that's not a footprint, it's a gross measurement.

But maybe that's good, since the footprint in the more proper sense (as you use it) is subject to even more disputed ratios, of what is sustainable.

I was rather surprised at the low figure for my train usage.
"National rail" was the closest thing to the electric trains I use.
I like to travel off-peak, and not having fixed work hours, I do.
Sometimes I have a whole carriage to myself, that carriage probably weighs a hundred tons. Just to move little old me and my bicycle.

I bet they based the usage figures for trains and buses on them being full.

I don't know how it'd work for calculations outside UK, but inside the UK they work them based on the average occupancy, hence the reason for splitting mainline, tube and DLR (the difference power consumption is minor compared to the difference in per capita emissions, caused by different ridership levels)

I don't know how it'd work for calculations outside UK, but inside the UK they work them based on the average occupancy, hence the reason for splitting mainline, tube and DLR (the difference power consumption is minor compared to the difference in per capita emissions, caused by different ridership levels)

I'm getting taken to school here, aren't I ? :p

Writing too much, reading too little ...

3.659, helped enormously by the fact I don't have a car and don't fly anywhere.

House: 1.574
Bus/Rail: 0.19
Secondary: 1.895 - tweaked this a little as the first time I did it I erred on the side of the greater effect if there wasn't an exact fit. Knocked .2 off my score.

I'm reasonably happy with that. I could knock off 0.7 by reducing gas and electricity usage by 20% and buying more local/organic food...if I could be bothered. And with the money I save, I'd probably buy a car. :p

It amuses me to no end that people actually care about this.

For starters there are so many factors not included (many have been mentioned thus far) that whatever number the test gives you bears little, if any, resemblance to reality.
Second, as also mentioned before, CO2 is probably the lest harmful chemical released into the atmosphere on a large scale and it does result in a marked improvement in the quality of agricultural produce.
Thirdly; stop treating your greenie-ness as a status symbol.
Lastly, no matter how much CO2 you and everyone else manage to cut back on it wont put a dent it in the amount of CO2 China, India, Brazil and Russia are all set to start blasting out.

Hmmm, 97.083 Tonns

Must be the 5 Cars, and the Drag Racing car we have that gets 1mpg on 110 Octance race gas.

After college I am sure it will triple as I buy more cars.

I don't get this paying for carbon credits.
They want to charge me for eating red meat from south America. I mean I already paid for it at the store why should I pay for it again?

4 just from the secondary things. Of course you can't exactly subtract the have 5 acres of reserved forest that I live on or that I grow produce as gifts.

I'm sure that counteracts some of it. I would recycle more but the other people of this household seem not to care.

(sheesh are they such neatfreaks that they cannot bear to have plastics or cans not go in the trash... *Sigh*)

test fails
I rarely travel out of my state, yet I cannot enter 0 for flights per year (my last fight was in the 20th century.)

I also travel (when I do) interisland. no option for that.

wtf does "Finance and other services" have to do with carbon footprints?

that being said...
2.911 is my carbon footprint. tho it might be less since I overestimated how far I travel by bus.

test fails
wtf does "Finance and other services" have to do with carbon footprints?

that being said...
2.911 is my carbon footprint. tho it might be less since I overestimated how far I travel by bus.

What does organic food have to do with carbon footprints? Doesn't organically grown food have the same amount of carbon as regular farm food?

What does organic food have to do with carbon footprints? Doesn't organically grown food have the same amount of carbon as regular farm food?

I took it to mean non-organic = big farms with lots of large equiptment and processing plants of which the produce goes through before going to your supermarket shelves, not to mention all the pesticides and chemicals that can leach into the water supply.

but I could be wrong. :p

Mine is 4.8. Helped by a major inconvenience in my life- I don't have a car and this town has no public transport.

Heh. I don't know or particularly care what my carbon footprint is.

Whoah. Put those flaming torches down, good liberal folk of NSG. Let me explain. I find the whole notion of individuals working out their carbon footprint a ridiculous and illusory notion. It promotes the myth that the ordinary person making a slight change can save humanity from the wave of environmental doom now inevitably heading our way. If we add the many new factories being built in industrialising countries in the East to our factories and power plants in the developed world, it becomes clear that us reducing our carbon footprints doesn't really matter.

Businesses claiming to be ethical and caring for the environment merely do so in order to gain customers and some good press. But is it not the case that the internal logic of the capitalist system prioritises growth over all other aims, such as protection of the environment? We are made by advertising to want more products, and we want them as cheap as possible. If environmental standards are raised in any given country, business will simply sod off to China where regulation is more lax. And if China increases regulation, they will just go somewhere else. Mind, communism hardly proved itself better, with the Soviet fetishism of industrial factories and the appalling state of the environment in much of the Eastern bloc. Without a world government, capable of imposing worldwide standards, business can play off one country against another and go to where the least regulation is, driving down standards, and dooming countries that try to take a stand on the environment to become poor. I really can't offer much of a solution. Is it feasible to make the move to a zero-growth economy with an effective world authority to regulate business? I'm inclined to think people won't want to make that sort of sacrifice, the sort of sacrifice that is really needed.

Basically, we're all screwed. Thus I don't really see the point of walking miles and miles from the middle of nowhere where I live rather than using a car, or sitting in near-darkness with crappy energy-efficient light bulbs. It won't save the world, and those who believe that it will are sadly deluded in my opinion

I took it to mean non-organic = big farms with lots of large equiptment and processing plants of which the produce goes through before going to your supermarket shelves, not to mention all the pesticides and chemicals that can leach into the water supply.

but I could be wrong. :p

Well all the chemicals and pesticides that help plants grow does not contribute CO2 to the atmosphere that I know of. And I would imagine, since mass farming techniques are more cost effective than small farming techniques, big farms use less energy per vegetable when farming and transporting.

Basically, we're all screwed. Thus I don't really see the point of walking miles and miles from the middle of nowhere where I live rather than using a car, or sitting in near-darkness with crappy energy-efficient light bulbs. It won't save the world, and those who believe that it will are sadly deluded in my opinion

Screwed? How so? I love using energy!

-snip-
One word: bullshit. Because of a simple fact: our nations are all made out of individuals, thus those individuals have to change. Reducing our footprint álwayse helps, no matter what. It means you polute less, what's so mythical about that? The fact that other people are screwing us over, is NOT an excuse to just don't care about your carbon footprint. It's a simple fact that every little bit helps, and that aaaaaall those little bits combined make up for a pretty large bit. The fastest and easiest alternetive fuel we have at the moment, is simply not using so damned much.
I really do nót understand where your opinion comes from, it sounds to me as a silly excuse to not make any sacrifices. If all people think like you, nothing will be done, no one will reduce his energy usage, everyone will just kep over-consuming. Can't you see that?

I don't give a crap about my Carbon foot print. Its all a load of crap anyway.

Clearly. This little test is really for UK residents anyway. They don't even have the two main cars we drive listed as in fuel type. All of them were diesel and not "petrol".

6.417 tonnes.

Not bad compared to my country. Not bad at all.

Hmmm, 97.083 Tonns

Must be the 5 Cars, and the Drag Racing car we have that gets 1mpg on 110 Octance race gas.

After college I am sure it will triple as I buy more cars.

LOL, what could you possibly need 5 cars for?

Well all the chemicals and pesticides that help plants grow does not contribute CO2 to the atmosphere that I know of. And I would imagine, since mass farming techniques are more cost effective than small farming techniques, big farms use less energy per vegetable when farming and transporting.

and it comes down to the definition of 'Small'. :p

and that gets nitpicky... and jackable, so I'll agree with you about organic farming and it's 'ties' with carbon footprints. :cool:

Yeah, reducing your carbon footprint is a good idea. It's always good to reduce your impact on the enviroment, though most people do for the wrong reasons. (The false alarm of global warming.)

My carbon footprint is 12.954.

There's a similar quiz here (http://ecofoot.org/) that tells you how many planets it would take to support your lifestyle if everyone lived that way. I don't know how much more scientific it is, but there is a nifty animation.

We would need 4.1 earths. Looks like about 5 billion of you are going to have to leave.

There's a similar quiz here (http://ecofoot.org/) that tells you how many planets it would take to support your lifestyle if everyone lived that way. I don't know how much more scientific it is, but there is a nifty animation.

We would need 4.1 earths. Looks like about 5 billion of you are going to have to leave.

i got 3.8
that's a nifty wee animation.:)

LOL, what could you possibly need 5 cars for?

1. 2006 Civic SI - Daily Driver
2. 1995 Lebaron Convertible - Project Car
3. 1991 Volvo 740 Turbo

Drag Car 1: 1988 Mustang 5.0, built to hell and back. Runs a 10.32 1/4mile on 110 Octane Race fuel, Headers only, dont know what it gets to the gallon, prolly around 2mpg

Drag Car 2: ( My dads, but I'd figure I'd throw it in ). 1986 Couger, built and blown 460 Cobra jet that also runs on Race fuel. Runs 8.31s

LOL, what could you possibly need 5 cars for?

LOL, what could you possibly need 5 cars for?

1. 2006 Civic SI - Daily Driver
2. 1995 Lebaron Convertible - Project Car
3. 1991 Volvo 740 Turbo

Drag Car 1: 1988 Mustang 5.0, built to hell and back. Runs a 10.32 1/4mile on 110 Octane Race fuel, Headers only, dont know what it gets to the gallon, prolly around 2mpg

Drag Car 2: ( My dads, but I'd figure I'd throw it in ). 1986 Couger, built and blown 460 Cobra jet that also runs on Race fuel. Runs 8.31s

http://www.carbonfootprint.com/

Mine is 9. About a year ago it was 15.

At 15.32 I'm still well below Al Gore. :D

One word: bullshit. Because of a simple fact: our nations are all made out of individuals, thus those individuals have to change. Reducing our footprint álwayse helps, no matter what. It means you polute less, what's so mythical about that? The fact that other people are screwing us over, is NOT an excuse to just don't care about your carbon footprint. It's a simple fact that every little bit helps, and that aaaaaall those little bits combined make up for a pretty large bit. The fastest and easiest alternetive fuel we have at the moment, is simply not using so damned much.
I really do nót understand where your opinion comes from, it sounds to me as a silly excuse to not make any sacrifices. If all people think like you, nothing will be done, no one will reduce his energy usage, everyone will just kep over-consuming. Can't you see that?

Well, what I'm saying is if people make only small sacrifices, and China and such like keep building loads of new factories (not a criticism of them, that is how we industrialized) the balance sheet still tips largely towards the negative. To balance that we need people in the developed West to sacrifice a really substantial part of their current standard of living. Even if everyone bought some energy saving lightbulbs and cut out a few car journeys where it wouldn't be really inconvenient to walk, we'd still be so far out of balance that we're still not going to make an appreciable long-term difference. What I conceive to be 'bullshit' are the ideas that (a) you can persuade everyone to make even small sacrifices and (b) that such small sacrifices, even on a large scale would be anywhere near sufficient to significantly reduce global warming. I think it puts too much faith in humanity to say that enough people are ready to make enough sacrifice to make any appreciable difference.

There's a similar quiz here (http://ecofoot.org/) that tells you how many planets it would take to support your lifestyle if everyone lived that way. I don't know how much more scientific it is, but there is a nifty animation.

We would need 4.1 earths. Looks like about 5 billion of you are going to have to leave.

I like that test better, more fun to take. Ok, 3.9 earths for my wife an myself.

There's a similar quiz here (http://ecofoot.org/) that tells you how many planets it would take to support your lifestyle if everyone lived that way. I don't know how much more scientific it is, but there is a nifty animation.

We would need 4.1 earths. Looks like about 5 billion of you are going to have to leave.
It's rubbish.
I chose the lowest option for each one. No electricity, no meats, no packaged food, eco friendly house. It said we'd need 2.8 earths to support this lifestyle (I don't actually live like that). In short, it's scaremongerer rubbish. *Fumes about Eco-freaks/scaremongerer give-the-earth-back-to-nature eviromentalists*

...To balance that we need people in the developed West to sacrifice a really substantial part of their current standard of living...

Why should I have to lower my standard of living because China and India want to industrialize? It ain't gonna happen Bubba!

test fails
I rarely travel out of my state, yet I cannot enter 0 for flights per year (my last fight was in the 20th century.)

I left flights blank ... didn't seem to worry it. Blank = 0.

wtf does "Finance and other services" have to do with carbon footprints?
I dunno. Being cynical, I assumed it meant "they make money out of you and invest it in China."

=========

I took it to mean non-organic = big farms with lots of large equiptment and processing plants of which the produce goes through before going to your supermarket shelves, not to mention all the pesticides and chemicals that can leach into the water supply.

Petrochemicals for fertilizer, and loss of carbon from the soil due to degradation. There's a lot of carbon in healthy soil.
That's my guess.

It's a dumb option though, because yields are lower and using animal manure fits the definition of "organic farming." And we all know what cows do ...

===========

Mine is 4.8. Helped by a major inconvenience in my life- I don't have a car and this town has no public transport.

If your name is Bitchkitten, you should ride a big black motorcycle.

Just a thought. ;)

==========

Heh. I don't know or particularly care what my carbon footprint is.
*snip*

Off-topic. And ... wall of text.

============

Drag Car 2: ( My dads, but I'd figure I'd throw it in )

Higher the better. Got it.

===========

Celtlund, yep its going to happen bubba. The more you spend ("standard of living") the more industries get built where it's cheap. You make conscious buying decisions (and your money doesn't go as far ie lower standard of living) you can affect it but economies are too diversified to keep all the money in your country.

If you don't like that, vote to bring back tariffs -- they work better than subsidies and add to your country's tax revenue instead of coming out of it.

It's rubbish.
I chose the lowest option for each one. No electricity, no meats, no packaged food, eco friendly house. It said we'd need 2.8 earths to support this lifestyle (I don't actually live like that). In short, it's scaremongerer rubbish. *Fumes about Eco-freaks/scaremongerer give-the-earth-back-to-nature eviromentalists*

I got 2.3

It's rubbish.
I chose the lowest option for each one. No electricity, no meats, no packaged food, eco friendly house. It said we'd need 2.8 earths to support this lifestyle (I don't actually live like that). In short, it's scaremongerer rubbish. *Fumes about Eco-freaks/scaremongerer give-the-earth-back-to-nature eviromentalists*

Why would it be rubbish ? Maybe the planet truly cannot support that lifestyle for 8 billion people.

Aside - at this moment the majority of the worlds population lives (far) below that level.
Aside 2 - the test is indeed far too superficial to have any real meaning.

Off-topic. And ... wall of text.


I was questioning the notion of whether our carbon footprint matters. On a thread on the topic of carbon footprints thats hardly irrelevant. It wouldn't be much of a thread if we were all to just post our numbers with no commentary or discussion of the concept. If you work on such a narrow basis probably three-quarters of all NSG posts would be regarded as such.

As for wall of text, three paragraphs, only one of which was of any substantial length and is still well within the generally accepted length of a paragraph, unless the authors of ever book I've read don't understand paragraphing. I apologiese, for now I actually have gone off-topic, but I had to comment, as that was incorrect, rude, and entirely unnecessary.

I was questioning the notion of whether our carbon footprint matters.

I said wall of text because it was long, but I did read it.

Just like reading an article linked to in an OP, or voting in a poll, it would be a basic courtesy to fill out that test and post a result.

Surely you can see a strong correlation between high results and people saying "oh, carbon emissions don't matter." That's interesting to me, and presumably to the poster who started the thread.

But since you won't play, and you already find me rude, I'll just guess yours. 9.6

I left flights blank ... didn't seem to worry it. Blank = 0.





Higher the better. Got it.

===========.

I'd figured I'd throw it in kuz I race it more than he does, and its faster :)

Also, I dont plan on giving up things like nice cars and drag racing, ever.

if you want to worry about the junk thrown into the enviroment maybe you all should worry about the stuff thay get payed to thrown into water supplys (Floride, just being the most popular industral pollutant to be added to drinking water)

Adding fluoride used to be a plot by the evil Communists, but with whom does the blame lie now, I wonder? Big Science? Liberals?

Hmmm, 97.083 Tonns

Must be the 5 Cars, and the Drag Racing car we have that gets 1mpg on 110 Octance race gas.

After college I am sure it will triple as I buy more cars.

What, you drive them all at once?

I rated about 5, but I doubt that's accurate. I'm a draftsman, so I use a lot of paper and electricity as part of my job. I'm not an environmentalist, but I try to conserve. I try to eat local and/or organic produce when possible, but I like steak and hamburger and chicken and fish. I recycle paper and buy a lot of my other possessions used at garage sales and thrift stores, but it's hard to buy new stuff that's not wrapped in plastic that just gets thrown away. I drive an efficient car (30-40 mpg depending on driving conditions) and I plan to bicycle to work once I've recovered from an injury that precludes a 5-mile bike ride. That injury has also lead to my eating a lot more prepackaged foods since I can't prepare my own meals as easily any more. I suspect that a total analysis would be somewhere around 7 or 8.

I said wall of text because it was long, but I did read it.

Just like reading an article linked to in an OP, or voting in a poll, it would be a basic courtesy to fill out that test and post a result.

Surely you can see a strong correlation between high results and people saying "oh, carbon emissions don't matter." That's interesting to me, and presumably to the poster who started the thread.

But since you won't play, and you already find me rude, I'll just guess yours. 9.6

Well, actually very wrong. 4.9 according to that test. Admittedly, it is artificially low because I am a student, don't own a car, can get a bus into university for a reasonable price and naturally want to save money rather than leave electricity on all day. The test is limited, so in reality it will be a little more. The reason I didn't post a figure the first time I posted was quite simply this: My point was that the notion of a carbon footprint is a nonsense invented to allow people to pat themselves on the back and feel good about themselves while ignoring the whole wider problem of what's happening worldwide and how they really would need to bring in much larger reductions, persuade people to stop reproducing, and to persuade China et al to stop industrialising. As my view is that 'carbon footprint' is a pointless notion, it didn't seem consistent for me to post a score. Hope thats any misunderstanding cleared up:)

I has a footprint of six.

Because I'm efficient, mofo's.

http://www.carbonfootprint.com/

Mine is 9. About a year ago it was 15. I'm reducing my carbon footprint by growing more of my own food, driving less, and I moved into a smaller place that is more energy efficient. I also got a car that gets much better gas mileage.

What is your carbon footprint? Do you think you can reduce it? Do you think you should have to?*



*not have to in a government's gonna take your car way, but in a uh... it would be responsible to do so way.


Total

8.073. Hey, for a NYer, not bad!

14. I have to start quad biking and skydiving to make it bigger. You know what they say about guys with huge feet.

14. I have to start quad biking and skydiving to make it bigger. You know what they say about guys with huge feet.

The right ones end up on the B.C. coast?

Well, what I'm saying is if people make only small sacrifices, and China and such like keep building loads of new factories (not a criticism of them, that is how we industrialized) the balance sheet still tips largely towards the negative. To balance that we need people in the developed West to sacrifice a really substantial part of their current standard of living. Even if everyone bought some energy saving lightbulbs and cut out a few car journeys where it wouldn't be really inconvenient to walk, we'd still be so far out of balance that we're still not going to make an appreciable long-term difference. What I conceive to be 'bullshit' are the ideas that (a) you can persuade everyone to make even small sacrifices and (b) that such small sacrifices, even on a large scale would be anywhere near sufficient to significantly reduce global warming. I think it puts too much faith in humanity to say that enough people are ready to make enough sacrifice to make any appreciable difference.
That does not matter, the fact that they are doing shitty things is definatly nót an excuse to just not care and also do shitty things. The fact that other people are doing wrong things, doesn't make it ok for ús to do the same wrong things as well.
And yes, I'm skeptical as well that everyone can be convinced, but it's definatly true that no one will be convinced if everyone would just keep a pessimistic view like yours. Have you never heard of self-furfilling prophecies? It starts with the people, it starts with the individual, évery little bit counts. If everyone just thinks "A what I do does not matter, who cares." like you do then nóthing will indeed happen, 0.00, zero. And THAT'S the attitude we need to break through if we actually want to change something.
The reason I didn't post a figure the first time I posted was quite simply this: My point was that the notion of a carbon footprint is a nonsense invented to allow people to pat themselves on the back and feel good about themselves while ignoring the whole wider problem of what's happening worldwide and how they really would need to bring in much larger reductions, persuade people to stop reproducing, and to persuade China et al to stop industrialising. As my view is that 'carbon footprint' is a pointless notion
Where did you get that from? Your carbon footprint is nothing more then what you use and polute all counted up. Heck, you can say that "China" has to stop doing those things, but don't forget one thing: China is made up from individuals, the USA is made out of individuals. It's the needs of the people who make sure those new factories and power plants are build, it's áll because of the needs of the individual. The true goal of personal energy reductions, is making sure that there is less need for new power plants, less need for new factories.
It looks like you're stuck in the monkeysphere (http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html) my friend ;)

It looks like you're stuck in the monkeysphere (http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html) my friend ;)

Having read that article it seems an entirely realistic depiction of what human nature is like.

I'm not ashamed to say that while you crazy hippies are running round in a blind panic in a futile attempt to change humanity and save the world, resting only for the nightly sing-song of 'Kumbaya' around your campfire, I will be living it up in the monkeysphere with all the bananas I could ever need, happily engaging in bonobo-like rampant mating

10.873. Not bad since i've flown 34 times this year already

Total

8.073. Hey, for a NYer, not bad!

5.752. Then again, I am an upstater. Since I live in the boonies, my car is my heaviest score.

The right ones end up on the B.C. coast?

Nice inter-thread pollination there. :)

=============

Having read that article it seems an entirely realistic depiction of what human nature is like.

I'm not ashamed to say that while you crazy hippies are running round in a blind panic in a futile attempt to change humanity and save the world, resting only for the nightly sing-song of 'Kumbaya' around your campfire, I will be living it up in the monkeysphere with all the bananas I could ever need, happily engaging in bonobo-like rampant mating

Our "nightly song of Kumbaya" is otherwise known as public policy. Participate if you wish. You seem more the chest-beating and tantrum type.

As to your habits, public policy will openly and democratically take all but one banana at a time out of your hands. Eat it or give it away, stockpile bananas perhaps, but destroying bananas to show off to the other monkeys is not acceptable. Not even in baby monkeys.

And yes, that is an accurate analogy. Money expresses real value, which in the analogy of bananas is their value as food.

YOU are incorrect and entirely unnecessary, as your description of one of my posts had it. I am merely rude. :D

My point was that the notion of a carbon footprint is a nonsense invented to allow people to pat themselves on the back and feel good about themselves

Yeah, fuck that. They should be trying to stab other people in the back. That's the only real way they earn the right to feel good, by making others suffer.

:rolleyes:

5.2 against a national italian average of 7.7, and a industrialised countries' average of 11.

not bad.

Our "nightly song of Kumbaya" is otherwise known as public policy. Participate if you wish. You seem more the chest-beating and tantrum type.

As to your habits, public policy will openly and democratically take all but one banana at a time out of your hands. Eat it or give it away, stockpile bananas perhaps, but destroying bananas to show off to the other monkeys is not acceptable. Not even in baby monkeys.

And yes, that is an accurate analogy. Money expresses real value, which in the analogy of bananas is their value as food.

YOU are incorrect and entirely unnecessary, as your description of one of my posts had it. I am merely rude. :D

Well, the way I see it, to continue the analogy, at best you are going to be able to persuade people to hand over one of their many hundreds of bananas. Try and take more, the monkey citizens will refuse and vote for someone else, thus hounding your vanguard human goverment out of the place by flinging their metaphorical shit in your faces:p

Yeah, fuck that. They should be trying to stab other people in the back. That's the only real way they earn the right to feel good, by making others suffer.

:rolleyes:

All you can achieve is moderate reform, and that won't be enough. We'll still be stabbing people in the back, though with slightly less force. The main point being, everyone will still die, though I'll concede with reform you might achieve a slightly slower, lingering death.

<snip>
All you can achieve is moderate reform, and that won't be enough. We'll still be stabbing people in the back, though with slightly less force. The main point being, everyone will still die, though I'll concede with reform you might achieve a slightly slower, lingering death.
OK, so basically, what I read in your posts is that there's no hope, you don't give a fuck, "it's all a bunch of shit" (that was my late grandfather's favorite "saying"), and you plan to just shove bananas up your ass until the merciful end finally comes. That sounds really...well, boring, but hey, much happiness may it bring you. Personally, though, I'm going to choose not to feel like a chump for not taking that same dull, pointless, conversation-killing attitude.

You know I find it funny, alot of those who are against enviornmental regulation pull the attitude of "hey we'll all die someday" yet these folks don't seem to be walking around with a gun in their mouths eager to pull the trigger.

The fact is, nobody truly believes that shit of "hey we'll all go someday so why care" because they're hardly developing that attitude in their own lives.

[b]BTW, all,/b] I think the significance of things like organic farming, buying used appliances/clothing, not using financial services, etc, is in the assumed amount of energy used to make those things happen that counts towards the "carbon footprint," which I always thought was a measure of fuel consumed to maintain a lifestyle. If so, then it's not so much the pollution from chemical fertilizers and pesticides, as it is the energy/fuel used to produce the chemical fertilizers and pesticides. It's not that new appliances and clothes are more bad for the environment, but that reusing old stuff and/or not replacing with new for several years, reduces the annual demand for new and thus, presumably, also reduces the energy used to manufacture new. As for financial services -- that one stumped me. Either they are estimating the amount of fuel used in actual financial services -- electricity burned to run computers/telecommunications/etc -- or they are lumping people who manage their money into a group that supposedly uses energy differently from people who don't manage money, which would seem kind of nuts.

The OP test is way too generalized/simplified. I think they are making a lot of assumptions that they're not explaining.

I work for a power company. Work factored in, I have more of a carbon assprint.

I work for a power company. Work factored in, I have more of a carbon assprint.

So sigged.:D

Sweet :D

Size 14 double wide.

Don't know, dont' care.

EDIT: 6.8 if anydoes