So you know how if you don’t work out for a while, and you’ve pigged out on a few too many buffets, you’re afraid to get on a scale? (Is it just me?) Well I felt the same way about measuring my carbon impact, and for good reason! I am a a slob!
After playing around with a few sites, including the Inconvenient Truth calculator I ended up using the Road, Flight and Home tabs at Terrapass. It seemed more precise - although that’s probably the topic of another post.
Anyway, the results were grim. My final tally 40,500 lbs of carbon last year. According to climatecrisis.net, the average for Americans is 7.5 tons, which is only (only!) 15,000 lbs. That means that I am 270% higher than average. I make me sick.
As you can see by the chart below, by far the largest impact I have comes from flying.
I’ve made a few long haul flights, and travel from San Francisco to NYC on a semi-regular basis. And true, I don’t really drive that much (8,000 miles / year in a Civic) but it’s still pretty amazing that 82% of my carbon contribution is airlie travel related.
JB may argue with me, (she’s busy shopping with reusable bags for gods sake) but the takeaway for me is that I’ve got to tackle the flying issue before I do anything else. More on this to come . . .
you disgust me. go plant a tree!
You disgust me. Next time you are thinking of flying some place, buy me a ticket instead.
if it makes you feel better, those plane would be flying anyways… with or without you. At this point, your participation on the flight makes it easier for the carbon to be tracked to a person…. YOU!