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Carbon Footprint

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Carbon footprint.

What is your carbon footprint? That’s a question I was not prepared for. I had no clue what a carbon footprint was or how to even answer that question. I was worried I would never understand what was being asked of me. Luckily my sociology teacher provided a website that would give me better understanding of what my carbon footprint was and how to break it down. The Nature Conservancy Carbon Calculator on Nature.org had questions for me to answer that would determine how much carbon I was responsible for. According to the carbon calculator my estimated greenhouse gas emission is 39 tons of carbon dioxide a year whereas the average person releases 27 tons in a year (Nature.org). Out of the estimated tons of carbon I release in a year, 83.3 % has to do with home energy. I have a detached, single family home with 2 bedrooms, and that makes my estimated impact jump to 27 tons of carbon dioxide a year (Nature.org). When I was heating and cooling my home I didn’t think twice when adjusting my thermostat. If I was hot I would turn the air down, when cold the heat went up. By doing that I was causing an estimated impact of 2.5 tons of CO2 per year. (Nature.org). There are other things in which I produce different amounts of CO2, driving my big Ford F150 roughly 30 miles in a week puts out an estimated 1.4 tons of CO2 per year (Nature.org). I eat red meat most days but I don’t eat it with every meal. My red meat consumption has an estimated impact of 4.1 tons of CO2 per year (Nature.com). When I calculated all the things I do that play apart in making up my carbon footprint, I was surprised. I had no idea that the things I do every day had such an effect on the world and everyone in it. I didn’t realize how important one person was to the environment, or how one person could have the ability to change so much. After seeing my calculated carbon footprint I

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