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girlawhirl goes green: deciphering her very own carbon footprint Jan 11, 2007
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As Girlawhirl explores her new environmentally friendly lifestyle, there's one phrase that keeps coming up: carbon footprint. It's an important term, and Girlawhirl's figured out what it means, how it applies to her and what she can do to make her own footprint, regardless of her actual shoe size, a little smaller… But before Girlawhirl got to her very own carbon footprint, she learned that greenhouse gases are in fact what make planet earth livable. Without these gases that are trapped by the earth's atmosphere, the planet would be about 33 degrees colder and much less inhabitable. Since the industrial revolution we've been using fossil fuels, and creating industrial and agricultural wastes, which in the forms of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide add to the layer of the earth's atmosphere that traps heat.
By calculating her own carbon footprint, Girlawhirl can figure out how much she's personally contributing to this phenomenon. It's been determined that the average American's lifestyle emits 7.5 times more carbon than a person who lives in Africa. With that in mind, Girlawhirl was anxious to see how she measured up.
The Carbon Calculator was easy to use, and with a few clicks showed that, yes, Girlawhirl was a very average American when it came to her carbon footprint. Her no-need-for-a-car city lifestyle was offset by her air travels, and since she couldn't control the efficiency of the system used to heat her apartment or her appliances, she needs to continue to turn down, turn off, replace regular light bulbs with compact fluorescent ones and recycle.
Calculate your carbon footprint here.
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