Twenty-five and a half metric tonnes.
I spent New Year’s Day 2020 calculating the carbon footprint of my household (two humans, two dogs, and a cat) after reading Peter Kalmus’s book “Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution”(affiliate link). I have calculated it before using other calculators, but I “like” this number, because it includes carbon dioxide equivalents which focuses on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases as opposed to carbon dioxide alone. We know that carbon dioxide isn’t the only gas that traps heat, with some gases worse than carbon dioxide and some not as bad.
Twenty-five and a half metric tonnes.
But I don’t like this number, because it is too high. Yes, it is below the average 48 metric tonnes for a household of two (24 metric tonnes per American). Our household does a lot of the standard save-the-environment actions, but the number to shoot for is 0 metric tonnes and the number to avoid catastrophic climate change by 2050 is 2 tons (although based on The Nature Conservancy’s Carbon Footprint Calculator and not the same tonnes, but the difference is minor).
Twenty-five and a half metric tonnes.
This 25.5 metric tonnes doesn’t include water but does include average sewer use. It doesn’t include purchasing new items, but does include our cat and dogs as meat-eaters. It includes how and how far we travel, what we eat, how we keep ourselves warm and cool, how we keep ourselves healthy, and how much waste we reduce.
This number inspired me to track our electricity use, natural gas use, and water use on a weekly basis in order to understand our behavior.
This number makes me consider all the easy things that are on all the “10 things to do now” lists to mitigate climate change and the hard things that aren’t on the lists and that very few people talk about.
This number reminds me that we need to talk about climate change and talk about our actions and their impact on the Earth.
But most importantly, we need to talk about our actions to mitigate climate change and reduce our footprints. This blog is me talking and me documenting our experiences. We’ve been walking on the path for a while. Yes, we still have a ways to go, but we have to keep walking.
Welcome on our journey.