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What Size Carbon Footprint Does Your Home Leave?

By Solar energy | January 26, 2009

leave only footprints
Image by Lori-B. via Flickr

What Size Carbon Footprint Does Your Home Leave?

Determining your carbon footprint can be a nightmare. The other day I posted about a couple carbon footprint calculators I played around with, trying to determine how much, if any, damage my presence on the planet causes.

Well, it depends on which calculator I use.

I found the size of my footprint differs with each calculator. Try this experiment yourself and see how your carbon footprint fluctuates between calculators.

Here’s a list offered and tried by Claire Trageser in her research.
American Forests, nonprofit forest conservation organization – americanforests.org/resources/ccc
BeGreen, from Green Mountain Energy Co., which sells environmentally friendly energy products and carbon offsets — begreennow.com/calculator
Bonneville Environmental Foundation, nonprofit that markets renewable energy products — greentagsusa.org/greentags/calculator
CarbonCounter, from The Climate Trust, an environmental nonprofit — carboncounter.org
Chuck Wright Consulting, sustainable energy consulting firm — chuck-wright.com/calculators/
Clear Water, environmental advocacy group for the Hudson River — clearwater.org/carbon.html
The Conservation Fund, environmental nonprofit — gozero.conservationfund.org/calc/calculate
Environmental Protection Agency — epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/ind_calculator.html
SafeClimate, from World Resources Institute, an environmental think tank — safeclimate.net
TerraPass, social enterprise that sells carbon offsets — terrapass.com/carbon-footprint-calculator

In defense of calculators, at least they make us take notice of how we use energy. And we can certainly learn what our high-energy use activities are.

On the other hand, trusting solely to these calculators gives rise to guilt, fear, and panic. And panic mode serves no good purpose.

So here’s a vote for pausing and taking a long, deep, breath.

More later…

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