Track your footprint like you track your footsteps

What’s the carbon footprint equivalent of 10,000 steps a day?

By now we all have that friend who interrupts conversations to peer at their app and gauge the steps they’ve racked up so far that day. (Recent studies call this number into question, but let’s not get distracted.)

We also all know we should cut our carbon footprint. But to what size is a question that goes unanswered in a lot of think-pieces about global emissions.

We need a hard number like 10,000 steps a day

I think I’ve found it.

First, some basics:

The Nature Conservancy defines a carbon footprint as: The total amount of greenhouse gasses (including carbon dioxide and methane) that are generated by our actions.

It’s pretty important that we collectively avoid raising the global temperatures by two degrees celsius by 2050. Why?

I’ll let NASA be the messenger: A 2-degree rise in global temperatures is considered a critical threshold above which dangerous and cascading effects of human-generated climate change will occur.

Something about that word “cascading” feels especially dire.

To avoid this 2-degree rise, the average annual global carbon footprint for individuals (not industries) needs to drop to under 2 tons by 2050.

The Columbia Climate School goes one step further and puts the exact number at 1.87 tons per person annually.

Our magic number is 1.87

1.87 tons may not have the ring of 10,000 steps a day, but if you need a handy way to remember it, T.J. Hooker and Beverly Hills Cop taught me that California Penal Code 187 stands for homicide.

So think of 1.87 as your carbon killer.

<Groan>.

1.87 tons sounds like a lot. But the current per capita average footprint for us Americans is (at least) 16 tons. Compare that to the global average of 4 tons and, well, “gloat” may not be the first word to come to mind.  

Your own current number could be a lot different, depending on stuff like your zip code, home energy usage, car and mileage, annual air travel, and predilection for beef.  

But even so, some drastic carbon dieting is in order.

Since the first step toward change is awareness, it’s a good idea to figure out your own current baseline. Then you can take action. 

In our next post, we’ll show you how.

Cheers,

Mike

Mike McAllister is head of story for Momo Homes.