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Be The Change

A 12 Step Sustainability Program for Communities

Step 8: Measure your Carbon Footprint

Calculate your CO₂ emissions

You can’t change what you can’t see or measure. CO₂ production is not the only measure of sustainability, but it goes up or down with most of the other measures of sustainability. It’s easy to calculate and you can use it to track your progress toward a sustainable lifestyle.

The typical American household generates 55,000 pounds of carbon dioxide annually. By contrast, the typical German household contributes 27,000 pounds and the average Swedish household only contributes 15,000 pounds. Clearly, we have much room for improvement. Taken collectively, US households directly produce about 8% of the planet’s carbon dioxide emissions, and through our purchases we are indirectly responsible for another 17%.

Everything you’ve done in the previous seven steps will decrease your CO₂ production. Let’s find out how you’ve been doing? You can use the household CO₂ calculator on the Native Energy site to calculate how many tons of CO₂ you produced last year.

Now that you have the answer, you might ask, “How big is a ton of CO₂?” It’s as big as a house. Or more precisely, a ton of CO₂ at sea level would fit in a cube 30 feet tall, 30 feet wide and 30 feet deep. Multiply that by 300 million Americans and you have a lot of CO₂.

Saving CO₂ = Saving $’s

Saving CO₂saves you money. It saves a lot of money. Just think about how much you can save on heating oil if you cut your consumption by 20% or how much you can save on gas if you drive less or buy a more fuel efficient car.[attach spreadsheet the calc price of gas, miles per gallon, and depreciation of 44.5 cents per mile (IRS business deduction in 2006)] The money you save by conserving energy will more than cover the cost of going all the way to carbon neutral.

Getting to Carbon Neutral

It costs about $12 a ton to offset your carbon emissions—you can actually purchase credits in renewable and clean energy sources to compensate for the greenhouse gas emissions of your daily lifestyle—with renewable energy sources that replace the electricity produced by fossil fuels like coal. Since the typical American household produces about 25 tons of CO₂ a year, that works out to about $400 per year/per household to be able to declare yourself as having NO carbon foot print. i.e. zero net carbon emissions per year.

Buying carbon offsets is not an excuse to pollute and the first order of business is still to reduce the creation of CO₂. But, your purchase of offsets will help wind farms get built that otherwise wouldn’t exist because it costs more to produce wind-generated electricity than coal-generated electricity (which is also subsidized). Native Energy also has a great movie on how CO₂ offsets work.

Going on a Low Carbon Diet

For those who want to make a serious commitment to lowering their CO₂ production, we strongly recommend the book, Low Carbon Diet: A 30 Day program to Lose 5000 Pounds which you can purchase through the Empowerment Institute. This “30 Day Program to Lose 5000 Pounds” is a fun, accessible, easy-to-use guide that shows you, step-by-step, how to dramatically reduce your CO₂ output in just a month’s time. It walks you through every step of the process, from calculating your current CO₂. “footprint” to tracking your progress.

By making simple changes in your lifestyle, you’ll learn how to reduce your annual household CO₂ output by at least 15%. And, for those of you who are more ambitious, you’ll discover how you can help your workplace, local schools, and community do the same.

The book is based on a tried and true methodology developed over two decades of research and testing of what makes people actually change their habits to live within a smaller ecological footprint. Not surprisingly, the key to permanent lifestyle changes is setting clear measurable goals and doing it in the context of a group. New values and behaviors rarely stick if you aren’t part of a team that reinforces your new behaviors.