J500 Media and the Environment

With so much attention on global climate change these days, I’ve gotten in the habit of measuring environmental impact in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, especially carbon dioxide (CO₂). Carbon calculators, such as the one found on the website for “An Inconvenient Truth”, help us measure our personal contributions to global climate change. While these calculators give us a nice number to work with, I find it difficult to visualize my impact by calculating GHG emissions. What does it really mean if I contribute 6.95 tons of CO2 to the atmosphere every year? And can’t I just buy a carbon offset to make it all go away?

A campaign in Australia has made the concept a little easier to visualize by representing emissions with black balloons. Their advertisements show balloons inflating and floating away from home appliances and light fixtures, noting that the average home creates over 200,000 balloons full of GHGs every year. This doesn’t quite work for me either, as one of my middle school teachers taught me long ago that releasing balloons wasn’t good for the environment. After all, they eventually float back down and end up littering a park in the Rockies or choking some unfortunate sea bird off the coast of Florida.

Balloons aside, carbon calculators tend to focus more on personal transportation and home energy use and less on everything else we do in our daily lives. Sure we are producing more GHGs than we need to, but as consumers we are also using up valuable resources and discarding them as waste. And even though the trash I put out on Wednesday mornings is about a forth of what my neighbor sets out, I know that I’m using and wasting more than my share. The ecological footprint quiz helps put that in perspective in a way that makes sense. We have one planet, and I need almost 5. No amount of carbon offsets in the world can make up that difference.

By the way, there is another calculator on American Public Media’s website that is based on the ecological footprint quiz . It provides some useful statistics and tips along the way to explain more specifically the impacts our individual actions. I think this is just as important because gives me a starting point to work on whittling down and getting closer to that 1 planet footprint that I have in reality. Plus you get to pick an avatar and watch your planets add up as you answer questions – so it makes getting the bad news about over consumption at least a little more fun. And you don’t have to feel guilty about where all those little black balloons are going to end up.

– Jeff

… I smell the blood of guilt conscious environmentalists !

In order to sustain my lifestyle, we would need 1.6 more of earth than we already have, my acreage being 12, half of what is “an average American lifestyle”. I am neither appalled, surprised, nor proud.

What does this mean? These numbers don’t have much weight or meaning to me because the validity of the quiz is uncertain to me. The questions are vague with a double-edged sword . If i don’t use public transportation, does that imply that I use my car instead, when in reality I bike or walk most places?

I remember taking this quiz about 5 years ago in high school, and upon taking this quiz then I was surprised, I was average. This was one of the few things that encouraged me to become more knowledgeable in environmentalism and pursue an eco-friendly lifestyle. At the time I felt that I had no control over my lifestyle, and things would change once I was on my own.

Admittedly, I was (and still am) always looking for the future for change, I figured it was something I would get to eventually, living a more eco-friendly lifestyle and taking action in trying to change the way things are.

Even though, my “footprint” is substantially less than what it was when I was in high school, it is still not enough, I feel there will always be room for improvement in my life to become more eco-friendly. I don’t do anymore than what is common sense to me, I bike or walk, I cook fresh organic food as much as my pocket can afford, and I maintain the triple R’s (reduce, reuse, recycle). This is my lifestyle, and for some people these little lifestyle changes would be terribly difficult to adapt to, but to me it’s definitely not enough.

It makes me wonder, no matter how much we change our lifestyle, even if we all become “uber environmentally hip” and all change our incandescents to CFL’s and wear recycled belts, will it ever be enough to save the world? Will it be enough to cut through the BS?

I am optimistic enough to say that it will, through necessity and eventuality .

-Juliana

18 acres. I have to say my footprint surprised me. I thought surely I was average if not over. But I was more surprised by the distribution of what affects my print I guess I was expecting my gas-guzzling SUV to have a larger toll on my print. That’s always where I have felt the most eco-guilt. I inherited a behemoth of a Ford Bronco and have driven it in shame ever since. It seems as if my guilt should be lying elsewhere. Actually only 1.7 of my 18 acres where attributed to my “mobility.” I, like others in the class, also feel that my household is extremely wasteful (mostly because of my environmentally dense roommates). “Shelter” still fell behind “food” and “goods/services.” These are two factors that I rarely consider.

I usually go to the grocery store when I’m starving and end up overshopping. Then, when I realize that much of my food has expired or rotted away, I starve myself again until I find the time to go to the grocery store and the cycle continues. This has always habit has always frustrated me, but only because uneaten food means wasted money. I have never once thought about how it was affecting the environment.

I’m glad I took this quiz. While I do feel that it could be more thorough and therefore more accurate, it has changed my perspective. I will be a much more contentious shopper from now on. This extra consideration will help lessen my footprint and save me some money.

-Travis Brown

My initial reaction to the Ecological Footprints Quiz went something like this…My overall score of 18 made me feel confident in my efforts towards being a “wanna be” enviornmentalist. Considering the average in America was a score of 24, I felt good. I knew that there were still some lifestyle choices (such as eating lots of meat and traveling by airplane often to get to my home in Chicago) that would alter my overall consumption. I continued down the page to find that if I continued with the lifestyle I am living now (easing my way into being a conscious consumer), there would need to be 4.1 worlds. That is when my smile turned upside down. I was disappointed to think that my efforts were not good enough, even though I was putting in so much more effort than my family and friends. I realized that there is more than one way of looking at this situation.

I started to think about how much people like me (some enviornmentalist, some carnviore/travel junky) were really impacting the world. I am starting to realize that my efforts alone are not going to make this world stronger, but that it is necessary to seek that collective and corporate action out there that could impact and influence others.

On the contrary, I believe that my efforts are a lot more apparent living in Lawrence as opposed to living in Chicago (where I am from.) I can definitely say for myself that I drive everywhere at home and tend to be a lot less aware of my everyday decisions regarding the enviornment. That only proves that being with others who are enviornmentally friendly only makes me want to be more like that as well. It shows that collective action is whats going to influence our nation and the world.

As I think about my efforts compared to those around me, I think one of the biggest problems we have is awareness and just an overall understanding of what is happening to our planet. Words like global warming and sustainability are not understood by many around our nation and our world.

Dena Hart