What is YOUR ecological footprint?

[Valka D'Ur]

3.41. But a lot of questions don't apply to me, and don't take into consideration all the things apartment dwellers are not allowed to have or do.

 

[KMRblue1027]

7.03 Earths almost entirely due to my diet. My good and services (Less than 40%) as well as carbon footprint (Less than 70%) are well below average and my housing is slightly above US average (112%), but apparently eating meat and dairy all the time is terrible for the planet.

I think it's also banging me hard for not really trying to conserve water, I live in South Jersey we have effectively unlimited water.

 

[Cutlass]

2.59 Earths

 

[Arwon]

5 earths for me.

One of the big drivers making Australia higher is our electricity being extremely dirty (our emissions for a kwh of electricity are twice that of the UK, for instance). We also consume more electricity per capita than most other countries. This would be flowing into everything, because half of our emissions are from stationary energy generation.

Most of the food and lifestyle stuff I left pretty default except where it could bring down estimates of our household electricity use since we're modest users in a well-insulated large apartment block.

To some extent Australians outside of Victoria is being over-estimated by the default factors being used (Victorian electricity is mostly brown coal) but it's marginal unless you're in Tasmania or South Australia. So I didn't bother calculating an adjustment to account for not being in Victoria.

In terms of addressing personal energy carbon impact, the ACT's renewable electricity purchase policy will reduce my personal electricity impact over coming years as we head towards making our consumption 90% renewable by investing in wind and solar power. I also adjusted the bus kms to account for the fact that our fleet is compressed natural gas not diesel, to get the right emissions estimate there.

I'm currently waiting to invest in a local community solar farm project called Solarshare, since I can't put panels on my roof due to renting an apartment. But I can't really do anything about government policies slowing down the decarbonisation of our energy system as a whole. ):

So yeah, like most Australians, my disproportionate impact compared to other rich places is directly and indirectly through our horribly dirty electricity supply. And to a much lesser extent, due to being a large sparsely populated country with high road freight emissions.

 

[CavLancer]

Excuses excuses verminous wasters! (joking) Behold the minor deity of conservation!

.45 Earths.

"Congratulations, you are living an ecologically conscientious lifestyle.
If everyone lived like you do, we would need only 0.45 Earths."

If you folks lived like I do we could ditch better than half the planet! Bow before CavLancer the Great! I am t h e Ecology King!

hew: Good thing I was able to keep my cool or I might have gone over the top.

 

[Old Hippy]

Excuses excuses verminous wasters! (joking) Behold the minor deity of conservation!



If you folks lived like I do we could ditch better than half the planet! Bow before CavLancer the Great! Ecology King!

hew: Good thing I was able to keep my cool or I might have gone over the top.

I will plant an extra couple of trees a year to offset the deforestation cause over there by that huge giganturous mega wood fired pizza oven...

 

[CavLancer]

! Actually we'll start with wood but I'm planning on compressing and burning rice husks. Once again, the Ecology King!

Kind of interesting btw Graf. Rice husks are waste here, and free in unlimited qty. Short vid, this is the process. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HBq-GQPIFY

 

[Zelig]

4.87 for me.

Although I think most of it is because of circumstances that are currently outside of my control. Right now we live in a pretty old apartment building that isn't made out of any energy efficient materials and doesn't have energy efficient appliances. We also live in an area that relies on very high carbon emission producing coal plants.

Where you live is not outside of your control.

 

[Narz]

1.48 Earths

Probably because I live in an urban environment & barely drive & never fly.

Not the best quiz of course but the online quiz medium is a poor one.

Compact fluorescent bulbs - LEDs. More efficient than average LEDs, at that.

I used to use LEDs but then I became concerned they were contributing to my insomnia.

 

[Zelig]

I used to use LEDs but then I became concerned they were contributing to my insomnia.

You can get LEDs at pretty much any colour temperature you want.

These are my favorite 2700K A19 bulbs, they're still painfully expensive, but if high CRI isn't a priority you can get significantly cheaper ones. (2700K Cree bulbs for $10)

 

[W|M]

 

[Mise]

I wonder how much national average affects this? I mean if I lived the exact same lifestyle in my native South America, would I end up with a higher or lower carbon footprint (a) in reality and (b) according to the model used on this website? It's worth considering whether moving to the Philippines or Brazil will help the environment long term. It would certainly be viable in a world of teleworking and service sector self-employment.

 

[Commodore]

Where you live is not outside of your control.

It is when you have a family to support. You go where the money and jobs are. And the place we live now is the only place we could afford at the time, so we have to wait until out lease is up before moving somewhere else.

 

[El_Machinae]

That's a very real and reasonable 'excuse'. Perfectly acceptable. The best you can do is ratchet yourself forwards, using iteration to improve your net contribution.

You know. My net footprint might be lower since I commonly teach people my Eco friendly ideas. Any good ideas I pass on effectively decease the net contribution every time they're adopted.

 

[Borachio]

It does have to be locality dependent, doesn't it?

Someone living on a Pacific atoll is certainly going to have a significantly smaller ecological footprint than someone living in Antarctica.

 

[Mise]

I don't know if that was directed at me, but what I mean is, if I were to do exactly the same stuff as I do now, just in Brazil, would the calculator tell me I have the same footprint or a different footprint? And is this accurate? Because I strongly suspect that the answers correspond to "more than national average", "national average", and "less than national average", with the overall footprint figure swinging a certain % each way depending on how you answer. If that's true then, while it's probably accurate on aggregate, I wouldn't conclude that living in Brazil but making no other lifestyle changes will necessarily reduce your ecological footprint. On the other hand, if living in Brazil makes lifestyle changes easier (e.g. you're more likely to walk if it's nice and warm outside), or reduces your footprint by e.g. not needing as much heating in your home, having more "organic" farms, less packaging on products, etc etc, then you can conclude that moving to Brazil will reduce your carbon footprint, even without putting significant effort into changing your life style.

Basically I want to know how to reasonably compare my result with a result from Brazil. Can I draw normative conclusions from cross-country comparisons when using this model? Or do comparisons between countries only work in aggregate?

 

[Borachio]

Yes. I think the model must skew your result according to locality. Iirc, it asks what heating methods you use, and their delivery type - not how much heating you consume (though it did mention how hot you keep your house). People living near the equator simply aren't going to be using as much heat. Domestic heating has to be the major source of carbon for those living in temperate and above latitudes, doesn't it?

Yet, I suppose those living on the equator are more likely to use air-conditioning. So now I simply don't know.

I think an as significant measure of ecological footprint would be how much of your income you actually spend. Isn't spending going to be closely related to how much carbon you produce? Poor people generally have a smaller footprint.

 

[Arwon]

I don't know if that was directed at me, but what I mean is, if I were to do exactly the same stuff as I do now, just in Brazil, would the calculator tell me I have the same footprint or a different footprint? And is this accurate? Because I strongly suspect that the answers correspond to "more than national average", "national average", and "less than national average", with the overall footprint figure swinging a certain % each way depending on how you answer. If that's true then, while it's probably accurate on aggregate, I wouldn't conclude that living in Brazil but making no other lifestyle changes will necessarily reduce your ecological footprint. On the other hand, if living in Brazil makes lifestyle changes easier (e.g. you're more likely to walk if it's nice and warm outside), or reduces your footprint by e.g. not needing as much heating in your home, having more "organic" farms, less packaging on products, etc etc, then you can conclude that moving to Brazil will reduce your carbon footprint, even without putting significant effort into changing your life style.

Basically I want to know how to reasonably compare my result with a result from Brazil. Can I draw normative conclusions from cross-country comparisons when using this model? Or do comparisons between countries only work in aggregate?

Judging by the massive scores all the Australians are getting, even those of us who are living in inner city apartments, this is clearly based on specific national factors for carbon, energy, land, water, etc. The data exists to support such a thing in energy, via publicly available IEA data. It presumably exists in some form for things such as land use and water use, too (maybe via the FAO?).

It'd be trivially easy to figure out a per capita use of each type of resource. My guess is the lifestyle entries would then apply fixed ratios modifying those national factors (for example assumed energy use for apartments being half that of a medium home, or whatever).

 

[Arwon]

Boom:

The quiz begins with the per capita average carbon, food, housing, and goods and services footprint values for your country and then makes a series of additions or deductions to these values based on your choices. These footprint values are derived from per capita average forest, cropland, pastureland, marine fisheries, built space, and carbon footprint values generated by the global footprint calculator housed at Redefining Progress (RP) using data published by international agencies like the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Bank. The general methodology for the per capita figures is described in Venetoulis, Jason and John Talberth 2005, "Refining the Ecological Footprint." The allocation of the RP footprint values to the quiz footprint categories (carbon, food, housing and goods and services) is guided by an extensive set of scientific research published by governments, non-governmental agencies, and academic institutions.

 

[Masada]

I'm at 6 earths. Although the housing questions were totally irrelevant. What in the hell is winter? Why would I want insulation? Why would I weather proof? And why should I be worried about water? I will cut down on meat though. That's a decent suggestion.

I'm also pissed that I'm being grouped with the coal states.

Interestingly, small apartments here are worse for the environment than big old houses. The former need air conditioning, my big old louvred place doesn't. New houses tend to be worse than old houses too.