To be a green person

What is "Carbon Foot Print"?
According to Carbon Footprint Ltd, "Carbon Footprint" is defined as a measure of the impact our activities have on the environment, and in particular climate change. It relates to the amount of greenhouse gases produced in our day-to-day lives through burning fossil fuels for electricity, heating and transportation etc. The carbon footprint is a measurement of all greenhouse gases we individually produce and has units of tonnes (or kg) of carbon dioxide equivalent.
(http://www.carbonfootprint.com/carbonfootprint.html)

Greenhouse gases(GHG) are gases that contribute to the greenhouse effect by absorbing infrared radiation. GHG includes Carbon dioxide (CO2), Methane (CH4), Nitrous Oxide (N2O), HFC,PFC, SF6, and the like.

To know individual carbon footprint, there are many web sites which can calculate it. This time, I used the web site, called "safeclimate.net". Some web site introduce you how much it cost to offset your carbon footprint, so it will be helpful for you if you are interested in carbon offset.

I calculated carbon footprints of three people; my family living in Japan, a friend living in Kalamazoo, and a professor living in Kalamazoo. To calculate the carbon footprint, I gathered four information; driving distance, fuel consumption, electric usage, and gas usage.

-My family-
Place: Country side in Japan
Driving distance: 420km/month
Fuel Consumption: 14km/l
Electrical usage: 200kwh/month
Gas usage: 47 m3/month

Carbon footprint: 244kg/month
-A friend-
Place: Kalamazoo
Driving distance: 170mile/week
Fuel Consumption: 24mile/gallon
Electrical usage: 419kwh/month
Gas usage: 12Mcf/month

Carbon footprint: 1291kg/month

-A professor-
Place: Kalamazoo
Driving distance: 0mile/week
Fuel Consumption: 0mile/gallon
Electrical usage: 296kwh/month
Gas usage: 8.4Mcf/month

Carbon footprint: 715kg/month




Then, seeing these results, what can we learn? First of all, compared with a friend and a professor, we can see electrical usage is much important problem to think than car usage. Although the professor did not use any car, the carbon footprint is over half as much as the carbon footprint of the friend. I calculated the difference of carbon footprint between Japan and United States, and I got the result below:
Electric: 1kwh=0.36kg-co2 (Japan) 1kwh=0.61kg-co2 (U.S.)
Gas: 1m3=2.1kg-co2 (Japan) 1m3=2.1kg-co2(U.S.)
Fuel: 1L=2.3kg-co2 (Japan) 1L=2.3kg-co2 (U.S.)

This result shows using electric in U.S. emits twice as much CO2 as in Japan!!!

Second, using electric is much better than using gas. As the result of calculation shows, gas emits approximately four times as much CO2 as electric does in U.S., and six times as much CO2 as electric does in Japan. This means it would be very effective to use electric to decrease the amount of CO2.

Knowing the amount of CO2 which individual emits is very good time to think about the environment. People can imagine how much they affect on the environment, and can have chance to think how to improve their lives. Of course, we have to emit some CO2, I mean, we cannot stop emitting CO2 because we have to use electric, gas, and cars(if people live in city side, they do not have to use them). But, we have to care about the amount of CO2, and continue thinking how to improve our lives. If people want to make the emission zero, they can execute carbon offset to pay money for buying emission credits.

DON'T GIVE UP!! THERE ARE A LOT OF WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR LIVES!!!