Here are some photos of the interior of my condo, which is currently vacant, as you can probably see.
View of the bedroom looking toward the closet and door:
View of the bedroom looking toward the southwest:
View of the bathroom, which isn’t really all yellow, by the way:
View of the hall with its walk-in closet and linen closet:
View from the front door looking left:
View of the kitchen looking straight in:
View of the kitchen from an oblique angle:
View of the living room from the hallway looking northwest:
View of the living room looking toward the front door:
Now, you may ask, What has this to do with a carbon footprint? Everything, it turns out. Read on.
I work in Amherst, and my condo is in Northampton, 9.8 miles away, but I don’t live there. Instead, I commute 32.6 miles each way, five days a week, from my home in Central Massachusetts. What kind of an impact on the environment does this have, I wondered.
A Google search found me the following online carbon footprint calculators. In alphabetical order:
- British Petroleum
- Carbon Footprint
- Climate Crisis
- EPA
- The Nature Conservancy
- World Resources Institute
- Yahoo
Of course, I was a bit taken aback when the sites’ algorithms yielded radically different results. “Voodoo science,” I thought with annoyance, “No wonder people question this climate change stuff.” Nevertheless, I was forced to come up with some hard numbers, more or less, for characterizing my lifestyle. All the sites ask mostly about your home energy usage and your transportation modalities, which I guess are the more easily quantifiable factors. My personal footprint is probably around 14 tons (yikes) per year, which is way above the average for the developing world (4 tons) but probably typical of many Americans or Canadians.
Here are some of my critical numbers:
- Miles driven per year – 18,000
- Miles flown per year – 6,000
- Total kWh – 1,277
- Total therms – 359
Although it’s over 10 years old, my Honda Civic still gets 36 mpg, which is certainly competitive with all models except hybrids, but if I were to move, I’d cut my miles driven by two-thirds. Based on 6,000 automobile miles per year, my carbon footprint could be reduced to a little less than 10 tons. Should I move back to my condo? Your comments are welcome!
I won’t discuss carbon offsetting in this post, as it’s too controversial, in the sense that there’s fierce debate over its efficacy in cutting greenhouse gas emissions. I’ve been studying the issue of purchasing carbon offsets but haven’t made any decisions yet.
[Update on Feb 22: I purchased carbon offsets from Native Energy, Inc.]