A ‘Real Life Carbon Footprint Calculator’. Take our test. We factor more than just carbon impact, using some calculations that just aren’t that common.  Here’s why you should: no sooner did the ink dry on the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty designed to limit greenhouse gas emissions, did online calculators for determining one’s ‘carbon footprint’ explode in number and popularity.  Many sites represent organizations that will gladly take your alms, promising to mitigate the effects of your self-indulgent lifestyle, displaying a prominent contribution button that you can press to assuage your guilt right on the spot.

There are carbon footprint calculators, water footprint calculators, airline flights calculators. There are even secondary carbon footprint calculators, which estimate the impact other activities you engage in are having, for example, the impact of the packaging you buy is having on the environment.  And there’s a contribution button for that, too.Picture of Carbon Footprint Calculator

To be sure, nothing would be worse than that mankind chokes itself out of the realm of the living because of the products of his own success is rendering the planet unliveable.  Just about as ironic as the dinsosaurs, who collectively thumped their tails earth-wide on that fateful day in prehistory, thinking it would be cool, jarring the Earth’s orbit a few degrees enough into the flight-path of the Chicxulub Asteroid and sealing their doom.

This story isn’t about the science, or the effects of climate change.  It’s about the calculators.  If, among all the ‘footprint’ calculators one is missing, it’s the ‘Greedulator’, one that will compute just howCyber Scam Warning much greed has accelerated once human’s tendency towards guilt for just about anything has put $$$ on the results of this Schlock Lore of Online Carbon Footprinting.  Doesn’t even matter if they know who you are, with your IP address, or your Zip code if you volunteer it, they will know in what 3-mile radius of wherever, which major appliances are how old.  Or what percentage of people eat meat how many times a week.  Who cares about saving the earth; these people are the Strip Miners of Demograhic Data.  And you’re the ore.

Our household’s carbon footprint has ranged from 2.6 Earths to 10.5, among the various online calculators we’ve used.  Hmmmm.  Looks like just about anyone can have their own calculator, so we decided to launch our own.  Ours is free and open to the public without obligation, or tricks to pry loose your personal vital stats.

This is a ‘Real Life Actual Total Footprint Calculator’.  It computes more than just carbon impact, using some calculations that just aren’t that common.

[ezquiz] title:Real Life Actual Carbon Footprint Calculator
help: Choose True or False. At the end of the quiz, you will get your score.
q: I often watch TV with the lights off.  And the TV too.
a: true
q: I often request locally-grown food when dining out.
a: true
q: I’m sometimes asked to leave.
a: true
q: I have fish at least once a week for dinner.
a: true
q: The fish sometimes helps with the dishes.
a: true
q: I often skip ‘plastic’ and ‘paper’ and use my pockets instead.
a: true
q: ‘Techno Trash’ is a type of bad music from Germany.
a: false
q: I eat only at sporting events.
a: true
q: I’ve been known to say, “Honey, we’re down to our last freezer of Kobe beef!”
a: false
q: ‘Greenwashing’ means scrubbing the algae off your ski-boat’s hull.
a: false
q: I often stick my feet out to stop my car.
a: true
q: ‘Alternative Fuels’ are all those other buttons on the gas pump.
a: false
q: I’ve said this: “I can’t believe Grandpa and Grandma’s clothes still fit us so well!”
a: true
q: I generally dry my clothes by attaching them to ceiling fans.
a: true
q: ‘Virgin Paper’ is the name of a popular airlines’ inflight magazine.
a: false
q: I generally put more than 3 trash bags a week out at the curb.
a: false
q: I never think of buying a trash can.
a: false
q: I usually ‘Just Say No’ to disposable plastic water bottles.
a: true
q: My pants are often wet.
a: true
q: A’Walk Shed’is a place outdoors where you store sneakers and workout gear.
a: false
[/ezquiz]

 

Okay, let’s look at your possible scores.  And the questions that tripped you up, and how you can improve on your score.  Alongside your ‘Ranking’ below is the number of Earths needed to support you, based on your answers.  Hopefully this guidance can help you mold your behavior.  This is, after all, all about sustainability.

81-100% Best Friend of Earth – 1.5 Earths or less.  Good for you.  You’re doing just about nothing bad to anyone, and you’re sustainable.  You probably never let anyone copy your homework, either.

61-80% Pal of Earth.  Sort of –  3 Earths.  Okay, we tripped you up on ‘Do You Dry Clothes With Ceiling Fans?’  Look, many people today dry their underpants by attaching them to ceiling fans, but for some reason, you just don’t want to fess up to that.  Fine.  You obviously don’t know why ceiling fans have speeds, then, do you?  ‘Low’ is for delicates, ‘Medium’ for permanent-press….that’s how that works.

41-60% Person Earth Should Put Off at the Next Stop5 Earths.  Hello!  Last time we looked, there was only one planet around here!  And we asked you about your ‘Last Freezer of Kobe Beef?’.  We  couldn’t resist maligning this long-distance treat to illustrate another point: most food you eat in the US has traveled an average of 1500 miles to get to your plate.  Wanna do something useful?  Turn ‘Locavore’…a Person That Just Eats Locally Grown Foods.   And if you really wanted to help the environment, you’d preserve that Kobe in the traditional Old Western way.  Make jerky.  Think what a hit you’d be in the Superstretch at Daytona when you toss out those snacks to your redneck pals.

Cartoon of burning sneakers.

Ever stop your car with your feet? >>

21-40% Self-Indulgent Hogwart – 10 Earths.  We know you got snookered into answering ‘Never’ to the ‘Grandpa and Grandma’s Clothes?’ question.  Who wears that old stuff??!!  The only thing we spend more on than food…is clothing.   Never mind the crushing environmental costs of getting rid of discarded threads each year.  Now here’s where the road to hell really gets paved with good intentions (and not just by using your feet to stop your car): the much-ballyhooed ‘green’ concept of spinning textiles from discarded water bottles.  Right!  Let’s encourage the manufacture of even more insanely wasteful single-use packaging of a few gulps of glorified, über-marketed tap-water in the name of another addition to our overstuffed closets.  Really.  Wear old folks’ clothes?!  Okay, so if you really just can’t picture yourself in Gramps’ old Plus Fours on a daily basis, just save those shorty-pants for Halloween and impress the kids.Cartoon of 'Kyotato' the World Spud

0-20% A Plague Upon Us All –  There is NO number of Earths that can support you!  In fact, you’ve used this one up completely, with no hope of recovery,  and we’ve all had to move to Mars.  And no, you’re not welcome here!  Keep in mind how we trapped you with the ‘Do You Only Eat at Sporting Events?’ question, which no doubt caught you in the wrong end-zone with your jockey shorts down.  Little known to the rest of the world, a separate, clandestine treaty was hatched at Kyoto, code-named “Kyotato”.  This is a carbon-offset strategy championed by the NFL, Major League Baseball, and nearly all colleges and universities in the US to secretly grow potatoes on the gridirons and baseball diamonds of their stadiums in return for massive carbon credits.  These become the french-fries that fuel the fans from coast to coast, unbeknownst to them.  The fans, that is.  And the Kyotato is bioengineered to add its own kick to biofuels: it fries ‘clean’ and boosts the cetane rating of biodiesel when they oil in which it’s fried is added to the supply chain.   Don’t bother trying to spot these secret crops: you can’t see the potatoes from the bleachers because a) they’re under the fields, and b) evidence of cultivation is hidden by those tarps you see the ground crews pulling around all the time.

Okay, we’ve had our fun.  If you’d like to explore a more precise analysis of your impact on the world, we recommend you download a spreadsheet version of a calculator and do it offline.  A search on ‘spreadsheet carbon footprint calculator’ (optionally add the product name ‘Excel’ if you’d like) will give you many choices.  Remember, if you chose to print the results, be sure to use ‘experienced’ paper.  Not Virgin.