How to reduce your carbon footprint and why it is important
Global warming due to human activities is causing long-lasting and likely permanent changes to weather patterns, biodiversity, and soil health and resilience. This has led to a global climate crisis that threatens both human and animal populations with extreme weather events, shrinking natural resources, and declining crop yields — the consequences of which include increased food insecurity, population displacements, worsening health, and species and habitat loss.
Given the urgency of the climate crisis, it is vital that each of us does whatever we can to reduce our impact on the environment. This includes being aware of how one’s activities may generate greenhouse gases (GHGs), which accumulate in the Earth’s atmosphere and trap heat that subsequently raises the planet’s temperature. Many daily choices contribute to GHG emissions, like eating a hamburger, flying on a plane, and driving a car.
A carbon footprint is important because it provides an estimate of how much GHG emissions are generated by a person, organization, or industry. The more choices individuals, groups, or industries can make to reduce their carbon footprints, the less GHG emissions will be released into the atmosphere to contribute to global warming
.
What is a carbon footprint?
A carbon footprint is the total amount of GHGs created by a person’s activities. Businesses, industries, countries, and products can also have carbon footprints. The carbon footprint calculates the quantity of GHGs — carbon dioxide, methane, fluorinated gases, and nitrous oxide — that are released by a given activity. Although several GHGs are included in a carbon footprint, measurements are expressed in carbon dioxide equivalency so that they can easily be compared between activities and industries.
An individual’s carbon footprint depends on multiple factors, like how often they drive a car or fly, whether they eat meat or not, what kind of clothes they buy, and how much they throw away. Knowing one’s carbon footprint can help an individual identify areas where they can reduce the emissions they generate and lessen their contribution to climate change.
Carbon footprints vary considerably around the world and within national populations, and higher carbon footprints have been shown to be associated with areas of higher income. Cities, in particular, have higher carbon footprints than rural areas and contribute around 68% of the global carbon footprint. The carbon footprints of cities are driven up by both population density and per capita carbon footprints. Some cities with high GHG emissions are located in countries that have overall low emissions, in which case the relative affluence of city-dwellers accounts for the difference.
Some of the cities with the highest carbon footprints, according to a 2018 study, include:
Seoul
Guangzhou
New York
Los Angeles
Shanghai
Singapore
Chicago
The individual countries with the largest carbon footprints overall are:
China
United States
India
Indonesia
Russia
Almost 70% of global GHG emissions come from around nine countries plus the EU, with many other parts of the world contributing much lower levels. However, per capita carbon footprints — the average quantity of GHG emissions generated by an individual living in a country — are highest in the United States, Russia, South Korea, Iran, and Japan, according to 2018 calculations.
According to World Bank data from 2019, the countries with the smallest carbon footprints include Ghana, Malawi, Honduras, Burundi, Chad, and Eritrea, among others. With some exceptions, most countries with small carbon footprints are located in the Global South.
Why is it important to reduce your carbon footprint?
The 2022 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has identified an urgent need to implement mitigation strategies that reduce emissions and prevent global warming from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius in the next few decades. According to the IPCC, if global warming is permitted to continue at its current rate, an increase in adverse effects can be expected, including:
Drought
Wildfires
Heavy precipitation and flooding
Human and animal populations unable to recover or adapt
Reduced food security and drinking water availability
Strained or collapsed infrastructure
Destruction of marine ecosystems and wildlife extinction
Dire changes to the planet are already occurring and will only get worse if no action is taken. Reducing global GHG emissions is crucial to preventing planetary temperature increases that are incompatible with life as it currently exists, and requires concerted international efforts and cooperation between countries.
However, individuals can help to reduce GHG emissions by making lifestyle choices to decrease their carbon footprints. Two industries are responsible for generating the most GHGs worldwide and driving climate change — the agricultural sector and the energy sector.
Animal agriculture alone is responsible for at least 16.5% of global GHG emissions and contributes to global warming via other pathways like deforestation as well as causing other forms of environmental damage such as water pollution. Additionally, estimates suggest that between 8% and 10% of GHG emissions are caused by food that is never eaten.
The energy sector includes the use of fossil fuels in transportation like cars and airplanes, electricity, and heat. Emissions generated by energy use account for over 75% of global emissions since 2009.
Lifestyle changes, like adopting a plant-based diet and reducing daily energy usage, will decrease your carbon footprint and help slow the progression of global warming. The first step is to determine what your current carbon footprint is, and then identify ways to reduce it.