TellUs: Beginner Guide To Carbon Footprints

What is the carbon and ecological footprint and why are they important? Beginners guide.

The carbon footprint is the annual amount of greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from carbon dioxide, that result from the activities of an individual or group of people. Especially from their use of energy, transport, consumption of food, goods and services. It’s measured by mass - in kilograms or tonnes per year, either of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions alone or of CO₂ plus. CO₂ plus is the mass of other greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions, converted into their carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂e), global warming effect. 

Carbon footprints can also be calculated for events, for example a music festival. Moreover it can be calculated for making and distributing a product, such as a car or computer.

The carbon footprint is an environmental indicator - a way of measuring impacts on the environment, in this case typically through climate change. This means that the carbon footprint doesn’t measure other impacts, except sometimes indirectly. For example driving a petrol or diesel car, as well as emitting CO₂, results in air pollution from nitrogen oxides (NO_x). Especially the irritant gas nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) and other engine emissions. So the larger your carbon footprint from driving, the more air pollution you are creating. 

There are other environmental indicators that measure different impacts. This includes air and water pollution, loss of landscapes and biodiversity, depletion of mineral and water resources. The UK Government, the European Union and the United Nations publish sets of ‘sustainable development indicators’ which - as well as measures economic growth, life expectancy and levels of inequality - include environmental indicators such as wildlife populations, pollution levels, recycling rates and annual GHG emissions.

A commonly used environmental indicator is the ecological footprint, based on the availability of land and sea to support a population. The ecological footprint (EF) is a measure of the environmental impact of a population (a household, city or nation) based on the area of land and sea theoretically required to indefinitely support its lifestyle, at a given level of technology.

The ecological footprint measures the area of land and sea required to produce the population’s food and accommodate its roads, buildings etc, as well as the forested area required to absorb the population’s CO₂ emissions. Therefore the EF measures the carbon footprint component of a population’s environmental impact using land and sea area. Occasionally a 10% land area is added to the ecological footprint to account for biodiversity conservation. The EF is the indicator used to show that about three planet Earths would be needed if everyone in the world tried to live the current lifestyle of an average European in the long term. This is clearly unsustainable!

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Check out my previous blog: https://www.tellusabouttheenvironment.com/2019/08/tellus-climate-change-irreversible.html