Online Carbon Footprint Calculator Helps Texans Keep Cool

Educators can use the calculator to help young Texans understand their individual roles in supporting a healthy planet.

The Conservancy's carbon calculator demonstrates how personal choices increase or decrease the user's impact on global warming by measuring that person's or family's carbon footprint.

The footprint is the amount of greenhouse gas produced by use of transportation, electric energy consumption and dietary choices. The calculator puts these choices in context, allowing people to better understand the impacts of their actions.

Jim Bergan, Ph.D., director of science for The Nature Conservancy of Texas, said, "In Texas, scientists are documenting the threats from global warming and climate change. While some patterns are within the range of historic variability, in recent years our state has faced severe drought, more intense storms and hurricanes, and the effects of rising sea level along the Gulf Coast."

Traffic crawls along I-35 in Texas, emitting greenhouse gases. (Photo courtesy Texas Department of Transportation)

The Carbon Footprint Calculator also provides tips for reducing emissions and allows people to compare their overall impact to national and worldwide averages.

The tool estimates emissions of all greenhouse gases, not just carbon dioxide. Because some of the gases that drive climate change can linger in the atmosphere for a century or more, today's actions can make a big difference to future generations.

The calculator uses a visually accessible format, including graphs and charts, and can be completed in a few minutes. It provides immediate visual feedback to users about the impact of their behaviors.

The calculations have been reviewed and verified by Conservancy climate change scientists and are based on data from sources including the World Resources Institute and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

"Once people use the carbon calculator and get a sense of what their impact is, there are many steps they can take to reduce their contributions to climate change," Bergan said. "With the great distances we travel within the borders of Texas, we can choose to teleconference instead of driving or flying to business meetings, reducing carbon emissions while saving on the high cost of fuel."

"Developing this mindset is not a partisan issue, it's about optimizing household economies and bettering our environment," he said.

“We can install programmable thermostats in our homes and offices for more efficient cooling in the hot summer months, and plant native Texas trees to provide shade," Bergan added. "We can also take better advantage of our delicious and abundant Texas-grown produce, meats, fish, shrimp and other foods, which would result in fewer emissions when compared to food transported from out of state."

In addition to public awareness efforts such as the Carbon Footprint Calculator, the Conservancy works to reduce sources of global warming by promoting policies to reduce emissions from fossil fuels and by stemming deforestation.

Conservancy scientists in Texas are working in the Hill Country, on the Gulf Coast, in the Trans Pecos of West Texas, in the Big Thicket, in the Rio Grande Valley and other parts of the state to build networks of conservation areas that help plants and animals move into new locations as the old ones become uninhabitable.

The organization says these projects improve the ability of ecosystems to cope with warmer temperatures, altered precipitation, rising sea levels and other changes.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2008. All rights reserved.