FRIDAY, JAN 13, 2023: NOTE TO FILE
Module 1-11
A short 8-week course in ecological design, module 1, lesson 11
Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS
TOPICS: SUSTAINABILITY, FROM THE WIRES, LANGUAGE GAMES
Abstract: As I have sustainability concerns and concerns for posterity's and the biosphere's future, I will start a course in Ecological Design tomorrow, which is one of four 'dimensions' of the offering. Subnotes to file will likely follow.
COOS BAY (A-P) — The 11th lesson. [My comments are in brackets.]
Our Carbon Footprint
A carbon footprint is one way of measuring an important aspect of the impact our activities have on the environment - in particular how our behaviour impacts climate change directly. It relates to the amount of greenhouse gases produced in our day-to-day lives through burning fossil fuels for electricity, heating and transportation, etc. Our carbon footprint is a measurement of all greenhouse gas emissions our individual behaviour results in. It is typically measured in units of tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per annum (tCO2pa).
The pie chart below shows the main elements, which make up the total of a typical person's carbon footprint in the developed world.
A carbon footprint is made up of the sum of two parts:
▪ Our individual share of carbon emissions related to the household we live in and our own transport, holiday, and consumption habits is referred to as the primary footprint (shown by the green slices of the pie chart). We have direct control of our primary footprint.
▪ The share we have in maintaining public infrastructures, key industries that we buy or rent products from, the entire life-cycle of the products we use, the financial service industry we use as participants in the economy, and the emissions resulting from public services, etc., are all referred to as being part of the secondary footprint (shown as the yellow slices).
Click on the link to watch a short video (2mins) explaining the basic concept of a carbon footprint.
A Few Facts:
▪ At the start of the Industrial Revolution the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere was 280 ppm (ppm = parts per million)
▪ By the late 1950s the CO2 concentration had risen to 315 ppm
▪ In November 2020, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere reached 412.89 ppm
▪ And it is rising by approximately 2 ppm annually
On the infographic below, you can look at your country's carbon footprint.
Global Carbon Footprint by Country (Source)
In the Economics Dimension of the GEDS course we will revisit the issue of climate change and address a number of global emissions reduction strategies in more detail, among them ‘contraction & convergence’, ‘cap & trade’, and ‘cap & share’.
7.1. Ecological Footprint, Earth Overshoot Day and the Happy Planet Index
OUR CARBON FOOTPRINT is a significant part of our more general Ecological Footprint. We have already mentioned this measure before. Our ecological footprint can be defined as “the impact of human activities measured in terms of the area of biologically productive land and water required to produce the goods consumed and to assimilate the wastes generated” (WWF, 2015). The graphs below show how much of the increase in humanity’s ecological footprint is due to an increase in our carbon footprint since the 1960s; the second graph also illustrates the other contributions to our ecological footprint besides carbon.
The Ecological Footprint measures
For more information on ecological footprinting and comparisons of different ecological footprints by country please take a closer look at the website of the Footprint Network. Some countries exceed their biocapacity constraints, which means they are borrowing resources from future generations within their own country and also importing resources from other countries. There are very few countries in the world that live within their biocapacity, and these are primarily those countries with vast open spaces with substantial biomass, such as, Canada and Brazil (see map below). On a planetary scale humanity went into overshoot in the late 1960s. Overshoot in this context means that we started living off the capital rather than the interest of what the bioproductivity of the planet provides to regeneration each year.
Resources from ecological footprints here
Earth Overshoot Day 2020 landed on 22th August. It is the day when, as a planet, we collectively reach the limit of resources we can use this year without jeopardising the planet’s ability to replenish those resources for the future.
Watch the video explaining the concepts of ecological footprint and earth overshoot day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=XBHW3zlkY44&feature=emb_title
If you want to calculate your own footprint, please follow this link. We will revisit the issue of our ecological footprint in the Economics Dimension.
Does our ecological footprint correlate with human well-being? Are we happier when we have more stuff or more development?
Watch the video explaining the Happy Planet Index. More of this alternative to GDP (measuring well-being in terms of Gross Domestic Product) in the Economics Dimension.
Module 1, lesson 12
