1. Surprisingly, my carbon footprint of 4.1 Planet Earths was below the country average’s of 5 Earths. If everyone were to live my odd way of life, we would need the resources supplied by our Earth multiplied by 4.1. The average of the country would require the resources of 5 Earths. However, while it takes 17 global acres to support the average lifestyle of our country, it would take 18.3 global acres to support my lifestyle.
2. Three of the many things that one could possibly change in their lifestyle is diet, modes of transportation, and how they recycle and use renewable resources. I chose to maximize these aspects of my lifestyle and the number of Earths it took to satisfy such a lifestyle skyrocketed. I already do not use much public transportation to get to school or to place, and when I opted to not use any public transportation and to drive more excessively and to never carpool, the number of Earths jumped to 5.5. At home, we buy all of our meat from butchers and never buy packaged meat for cost preferences, and also because we have many butchers in our neighborhood. However, the moment I switched my diet to having poultry of every kind every day, packaged and processed, the number of Earths became 7.4! The change was drastic and quite shocking. In terms of renewable energy, I was definitely surprised. I bought all sorts of newspapers and magazines, had insane gas and electric bills, and minimized the amount of recycling I did, and the footprint calculator showed no mercy. The number of Earths became 9.3.
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3. My inner conflict with the question, how can we create a more sustainable society, is this amazing privilege we are subtly exercising when we get to CHOOSE whether to live a more sustainable life or not. In my circumstances, I may choose to off all the lights as I go from room to room in my house, take 12-minute showers, and place stickers on my family’s garbage cans so to differentiate between recyclables and make it more convenient. I can CHOOSE to either take the subway to school or to let my parents drive me every week. I can choose to either drive with my brother to church or to hitch a ride with four other friends. I think as a society we need to work towards making sustainability the more convenient choice for all people of all socioeconomic backgrounds. If carpooling was rewarded more often—just like the HOV lanes—and public transportation would stop increasing its prices then more people would opt for sustainability. As a society we need to work towards evening out the playing field for everyone.

1) My carbon  footprint was 5.1 earths and 22.8 acres, which means that if everyone lived my lifestyle, it would require 5.1 earths to provide enough resources. This is .1 earths above the national average of 5 earths, and a very concerning 5.8 acres above the national average of 17 acres.

2) I chose to maximize diet, shelter and transportation. Maximizing my diet increased my total earths to 7.2, maximizing my shelter increased my total earths to 8.4 and finally, the largest increase, maximizing transportation increased my total earths to 18. I was not surprised that maximizing transportation led to the largest increase. When you are constantly contributing to the emission of the type of pollution that cars, bikes, buses and planes release, it is bound to drastically increase your footprint. Because of how drastically transportation affects one’s carbon footprint, I think this would be the best area to make a change in.  The easiest and most practical way to decrease my footprint would be to cut down the amount of times I use cars, buses, and trains and instead use a different form of transportation such as riding a bike or walking. By doing this and increasing the amount of carpooling I do, I was able to decrease my carbon footprint to 4.5 earths. It makes you wonder how many other simple changes in our lifestyle would not only benefit us in regards to our health, but also drastically reduce our carbon footprint on the Earth. It is definitely something worth looking into.

3) As a society there are a number of things we can do to create a more sustainable world. For one thing, we should do more to support natural food that is grown locally. Also, like I already mentioned, reducing the amount of time we spend in cars and increasing walking and bike riding would do wonders for our sustainability. In regards to our electricity and other utilities we should pursue a lifestyle that is not wasteful. We should not leave lights on when not in use, we should not keep the water running and, in general, we should avoid using our resources in excess. Furthermore, more responsible and economical usage of our resources would go a long way. Creating more centralized communities would reduce commuting. Centralized housing would also make it easier to  provide heat and electricity to a number of units at once. Making even a  few of these changes would greatly improve the sustainability of our Earth. 

My ecological footprint measured 4.7 earths and 17.3 acres, this differed from the USA average, 17 acres and 5 earths, below the average earths, but above the amount of acres.

The three sections I maximized were use of electricity, garbage production and consumption of food grown. When minimizing the amount of electricity (enough to survive in the modern world), the amount of earths – 4.6 did not vary that much from my original amount of earths – 4.7. When I maximized garbage production that increased the amount of earths by 3, to 7.3 earths. When I maximized consumption of food grown, I got a number of 3.9 earths. The differing number of earths necessary decreases as natural resources increase; additionally, as unnatural resources are being used the number of earths increase.

As a society, to make the world a more sustainable society we need to cut back on a lot; by doing these footprints you can easily see the effects of eating meat versus eating food grown, or the effects of the increased amount of garbage. We can continue recycling to decrease the amounts of actual garbage, we can decrease the amount of meat consumed to once a week instead of five, we can unplug our TVs and anything plugged in the wall when we’re not home to decrease use of electricity. There’s a lot we can do, it’s just easier to continue living at our convenience. I think this was mentioned in class, that all these things were invented or started because they made things more convenient, we can try to stop the old habits, but we should also try to stop any new habits from appearing, that’ll hurt earth.

1. My ecological footprint requires 4.2 planet Earths and 18.7 global acres to support my lifestyle. While the number of planet Earths is below the country average, my number of acres is 1.7 above the average. Energy land is what takes up most of my 18.7 global acres.
2. I maximized diet, public transportation, and waste/recycling habits to see how this would change my ecological footprint. Maximizing the public transportation would have made my footprint to be just under 7 planet Earths, maximizing my diet was the second largest increase, and maximizing the waste/recycling habits would have been the smallest increase of the three. I rarely use public transportation during the week because I always walk to and from school. As for my diet, I could eat more organic foods. I honestly don’t remember the last time I ate a fruit.  Most of the meals I eat for dinner include meat so I could definitely try to eat less of it.  I already recycle all of my plastic bottles.  I think that using my electronics less  would make the most difference on my ecological footprint because I know that I waste a lot of electricity. One of my bad habits is leaving the television on as background noise.  3. I think that we should all decrease the amount of electricity we use daily.  Turning off lights that aren’t being used or turning off the televisions and computers when we are not in the room would be really beneficial.  Those who often drive cars can try using public transportation even if it’s only once a week because that could decrease the amount of air pollution there is, especially in a place like New York City.  One can try walking to their destinations because that would benefit the environment as well as one’s own health.  In order to create a more sustainable society, many people need to change their lifestyles because one person won’t make much of a difference on our planet.

1. My original footprint was 5.2, which means that if everyone in the world lived the way I did we would require that many earth’s to sustain ourselves, which is about the same as the national average of 5 earths.
2. Three parameters that I maximized were my diet, transportation, and energy usage. Maximizing my meat consumption increased the number of planets to 7.1, maximizing my transportation increased the number of planets to 8.5, and maximizing energy usage increased the number of planets to 8.8. Changes I could make in my lifestyle to minimize the harm that I am causing to the planet is by eating less meat and buying my meat locally or completely cutting out meat and becoming a vegetarian or vegan. Also I could use more public transportation or walk to more places rather than using a car. I could also minimize the amount of energy that I use by using less energy at home and living in a smaller and more environmentally friendly home.
3. As a society we need to make it easier and more convenient to become environmentally friendly. When it is easier for people to take these steps they will be more willing to do them. We need to give people an incentive to be active in protecting and sustaining this planet. Certain things we could do is by reducing the cost that goes into being environmentally friendly.

My original footprint is 4.1 planets and 18.2 acres. Compared to the United States, the number of planets needed to sustain my type of lifestyle is way below the average for the Unites States, but the acres of land needed to sustain my lifestyle if much higher than average. This is probably because I don’t consume any meat products at all, but I do travel by bus, car, and train a lot. Each day’s commute to Brooklyn College is more than 50 miles, so that really is a huge chunk of my energy/land usage.

When I maximized three different parameters, the number of planets and acres of land needed to sustain my hypothetical lifestyle drastically increased. For the first parameter, I increased my meat consumption from none to the maximum, which was daily, I believe. This caused both the planets and acres needed to increase, from 4.1 to 6.5 and from 18.2 to 28.8. This was truly shocking to me and actually quite comforting, knowing that my current lifestyle’s carbon footprint is way less than someone who does eat meat everyday. Its even more of an incentive to sustain my lacto-vegetarian lifestyle and continue living the life I am.

The second parameter that I maximized was the use of personal transportation. This caused my carbon footprint to increase to a whopping 7.1 planets and 31.7 acres of land. This was the biggest increase and it is expected, because cars release so much carbon dioxide and other pollutants. Increasing my personal car use would be very harmful to the environment, and in a way it is also comforting for me to think how much of a less impacts I am making on the environment by using public transportation rather than my own car.

The last parameter I maximized was energy usage. The number of planets and acres needed for me to sustain that lifestyle increased to 6 and 26.7, respectively. This was quite interesting, because it also brought me content to think that all that I do to save energy really does make an impact. I always make sure to turn off all the lights in our house before we leave or go to sleep. I also use only one room’s light at a time, and never leave electric decorations on all night or at all day. The heat is also left on the minimum that I need for that day, around 60 or 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Though these are simple things, in the long run, they do help out. Overall, here is the comparison of all four parameters and by looking at this, it is quite obvious that my current lifestyle is the most sustainable of the four.

Changes that I could probably make to my lifestyle would be to buy more local, organic goods, reduce the wasteful purchase of packaged goods, and take more public transportation. However, these aren’t that ideal because I live in a family setting. It is very difficult to follow a non-wasteful lifecycle when one person wants this packaged food, that new type of cereal, and so on. Also, I do have a recyclables compartment in my house, but I wish to make it even more efficient and inclusive. I have three cans for paper, plastic and cans, but I want to make a new compartment for compost or organic goods. In addition to those changes, I want to try and convince my parents to install solar panels on our house. Not only will it help us on electricity, but also it will harness renewable energy, which I believe more people and corporations should make use of. These are just a few examples of what I could do on an individual level to help reduce my carbon footprint.

I believe, that whatever changes I would make to my lifestyle to make it more sustainable would only be to lift the burden of ecological sin from my conscience. Other than that, it is really too small of an impact to help save the planet or stop global warming. There needs to be a global movement to get corporations and other big producers of CO₂ and other harmful pollutants to reduce their carbon footprints. It is them that play a major part in what wastes get put out into the atmosphere and it is only them who can help reduce the global carbon footprint.

WJT Mitchell  says so. There’s your bit of literary theory for the day.

By comparison to the American standard of having to use 5 earths, I use one entire earth less at 4. I am slightly below average. Though, conversely, I use one global acre more at 18 than the US average at 17. Personally, I’ve no idea how that works, but oh well.

I decided to maximize subway travel, electricity usage, and animal by-product consumption:

On the other side of things, I discovered that if I made a move to veganism as well as eating mostly fresh and locally grown products, I could reduce my impact by however much is worth .4 Earths. This seems like a half ridiculous measure but I guess we’re rolling with it. Generally speaking, though, I think a general shift toward more eco-friendly diets is one of the best and easiest ways to help the environment and ourselves (no, really, vegetarianism/veganism is not that difficult). And seeing a,s of the values that I tested, electricity has a huge impact on our eco footprint, it might be a good idea to just generally use less of it—and pay less for it in the process.

Discussion Questions:

1. Compared to my original foot print calculation of requiring 5.7 planets to provide enough resources for everyone to live the way I live, the country’s average is only 5.0 planets

2. The biggest, easiest and more sensical change I could make would be to cut back on all of the meat I consume on a weekly basis. I eat meat around 4-5 times a week. If I cut back on my meat consumption, my foot print would decrease by more tan an entire planet. It would also save me huge amounts of money.

3. Overall as a society and as a world, we just need to think more in regards to all of the resources we consume. There are some huge changes we can make, such as switching to a car with more miles per gallon, but there are also the simple and easy changes we can make, like consuming less meats or consuming local meats and foods. Even if we don’t make changes right away, if we just take the time to consider the changes we could make and how greatly it could impact and better our world, that alone would be a step in the right direction. Awareness is the first step.