'Hacking' your carbon footprint

Measuring your carbon footprint (by Jen Luxton).

Many of the actions we take in our daily lives contribute to global warming. When we start a car, we’ve made a decision to change the Earth’s climate. This is also true when we eat lunch, book a flight, do the laundry, turn on the television, or flush the toilet. But the fossil fuels we consume tend to be hidden from our immediate experience, making them easy to take for granted.

Over the past few years I’ve been working to systematically reduce my impact. I didn’t set out to save the world; my reductions are a billion times too small for that. Instead, I’m motivated to avoid harming others, human and nonhuman, and it has become clear that burning fossil fuel does, in fact, harm others. I was also curious to see what life without all the fossil fuel would be like. It turns out that I like it better.

Read the Yes! story by Peter Kalmus - “Real Life Hacks to Cut Your Carbon Footprint (Plus: A Personal Emissions Calculator).”