My Carbon Footprint is killing me

I was sent a link yesterday from a coworker about how to measure and decrease my carbon footprint. I have been sent these before. I filled out the detailed survey saying that I live in a single bedroom apartment in a building with roughly 15 occupied apartments, I drive a scooter, I take 6 flights a year, four of those being coast to coast, and the list goes on. I turn off the lights when I leave the room, I recycle, I buy local foods when I can, although I don’t compost. Where the heck would I compost?

Regardless of my relatively low-key urban lifestyle with no car, mostly walking or scooting, little appliance usage, using energy-saving light bulbs, recycling and what have you, I still ended up with a four and-a-half earth rating. The test tells you how many earths would be wasted if everyone lived like you. It’s like an overbearing mother. “You know if everyone lived like you we would have been destroyed thousands of years ago.”

I performed a Google search for “carbon footprint” to see where else I could find these tests, and lots of sites have them, for different reasons. Some aim to raise money to offset your carbon footprint; others just make you feel like crap for purchasing packaged cheese.

Some only measure fuel usage, while others get down to the nitty-gritty details of being vegetarian, omnivore or carnivore, like my survey yesterday. Some are set up more like a quiz, similar to a format you would use to find your celebrity crush. Others are set up like a calculator, adding up your overall waste and driving you to stop halfway through since you are sure your personal waste will add up to more than the national debt.

Are there any individuals out there in QA wasting some inordinate amount of earths that we should be concerned about? As far as I know, none of my neighbors live in a huge house with all the lights on, a semi-tractor trailer out front and a small head of cattle in the back yard.

Global destruction is no laughing matter, but guilt is downright hilarious.

Lane Keough