| 
ENSC 1: Introduction to Environmental Sciences
Assignment
#3-
Carbon budgets and your ecological footprint. |
|||
Due
Date: February 26, 2013 |
|||
| To complete this assignment, you will need to visit several web sites. First you’ll determine your household carbon budget, and then you’ll estimate your ecological footprint. Following each of these exercises, there will be a series of questions to answer. | |||
| 1. | Your household carbon budget: go to coolclimate.berkeley.edu/uscalc to calculate your household carbon budget (Use Firefox.). You should do this for your home town, not your residence at UVM. You will need information about both home energy sources and usage and transportation (how many cars in the family, etc.) By filling in some simple data, you’ll be able to estimate how much carbon dioxide your household releases. Answer the following: | ||
| a. | What is your household's total carbon footprint (tons CO2/yr)? (1 point) | ||
| b. | How does the number you calculated in (a) compare to the average household in your town? (1 point) | ||
| c. | Which of the following, travel, home, food, goods, or services, accounts for the greatest percentage of your household's total carbon footprint? (1 point) |
||
| d. | Briefly describe and discuss one step you could take to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide released by your household. (3 points) | ||
| e. | How
much would it cost you to offset your household carbon dioxide
emissions? (1 point) |
||
| http://energydeals.wordpress.com/2010/12/06/1407/ | |||
| f. | Do you think carbon offsets are an effective way to deal with climate change? Why or why not? (1 point) | ||
| 2. | Your ecological footprint: go to www.footprintnetwork.org to estimate your ecological footprint. Again, use your home for the series of quiz entries. Answer the following: | ||
| a. | What is an ecological footprint? (1 point) | ||
| b. | What is your calculated footprint in acres? (1 point) | ||
| c. | Which
of the categories shown (e.g. fishing grounds, forest land, etc.) makes the greatest contribution
to your footprint? (1 point) |
||
| d. | Discuss two actions you might take to reduce your ecological footprint. (3 points) | ||
| e. | If everyone lived as you do, how many planets would we need? (1 point) | ||
The
Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources |
|||
Last modified February 19 2013 01:37 PM