Step One: The Footprint

So, what precisely am I talking about with this whole carbon footprint thing, anyway? There are a bunch of scholarly articles that I won't bore you with, and a bunch of embarrassingly crunchy nonsense that I won't make you want to punch me with. Without putting too fine a point on it, it's a simple way of measuring how much impact your lifestyle has on our environment. Directly or indirectly, everything from the car you drive to the Chilean strawberries you buy in January contributes to the greenhouse effect and drives climate change, which keeps our kids from having water and air, and makes polar bears frown.

I visited several carbon accounting websites to work out my own impact, because doing the math myself would take forever because I just wouldn't do it so it would never happen. I am nothing if not pragmatic. Every website had its own methodology; some only asked about my house and car, while others were so detailed that they asked about how much food I composted and compared me to other houses in my zip code. Three websites were especially helpful:

http://www.nature.org/greenliving/carboncalculator strikes a good compromise between simplicity and detail, and I've used their numbers for this post.
http://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/carboncalculator is quite detailed, and lists a ton of suggestions to help reduce your emissions at the end.
http://footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/calculators is extremely interactive, but gives one's result in the number of Earths needed to support one's lifestyle. An interesting thought experiment, but a bit esoteric for my needs here.

After I put in all the relevant info, I was gobsmacked by the result. I am personally responsible for approximately 28 tons of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere every year,  just slightly above the US average of 27 tons. I figured I'd at least be better than average. It's worth noting here that the world average is about 5 1/2 tons, partly because of stricter environmental controls in many European countries, and partly because large swaths of the planet are simply so poor that they can't afford cars or electricity in their homes.

Screen capture from nature.org

Just a shade over half of my emissions come from my car. It's a tiny, TINY compact, but I rack up miles super fast driving between customers' houses. My apartment is roughly a third, a lot of which is unfortunately out of my control. Me and the missus are saving up to buy a house, but I can't very well rip out my landlady's old oil heater or insulate her attic. I'm not crazy enough to advocate selling all my material possessions and grow a beard that birds can nest in. But clearly I've got some work to do in the put up or shut up department.