living in a shoebox is good for your carbon footprint

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Hey kids! Here’s a fun and disturbing game! Type your habits (living, driving, eating) into NPR’s Consumer Consequences calculator and find out how many Earths we’d need to sustain the human population if everyone lived like you.

If everyone lived Cheryl-style, we’d need between 3.8 and 4.1 Earths (I was unsure about my food estimates, so I entered a couple of different numbers). Living in L.A. and driving a lot, I knew my transportation footprint would be like a size 12-Wide, but I was shocked that I have the eating habits of a seven-planet person. And I buy a lot of organic stuff! And don’t eat out that much! Well, at least not for an urban girl on the go!

Okay, I doth protest too much. Time to hit the farmer’s market and lay off the coffee. But who would have guessed that my purely economic lifestyle “choice”—living in a tiny apartment that doesn’t use a lot of gas or electricity—would be my greatest contribution to a sustainable world?

Comments

Anonymous said…
oookay. well, is this a game where the higher the score the better? because if so, i so totally kicked your *ss. 6.7 earths! in your face!

i eat out a lot, what can i say? :(
September 24, 2007 at 8:45 PM
Cheryl said…
Just wait till my Hummer gets out of the shop. Then you're toast.
September 25, 2007 at 6:32 PM
Ms. Q said…
3.9 earths for me! I think we can manage that somewhere in the universe - oh wait, is space travel sustainable?
But I protest about coffee! My food profile put me waaay up (from 1.7 earths to 3.9) and I eat out very rarely, so I attribute that all to the coffee and wine.
They don't even ask if I drink California wine or French wine!
Sheesh.
October 1, 2007 at 10:17 PM
Cheryl said…
I was thinking the same thing about the wine! But then my friend Jamie told me that apparently vineyards are big methane producers. It's confusing enough to drive a girl to drink.
October 2, 2007 at 6:16 PM
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