Carbon Footprint

After reading this Huffington Post by Corrine Marshall, in which she laments that her carbon footprint is 22,900 lbs/yr, I went ahead and calculated my own footprint at the movie site. It came to a surprisingly low 4,900 lbs/yr.

I was helped by several factors:

• Since moving from a small town in New Hampshire to Portland, Oregon I can walk to more stores and only drive 100-200 mi/mth. In New Hamspshire it was a 20-mile round trip just to get to the grocery store or Staples. And since I work at home I can avoid commuting miles.
  
• My apartment is fairly well ensconsed, and the weather is milder here, so I'm able to get by without heat or air-conditioning. I'm spending about $30/mth on electricity, which is considerably cheaper in the Pacific Northwest, only about 7.5 cents/kW-hr instead of NH's 15-16 cents/kW-hr. (That's the total rate, after taxes and fees.) No expenses for natural gas, oil, or propane.
  
• Inspired by Gore's film, I signed up for 100% green power through my power company. Cost is about 10% more. Their sources are primarily wind (63%), then biomass, then a little solar.
• I don't fly much, only about one cross-country trip a year.

So I'm only 1/3rd of the national average household (maybe a little more -- I tend to fart a lot...but it's OK, I live alone), but I don't think it's much to brag about, and I don't think people like Corrine Marshall need to feel especially guilty about a larger than average footprint. If my lifestyle needed it -- if I had to commute to work, or fly more -- I would, of course. Most of us will. We're not going to solve the problem of global warming by reducing our lives to the Stone Age, because there's no way people will do that, even if the planet gets many degrees warmer and storms significantly stronger. Technology (new but mostly existing) is going to have to be the answer. Of course everyone should conserve as they can, and unlike Dick Cheney I even think it's a moral imperative, but we need to live a modern life. We just need better solutions.

UPDATE: If, like me, everyone on the planet emitted 4,900 lbs C/yr, we'd still be putting 15 Gt (gigatons) of carbon in the atmosphere every year. That's about 2.5 times today's global total. Emissions of about 0.2 t/person/yr are thought to be needed to stablize the climate.