My Call to Reduce Carbon Footprint
by Rony Cabuyadao
Good evening, fellow leaders.
Is anyone in this room knows his/her current level of carbon footprint? If your answer is 'negative', I encourage you to compute for it later tonight. There are many carbon footprint calculators available on the web for you to choose from. But, first, what is carbon footprint? Why is it important to know about it?
Carbon footprint is a measure of the effect we have on the climate in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases we produce, measured in equivalent tons of carbon dioxide or CO2. It is how much carbon goes into the air because of something done by people (not by nature). Many of our daily activities generate carbon emissions, which have an impact on the health of the environment.
Oil, gas, and coal are called "fossil fuels" because they came from fossils of ancient plants and animals. Those plants and animals had carbon in them. So when we burn oil, gas, and coal, the carbon becomes CO2 and goes into the air as smoke. This makes pollution. It also makes the greenhouse effect, which means that CO2 makes the earth warmer, like a greenhouse. Just as walking on the sand leaves a footprint, burning fuel leaves CO2 in the air, which is the carbon footprint.
Once your size of a carbon footprint is known, a strategy can be planned to reduce it. There are many suggested ways on how we can reduce our carbon footprint. Most of those that I will share are taken from the website www.cotap.org. Actually, most of them are not new to us; we have heard them before.
