Skip to content

Page Header

More Fun With Carbon Calculators

More Fun With Carbon Calculators published on 4 Comments on More Fun With Carbon Calculators

yourimpactlifeout.jpg

On Friday we got tipped off to yet another fun carbon calculator. This test is brought to us by Earth Lab.

I took it. I’m embarrassed to tell you my score, but if you tell yours, I might share mine. See, here’s the flaw with these things…it’s multiple choice. They should allow you to explain your answers! For instance, we own a pick up truck, but that doesn’t get used unless we need to haul stuff. We also have an oversized house for just 2 people. These things ask how many people live there, but what about the pets? 6 cats and 2 dogs need space! What of the animals? Think about the animals!

I hate doing these things. It just makes me feel guilty. But you should do it. I want to see some scores worse than my own.

4 Comments

What a waste of time. The test you linked to was written by, for and about
energy wasting yuppies. (do they still call them that?)

Do we use a manual leaf blower or lawn mower? No, we wouldn’t waste
time/money blowing leaves, *or* maintaining a “lawn”, but since there’s no
option for “does not apply”, it would seem we get that counted against us.
Ditto questions about our thermostat. We heat our entire >900 sq ft home
with one wood burning stove, we don’t NEED no stinking thermostat. Ditto
transportation on a train, bus, bicycle or airplane. In fact, we don’t
commute at all, this is a farm, we work at home. We don’t “buy” organic, we
grow it ourselves. And fer pete’s sake, how is buying organic supposed to be
such a great choice when you consider the vast amounts of fossil fuel spent
to transport that food to the cities and suburbs? Other than the computer,
we have no electrical appliances; not even a microwave. We have a compact
car and a mid size pickup that is the official farm vehicle. I’m guessing
the two vehicles are what earned us the jaw dropping score of 463. OTOH, if
I had a 4,000 sq ft house with three 16X20 foot bedroom “suites”, a 600.00+
a month electric bill, kept my yard nice and tidy with a manual mower,
bought overpriced, trucked in “organic” foods, and rode the bus, why, I’d be
considered a real Greenie.

There are NO questions about total square footage of your home, or the
percentage of insulated living area, or whether you are using a dishwasher
or washing machine daily, or what kind of “recycling” it is you’re doing;
would that be carefully separating different colors of glass and bundling
newspapers for the taxpayer funded recycling crew to collect, collecting
empty beer cans off the side of the road, or literally reusing each and
every item that comes into your possession,? No questions about how much
trash your household throws away, and rather than asking how much you pay
for electricity, what about asking how many KW your household uses a month,
or how many gallons of water? How stupid.

I don’t know what your score is, but I don’t feel guilty, I feel cheated.

Ok, I feel better now. I did have difficulty answering the transportation question. I work from home but I may take a train, drive or walk depending on where I have to go certain days. Also, no option for zoned heating or having radiators turned off in rooms that get no use.
My ecp was 554 and carbon=30.1.

Primary Sidebar