My carbon footprint averaged three times that when my parents were born, twice the global increase over the same time.
As a parent shouldn’t I take steps to reduce my footprint to at least that level at which I inherited?
As part of the next generation what carbon footprint will I leave?
I embarked on my personal journey to become more educated about climate transition, carbon footprints and our path to 1.5°C following many discussions with my adult children.
I have sought to leave the specific tasks of enterprises and large organisations to strategise, and decarbonise to my adult children and the hundreds of emerging consultants, advisers, and scholars in sustainability.
Undaunted by the complexity, rather I sought to focus on the consumer and households. Ultimately the end-user of all goods and services and the driver of consumerism, industrialisation and the rapid accelerated increase in carbon emissions in my lifetime.
My own interest was peaked when at COP26 Prime Minster Narendra Modi announced as part of India’s ambitions to achieve net zero the “LIFE - Lifestyle for Environment” campaign. A campaign for 1.4 billion people to take one simple environment-friendly action per day for 21 days as part of developing an environmentally friendly lifestyle. How would that work?
Think global, act local. Globally the average carbon footprint per person is around 6,000 kg, with the high-income country average calculated as being more than twice that at 13,900 kg per person.
Using insights by country, 28 countries with 1.2 billion people emit an average of 13,900 kg or three times the average of the 6.8 billion people in the rest of the world.
Act local. In the absence of suitable on-line calculators, I undertook the difficult task of measuring my own carbon footprint reflective of my own lifestyle. At the time I calculated that I was in line with the average Australian contributing 10 times the emissions of the average Indian and around 4 times that of the global average.
That didn’t sit well with the 1.5C global warming targets for the world to be net zero by 2050 and the need to reduce my average footprint by 50% by 2030.
After rethinking my carbon footprint and rotating several lifestyle habits I have stepped down my personal carbon footprint by around 50% to around 11,500 kg per year.
Still some work to do, with my next step down ambitions intertwined with decarbonisation programs of our energy network and the brands I have now rotated to achieving its own climate transition plans.
Have you reflected upon what your personal or household carbon footprint is and what steps you will be taking to reduce it by at least 50% in the next few years?
Get and download the infini app to self-assess your household’s carbon footprint and the Stepdown8 actions you will take.