More than EnviroStats!

3,275 lb = 1,489 kg
950 lbs = 432 kg
1,600 lbs = 727 kg

I did not check this claim because every CO2 calculator is a little different, but they’re generally close enough that an approximation like this should suffice to give you an idea of how much CO2 we’re talking about here. As for giving some meaning to the totals, here are some statements you can make from the CO2 conversion of 12 kg CO2 absorbed per tree per year:

- The meat portion of the average American diet has a carbon footprint equivalent to that of 128 trees to offset for that year.

- Cutting red meat with fish, eggs and poultry will let 36 trees offset CO2 from other sources during the year.

- Going vegetarian will let 61 trees offset CO2 from other sources during the year.

If you would like to try out a CO2 calculator, may I recommend the two at right in the Links menu, which were from American Forests and the US Climate Technology Cooperation Gateway, with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and others. I will write an article on this later but I think you’d still get an experience of interest to just go there and fiddle around if you’ve never tried out one of these things.

If you can find dietary information as to how the diet of the average person in your geographical domain is compared to the average American, just as a ballpark figure, you can adjust the calculation by that factor. If you know yourself for your life, even as an approximation, you can also make the adjustment to your life for your own knowledge.

This was in tribute to the United Nations’ World Food Day on Oct 16 2007 which I had missed because I had not known about it. [Envirostats author]

- Courtesy of Cynthia Hubert in the Sacromento Bee, via Scrippsnews due to protected subscription sign-in requirements at the former, Oct 15 2007