Earth Case

1. What are the 3 everyday products and practices that contribute most to your environmental footprint?

The three categories that contribute the most to my environmental footprint are food, goods, and services. I eat food that is not locally grown, I am on the computer for personal or work related things, and I drive my own transportation on a daily basis.

2. What impacts might result if everyone in the world enjoyed the same lifestyle? For example, what might the impacts be on:

a. Earth's climate?

The Earth's atmosphere would be tremendously ruined due to the fossil gas that is burned for our usage and the fertilizer used at many farms to produce the plants we eat.

b. The health of ecosystems and biodiversity? Animals will continue to go extinct at a fast pace. The pollution in the air and in the water will produce diseases that will continue to attack the human race and there will be a food shortage.

c. Humanity's natural resource base and thus economic security? There will be shortages in water, gas, energy, and etc. If there is a shortage in natural resources with the need of natural resources so high, the prices will go up and only a small amount of people will have them. More people will be living in poverty or homeless.

3. Identify solutions to each of the 3 components of your environmental footprint that you listed in question 2. What are the savings of BOTH carbon emissions and money you can achieve via each solution?

a. How much would this amount to if every household in America (roughly 100 million) did this? Each person would use 38,199.15 lbs of emissions and save $85 a year.

b. If everybody did this, what might the impact on the health of our environment be? For example, how might these collective actions benefit our air and water quality? The health of the world's forests?

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