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Many of us cruise through our daily lives completely oblivious to such things as a carbon footprint. The impact we all have on global warming is reflected not only in our personal production of greenhouse gases but in the products we use. This isn’t surprising, it’s just a fact of life that there are many distractions that take place and we take for granted the imprint we are leaving on the world, just by living.

Here’s just a personal example of how my family takes energy use for granted. Our multiple digital clocks run in our houses 24 hours a day – we’ve got one on the microwave, one on the conventional oven, one on the CD player, one on the stereo and one in each of our three bedrooms, all of them drawing passive energy and we don’t even give it a thought. It’s just one of the assumed “rights” of living in a modern affluent society, we may not use it but we don’t mind paying for it regardless. It may be a little shocking for some people to learn exactly what the level of carbon emissions they produce each year is, as well as the added costs they are incurring simply by being blase about the little things.

You Can’t Change What You Don’t Know

I like that sentence, it neatly sums up a whole range of human instincts and precisely describes one of the roadblocks in front of those trying to educate people on the importance of reducing our carbon footprint. It only takes a gentle reminder that there are consequences for the actions taken on a daily basis that people begin to realise that there is a need to change.

It’s not until you’re told that running your car produces around 2 ½ tonnes of carbon dioxide per year that you begin to realise that this could be a problem. You can then take the challenge to lower next year’s number. Now you have given yourself a goal that can be quantified with the possibility of aiming to achieve. There will be no way of definitively knowing the damage you are doing with your carbon footprint without some means of calculation. Trying to produce less in the future would be next to impossible to gauge.

The fact that we each stand to get a direct benefit in terms of cost to reducing our carbon footprint should have people more than a little interested. That cost benefit is that you save money! Fortunately, the word is slowly getting out there while, with any luck, the levels of carbon dioxide aren’t.

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If ever we had a need for science to step in and help out in a crisis, now is the time. At this point, it’s excruciatingly clear that fossil fuels won’t last forever, and yet, as a country and as a planet, we consume them at a growing rate. As a result, supply decreases, demand increases, fuel prices rise dramatically, and suddenly our lifestyles are affected.

The future has been revealed: a day will come when there will be no more oil.

The first step that science and industry can provide to help out is innovative, energy-conserving vehicles. Recognizing this need, Hybrid cars have sprung up everywhere from almost every auto manufacturer, with more models being planned and produced in the coming months.

GM introduced the EV1 electric concept vehicle several years ago. While it never went into wide-scale production, that technology will definitely be analyzed and possibly brought back to the market.

Companies and municipalities are beginning to include Hybrid and bio-diesel powered vehicles in their fleets, further increasing the demand for alternative-fuel vehicles.

Celebrities have stepped into the picture, as well as businessmen, women, and environmentalists. While bio-diesel is an affordable alternative, it is still a major polutant, and not all cities have convenient bio-diesel stations in which to fill up.

Many car companies are “going green” - Saturn even calls their environmentally friendly line of vehicles their “Green Line.” Solar cell technology, biodisel, electric engines - everything is on the table for these vehicles. The next few years will see some interesting new designs to improve fuel economy and use less energy in the process of transporting people and things from one place to another.

One real advantage, other than saving money at the pump, is that wide adoption of newer, “Green” vehicles will mean less polutants in the air. This in turn will help with the man-made components of global warming, and in larger cities, with the smog problem that has been with us for the past several decades.

Industry experts are quick to point out that alternative fuel green cars have higher efficiency, thus increasing their EPA miles per gallon rating over traditional gas and diesel vehicles - a pleasant surprise when you see the vehicle’s sticker at the dealership.

The downside is the higher cost of these vehicles. Over time, this cost will come down as competition will force auto makers to find more economical ways of producing their lines of environmentally-friendly cars and trucks.

It has even been theorized that less automobile polutants will have a positive effect on the health of metropolitan areas. While this won’t be an overnight change, it will be interesting to see the statistics on asthma, allergies, and respiratory infections over the next few years.

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