“The footprint is growing.”
By: James F.
One of the big buzz words amongst environmentalist is “Carbon Footprint”. How big is yours, and what are you doing to offset it? Well, it turns out there is more depth to the equation than the conventional slash and burn image that comes to mind when people say, “The footprint is growing.” While it’s true that our planet’s use of carbon based energy and fuel sources, such as oil, coal and propane, contribute to the amount of carbon that gets released into the atmosphere, the Carbon Cycle shouldn’t be neglected when considering just what comprises this footprint.
Let’s begin with the simple physics of Carbon’s presence on Earth. According to the Law of Conservation of Mass, matter can neither be created nor destroyed under ordinary chemical circumstances[1]. Given this principle, regular human activity, such as burning gasoline and bon fires, cannot create more carbon. That’s the long and short of it. However, we do contribute to the Carbon Cycle by throwing shrimp on the barbi and lighting political effigies ablaze.
According to Drs. Friedland, Relyea, and Courard-Hauri, the Carbon Cycle involves the compartmentalization and release of carbon from one trophic level to the next[2]. In short, carbon- like water- cycles through different ecological layers (subterranean, living and non-living matter). Now for the anthropomorphic rub. While humans can neither create nor destroy carbon, we inevitably affect where it is compartmentalized. For instance, oil is considered fossil carbon, locked beneath the earth’s crust[3]. Since oil, for the most part, is sealed underground, it is not part of the atmospheric stage of the Carbon Cycle. However, mining for and use of oil on a global scale introduces a surplus of carbon to the atmosphere.
What does it all mean? We might want to look at CO2 in terms of medicine. CO2 plays an integral role in the function of living organisms- photosynthesis and inhabitable atmospheric conditions would be impossible without carbon. Only a planetary scale then, it’s all a matter of dose. In the case of a prescription, one should only take a certain dose of whatever medicine so as to avoid a poisonous overload. The same concept can be applied to carbon and just how much is introduced into our trophic cycle.
This leaves us with the question, how much is too much? Where is the point of no return of introducing carbon into the atmosphere? Granted, reducing one’s use of carbon emitting products is good. You save gas, burn less biomass, conserve more resources. However, the qualm of answering just how bad our current carbon footprint is is simply too tough to answer with any certainty. Perhaps the planet can do just fine, metabolizing our current carbon output; perhaps it can’t. Perhaps one of the most important questions one ought to ask is where is our carbon introduction cutoff and how close are we to breaching the safety line?
Sources:
[1] http://www.mi.mun.ca/users/edurnfor/1100/atomic%20structure/tsld004.htm
[2] Friedland, Andrew, Rick Relyea, and David Courard-Hauri. Environmental Science: Foundations and Applications. New York, NY: W.H. Freeman and Company, 2011. 66. Print.
[3] http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/CarbonCycle/
Images:
http://jeffparker.flatoday.net/2008/05/0530-cartoon-wipe-your-feet-our-carbon.shtml
http://www.ways2gogreen.com/CarbonFootprint.html
http://www.airqualitynow.eu/pollution_health_effects.php
