Carbon Footprint Goals for 2008

In the past few weeks I've noticed that the best overall measure of my progress seems to be my carbon footprint, since it encompasses all of the other things I am focused on. My 2008 goal will be centered on improving this metric.

At the start of this process, I had a carbon footprint of 22 tons.

My #1 goal for 2008 is to see that halved:

Our Carbon Footprint will be no more than 11 tons in 2008.

I've run the numbers, and I think this is going to be challenging. "Why?" you ask, looking at my numbers. "After all, you could just swear off air travel in 2008 and hit your goal automagically!"

Except we won't. My husband and I are planning on taking a sabbatical this summer. We've always dreamed of doing some significant traveling before we settle down and consider starting a family. We've both already arranged for 3 months off work.

Travelling anywhere seems to be akin to environmental suicide on our household's carbon footprint. But I'm going to set an aggressive goal anyhow, and see whether we can work within it.

Other green goals that I have for 2008:

• better understand the impact of the food and other goods we consume on that carbon footprint.
• participate in at least one green event to help raise awareness
• visit a renewable energy facility, like the Eastern Washington wind farms

What are your green goals this year?

Comments

[Livepaths]

Great blog!

If the economics don't work, recycling efforts won't either.
As our little contribution to make this economics of recycling more appealing, http://LivePaths.com blogs about people and companies that make money selling recycled or reused items, provide green services or help us reduce our dependency on non renewable resources.

[N. & J.]

My fiance and I just started out (our blog is only three days old now) but we want to reduce the amount of overprocessed and overpackaged food that we buy. Be better about recycling. We do it already but we tend to forget places like the bathroom where we would routinely throw the empty toilet paper role away. We want to switch to non-toxic household and personal cleaners. And who knows what else... we joined this online community to find the support and inspiration to make real life changes.