Aria Soeprono

University of California, Los Angeles, Environmental Science Studies & Footprint App User Research

Earth’s systems are interconnected, so various environmental footprints are connected as well, and they are all important when it comes to your overall environmental impact.

The United Nation’s definition of sustainability represents the idea of meeting current needs while at the same time ensuring that resources will be around to sustain future needs (United Nations). It is empathetic for the future generations and their desires, but it is not necessarily a self-less pursuit, as you can still be sustainable without depriving yourself from resources.

People require and depend on lots of resources and services that the earth provides, and which will potentially be impacted by climate change if they haven’t already. Your impact on land, water, and material usage, as well as your impact on ecology can be defined separately from carbon emissions, yet we can make a difference in the ability for resources to be sustained for future generations.

Land Footprint

People take up a lot of space all around the world, with some areas having lower population densities, which means more land per person. Further, there is a limited amount of land that is arable, meaning it can sustain crops for food, and so the amount of land usage that your food and other products take up is important.

While land footprint can be seen as a separate footprint aside from your carbon budget, the amount of land that is suitable for development or agriculture is affected by the climate. With increased carbon emissions, some areas will become too dry to sustain crops, while others will flood and drown out orchards. In addition, the forests that take up atmospheric carbon are threatened by land usage because they are often cut down to clear land for development or resources (Wells, para. 15).

Water Footprint

Scarcity of clean water is an issue in many areas of the world, even without climate change to complicate things. Water pollution can occur regardless of climate emissions, and the amount of water you use for your backyard, flushing the toilet, and washing your dishes can reduce the supply of drinking water, which is especially important to consider for drought-prone areas.

But your water footprint also is linked to your carbon footprint, because climate change is expected to make some areas suffer far worse droughts than ever before (Wells, para. 17). Further, the methods of oil extraction and transportation pose risks to underwater aquifers where many areas get their drinking water.

For instance, hydraulic fracturing, a method to get oil from deep within the earth’s surface, can pollute surrounding areas and even can leach harmful chemicals into the drinking water. Proponents of oil pipelines that are currently attempting to get permitted argue that there is no risk of water contamination.

Yet, in 2015 the Poplar Oil Pipeline spilled 40,000 gallons of oil into the Yellowstone River in Montana, indicating that there is a very real risk (American Rivers, para. 3). Therefore, while many issues of water quality deserve attention in their own right, water quality and the availability of freshwater is linked to your carbon footprint.

Materials Footprint

Some materials are more connected to your carbon footprint than others. For example, you may know that plastics are made out hydrocarbons from fossil fuels, so buying plastic, whether it be a product or even the packaging, contributes to the demand for fossil fuel extraction (Baheti).

If it is burned, such as in the incineration of trash, it contributes directly to carbon emissions. Other goods that make up your personal material footprint include fabric textiles, furniture, electronics, and appliances just to name a few. All of these goods utilize resources that can contribute to deforestation, mineral extraction, and more environmentally destructive practices. Many of these methods to obtain resources are energy intensive, requiring machinery or factories. Since current supply chains rely primarily on fossil fuels to run, that also means that there are carbon emissions associated with your material footprint.

Ecological Footprint

Ecological footprint is usually used interchangeably with land footprint, but in this article it is going to be discussed as its own category because of ecological implications beyond just land usage. Ecology is the study of organisms and their relation to each other. When used in this context, an ecological footprint refers to how personal or collective actions impact organisms and their supporting environmental systems. While repurposing land does contribute to an obvious loss of ecological function, there are other less evident mechanisms by which your behavior can alter earth’s systems. There are many ecological impacts that are unrelated to climate change, such as pollution that disturbs local ecology.

Yet, there are many more ecological problems that are directly caused by climate change, like species extinction, ocean acidification, and coral bleaching to name a few. As mentioned in the beginning of this article, many species face the threat of extinction due to loss of suitable habitat from the changing climate, so this can be considered both a climate and ecological footprint. Additionally, ocean acidification and coral bleaching are distinct ecological problems that are only related in their devastating ecological effects on the ocean. To simplify ocean acidification’s effect on marine ecology, an abundance of carbon that is naturally accumulated in the ocean alters the chemistry, making it more acidic such that the conditions are not suitable for the formation of aquatic shells that are formed by oysters, clams, and other organisms (U.S. Department of Commerce (2012).

When carbon is emitted in excess, this acidification has cascading implications up the food chain, threatening even larger animals that rely on shellfish for food. In comparison, while acidification also has a negative effect on corals in their ability to create strong structures, coral bleaching is the heat death of polyps (the animals that make up coral colonies), causing bright reefs to turn white and die (U.S. Department of Commerce (2010)). Therefore, your carbon footprint can have severe ecological effects as well.

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Sources:

American Rivers. (2018, September 10). Pipeline failures and our water supplies. Retrieved April 02, 2021, from https://www.americanrivers.org /threats-solutions/energy-development/pipeline-failures/

Baheti, P. (n.d.). British plastics FEDERATION. Retrieved April 02, 2021, from https://www.bpf.co.uk/plastipedia/how-is-plastic-made.aspx#:~: text=If%20we%20look%20at%20a,known%20as%20polyethylene%20(PE).

United Nations. (n.d.). Sustainability | academic impact. Retrieved April 02, 2021, from https://academicimpact.un.org/content/sustainability#:~: text=In%201987%2C%20the%20United%20Nations,development%20needs%2C%20but%20with%20the

US Department of Commerce. (2010, March 15). What is coral bleaching? Retrieved April 02, 2021, from https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts /coral_bleach.html

US Department of Commerce. (2012, August 01). What is ocean acidification? Retrieved April 02, 2021, from https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts /acidification.html

Wells, D. W. (2017, July 10). When will the planet be too hot for humans? Much, much sooner than you imagine. Retrieved April 02, 2021, from ht tps://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html

Why does carbon footprint matter?