So what does a pound of carbon look like?
They say driving less can save 19 pounds of carbon dioxide per gallon. I read that washing clothes in cold water can save 9 pounds a week. And someone told me a compact fluorescent bulb saves 150 lbs of carbon per year.
So? What does a pound of carbon look like? What does it do?
One pound of carbon dioxide would fill a balloon about two and a half feet in diameter. That extra gallon of gas each day, plus that week’s washing in hot water, plus one less CFL would fill 145 of those balloons in a week. And then there’s all that other energy we use.
For the year 2003, the average household produced 25,000 of those balloons from its household operations and another 23,000 from its automotive uses. Once in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases block Earth’s radiation of heat into space. The result: a warming planet.
Of course, CO2 is invisible to us, but at the top of Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii, scientists have been measuring carbon in the atmosphere for 50 years. Each year it’s gone up. In 1959 it made up 317 parts per million. Today that’s 389. To halt global warming we need to dramatically reduce our production of the stuff – to the point where natural processes will drop it back to 350.
It’s easier to imagine energy use as dollar bills falling out our wallet, but it might help occasionally to close our eyes and visualize our household releasing one of those balloons every ten or fifteen minutes.