Zero Your What?

Carbon dioxide or CO₂- it is one of the greenhouse gases (GHGs).
Each Australian produces the largest CO₂ output (your carbon footprint) on average in the whole world! How shameful, I feel a bit embarrassed about that one! I think we can change, don't you? 

• It is normal for our atmosphere to contain certain levels of CO₂, but it has been rising steadily since the Industrial Revolution. The build up of gases that includes CO₂ has created a greenhouse effect that is causing global warming (preventing heat escaping from the atmosphere). The result of global warming is climate change. Climate change is altered long term weather patterns which includes rises in temperate.

• Burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas is largely responsible for climate change. This exponential rise in CO₂ directly correlates with the rise in world population. The rise of CO₂ was offset by the processes of nature until recently. There is now danger in the rapid increase. 

• More human activity- burning fossil fuels, deforestation, and intensive agriculture has released huge quantities of CO₂ and other greenhouse gases.

• There are many Greenhouse Gases (GHG)- CO₂ being one of them. The other significant ones are methane and nitrous oxide. Others include hydro fluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfurhexafluoride carbon.

• CO₂ is the main contributor to climate change, especially through the burning of fossil fuels.

• Methane is produced naturally when vegetation is burned, digested or rotted without the presence of oxygen. Large amounts of methane is released by cattle farming, waste dumps, rice farming and the production of oil and gas.

• Nitrous oxide, released by chemical fertilizers and burning fossil fuels has a global warming potential 310 times that of carbon dioxide.

This information was sourced from www.davidsuzuki.org

For the purpose of this site we will concentrate on CO₂ that is the most prevalent of the GHGs and is the easiest for us to reduce. To reduce your carbon footprint, please refer to the 'Bring it Down' pages for your simple step by step reductions.