ShmoopTube
Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.
Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos
Science 5: What's a Carbon Footprint? 1 Views
Share It!
Transcript
- 00:14
If you've ever gone to the beach and looked down at the sand you've
- 00:16
probably seen all sorts of footprints your own footprints dog paw prints bird [different footprints in the sand]
- 00:21
tracks maybe even some bear footprints if you happen to live by bears who are
- 00:25
really into surfing but guess what there is a kind of footprint that's even [a bear riding a surfboard]
- 00:29
scarier than a bears the footprint of a bear with lasers for eyes oh and your
Full Transcript
- 00:35
carbon footprint so a carbon footprint isn't like a print that gets made in the
- 00:40
sand or in the mud it's actually the amount of greenhouse gases we are
- 00:43
responsible for releasing into the atmosphere and unfortunately even if you [man spraying an aerosol can into the air]
- 00:47
don't spend your spare time spraying gas into the sky you're almost certainly on
- 00:51
the hook for releasing a whole bunch of greenhouse gases nope not like that [woman and man turning to the side and farting]
- 00:57
gross that's disgusting okay we're just going to move away from the hot zone
- 01:01
there you see everytime fossil fuels are burned greenhouse gases are released [fossil fuels burning and releasing Co2 into the atmosphere]
- 01:06
that means every time you do some sort of activity that depends on the burning
- 01:10
of fossil fuels whether that's getting a ride in a car or even flipping on a [a man riding a car and flipping on a light switch]
- 01:14
light switch you're adding to your carbon footprint and if you're flipping
- 01:18
on a light switch just to watch someone burn a pile of coal hoo boy you've got a [person watching burning fossil fuels on the TV]
- 01:22
carbon footprint the size of Godzilla part of the trouble with living in the
- 01:25
modern world is that you can't help but have some sort of carbon footprint to
- 01:29
reduce your carbon footprint to zero you'd have to cut all the electronic devices [woman playing a guitar in the living room]
- 01:33
out of your life as well as cars and even plastics so if you're cool with
- 01:39
living in a cave and you might be able to get your carbon footprint down to [people sitting in an empty cave]
- 01:42
zero but that definitely won't work for everyone however even if we can't reduce
- 01:46
our carbon footprint down to zero we can still take steps in our lives to reduce [woman riding a bike down the road]
- 01:50
it a little bit for example each of these activities adds one kilogram of
- 01:55
carbon dioxide to your carbon footprint using a computer for 32 hours making
- 02:00
five plastic bags making two plastic bottles or making a third of a [Dino pointing to examples of activities that add 1kg of CO2 to the atmosphere]
- 02:05
cheeseburger so if you can cut down your computer time or on how many plastic
- 02:09
bags your bottles you use you'll be well on your way to reducing your carbon
- 02:13
footprint if you're really really ambitious you might even try to cut down on those [waiter serving a boy a cheeseburger and fries]
- 02:17
cheeseburgers but we understand if it takes you a while to gear up for that
- 02:20
can't all be superheroes