CHALLENGE
Carbon Reduction
$1 MILLION (Prize amount to be confirmed. Announcement expected for next year)
A carbon footprint is the total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused by an individual, event, organization, service, or product, expressed as carbon dioxide equivalent. Greenhouse gases, including the carbon-containing gases carbon dioxide and methane, can be emitted through the burning of fossil fuels, land clearance and the production and consumption of food, manufactured goods, materials, wood, roads, buildings, transportation and other services.
The term carbon footprint was popularised by a $250 million ad campaign by the oil and gas company BP in an attempt to move public attention away from restricting the activities of fossil fuel companies and onto individual responsibility for solving climate change.
In most cases, the total carbon footprint cannot be calculated exactly because of inadequate knowledge of and data about the complex interactions between contributing processes, including the influence of natural processes that store or release carbon dioxide. Drastic proposal to reduce the carbon footprint were recently presented that would completely revolutionize our lifestyle.
A July 2017 study found that the most significant way individuals could mitigate their own carbon footprint is to have one less child (“an average for developed countries of 58.6 tons CO2-equivalent (tCO2e) emission reductions per year”), followed by living car-free (2.4 tons CO2-equivalent per year), forgoing air travel (1.6 tons CO2-equivalent per trans-Atlantic trip) and adopting a plant-based diet (0.8 tons CO2-equivalent per year). Such severe conditions would change our lives but also destroy our economy.
Our society needs to reduce carbon footprint in a large way but keeping it wealth and growth rates while improving all parameters through its transformtion to all green conditions.
