how to reduce carbon footprint essay

clock This article was published more than  2 years ago

10 steps you can take to lower your carbon footprint

Small changes alone won’t stop climate change, but your actions are still worthwhile.

Here’s the thing: Small changes alone won’t save our planet. To keep the Earth from warming above the critical 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) limit, climate action needs to happen at an institutional level. The Washington Post has built a tracker to keep you up to date on all of President’s Biden’s environmental actions.

But that doesn’t mean you should feel helpless, or that your actions aren’t worthwhile. Taking steps to lower your own carbon footprint may help ease your climate anxiety by giving you back some power — and even the smallest of actions will contribute to keeping our planet habitable.

With that in mind, here are 10 places to start.

Create less food waste

By Sarah Kaplan

The carbon footprint of U.S. food waste is greater than that of the airline industry. More greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture than from several forms of transportation combined. The environmental consequences of producing food that no one eats are massive.

The biggest proportion of food waste — about 37 percent, according to the nonprofit ReFED — happens in the home.

Keep a list of what food you have on hand and organize the refrigerator so you can keep track of what’s inside. Some people find it helpful to label things with the date they were purchased or cooked. Others have a system in which the oldest items go on the top shelf, so they will reach for those items first.

Want to effect change on a larger scale? You can also write to local officials and vote for laws that support food recovery and prevent waste from ending up in landfills.

Read more ideas for how to reduce food waste

Ditch your grass

By Tik Root

There are an estimated 40 million to 50 million acres of lawn in the continental United States — that’s nearly as much as all of the country’s national parks combined. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, maintaining those lawns consumes nearly 3 trillion gallons of water a year , as well as 59 million pounds of pesticides, which can seep into our land and waterways.

Transportation Department data shows that in 2020, Americans used roughly 3 billion gallons of gasoline to run lawn and garden equipment. That’s the equivalent of nearly 6 million passenger cars running for a year.

Replacing grass with plants is among the most important ways to keep a yard eco-friendly. Laying down mulch is an easy place to start. It quickly kills grass and offers a blank canvas for planting.

“If you have lawn under a mature tree, convert it to a mulched area,” suggested Kathy Connolly, a Connecticut-based landscape designer, who recommends about six inches of raw arborist wood chips for the job. Connolly also recommends converting some of your lawn into paths, rock gardens or other features. “Ecologically, though,” she said, “the best thing to do is plant native trees and shrubs.”

Read more about how to make your lawn eco-friendly without making it an eyesore

Save coral reefs by packing smartly for your beach vacation

By Sunny Fitzgerald

Healthy marine ecosystems are essential for human well-being, and millions of people around the world rely on coral reefs for food, protection, recreation, medicine, cultural connection and economic opportunities. So the decline of coral reefs is not just an ocean-lover’s issue — it’s also a global problem that requires collaborative action.

There are plenty of ways travelers can do their part. To start, think about what you bring when you go to the beach.

Skip sunscreens and toiletries that contain oxybenzone and other chemicals and opt for mineral-based products instead. And remember to pack a reusable water bottle, utensils and bag, so you can avoid single-use plastic.

Read more about how to protect coral reefs while you travel

Shop sustainably by buying less

Here’s the thing about sustainable shopping: There are very few things you can purchase that are actively beneficial for the climate. Unless you’re buying a tree that will suck carbon from the air , most products require land, water and fossil fuels to produce, use and transport. New stuff — clothes, appliances, bath products, toys, etc. — inherently comes at an environmental cost.

In many situations, the “greenest” product you can buy is … nothing. Unless your purchase represents a significant upgrade from what you already own — say, swapping out your old gas-guzzling car for an electric vehicle — you are better off trying to refurbish or repurpose existing items than acquiring more stuff. Instead of buying paper towels, tear up old T-shirts to use as rags. Give your family’s discarded books and toys to younger children in your neighborhood. Build your own “circular economy” in your community and your home.

Read more about how to decide if a product is good for the planet

Protect our forests

Engaging with on-the-ground organizations as well as the policy process are a couple of ways that experts suggest individuals can encourage protection of the nation’s old-growth forests.

There are a number of groups that aim to help protect forests and old-growth trees. Joan Maloof, founder of the nonprofit Old-Growth Forest Network, said land trusts often buy and conserve land, and that the Land Trust Alliance runs findalandtrust.com to help connect people to organizations close to them.

“There are a lot of local organizations that speak out for their old-growth forest, too,” Maloof said. Nationally, she said there was a dearth of organizations advocating specifically for forest protection, which is why she started the Old-Growth Forest Network . But there are groups that have broader forest interests, such as promoting tree-planting and other restoration initiatives, including the Arbor Day Foundation and American Forests .

Read more about what you can do to protect the forests

Trade in for an electric car

One of the most powerful individual actions people can take against climate change is to change the way they get around.

New electric vehicles can be expensive — even the most affordable have a suggested sale price between $30,000 and $40,000. But as more car manufacturers start producing EVs (General Motors has even said it will only make EVs by 2035), the cost of these cars is expected to come down. EVs also tend to have lower fuel and maintenance costs than gas-powered cars, making them cheaper over the course of their lifetimes than combustion engine vehicles, according to recent research from MIT.

Electric vehicle purchases also qualify for federal tax credits of up to $7,500. Depending on where you live, your city or state might also provide additional financial incentives to go electric. The Energy Department maintains a full list of rebates, tax credits and other programs offered in each state, and more are expected to become available as President Biden moves to expand the nation’s electric vehicle fleet.

If buying an electric car isn’t feasible for you right now — and you need a car to get around — a hybrid is the next-best thing .

Read more about what to consider if you are thinking about buying an electric vehicle

Weatherize your home

Weatherization comes in many forms, but the easiest is closing up the cracks around windows and doors. According to the Energy Department, 25 to 30 percent of household heating and cooling is lost through windows. You can first identify leakage points by turning on your kitchen and bathroom exhaust fans, creating a slight pressure differential between indoors and outdoors, then holding up a lit incense stick to potential problem areas. If the smoke wavers or blows in one direction, there’s a draft that needs fixing. Use weatherstripping to insulate windows and install a sweep to the bottom of exterior doors.

In the summer, as soon as the sun rises, window shades should come down. Window glass is “one of the weakest links” in a building’s defense against solar radiation, buildings scientist Alexandra Rempel said, because it readily transmits heat. The best way to prevent this is to install exterior window coverings, like shutters or retractable awnings. If those aren’t an option, inside curtains or blinds are a good alternative. You can even cover a piece of cardboard in aluminum foil and press it into the window frame.

Read more tips on how to weatherize your home

Learn about the link between climate change and racial equity

Climate scientists are clear that a just and equitable society isn’t possible on a planet that’s been destabilized by human activities.

One study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that Black and Hispanic communities in the United States are exposed to far more air pollution than they produce through actions such as driving and using electricity. In contrast, White Americans experience better air quality than the national average, even though their activities are the source of most pollutants.

Another paper in the journal Science found that climate change will cause the most economic harm in the nation’s poorest counties; many of those places, such as Zavala County, Tex ., and Wilkinson County, Miss ., are home to mostly people of color.

Understanding that climate change will disproportionally impact these communities is an important step toward battling global warming and creating a more just world.

Read more about how climate change and racial justice go hand-in-hand

Consider carbon offsets

Without systemic changes in the way society functions — such as an electric grid powered completely by renewable energy or a food system that generates lower amounts of greenhouse gas emissions — it is pretty much impossible for a single person or even a large institution to go completely carbon-free.

“The whole purpose of offsets,” said University of California at Berkeley climate policy researcher Barbara Haya, “is to create a way for an individual or a company or a university to pay someone else to reduce emissions to cover emissions that they can’t reduce themselves.”

People can buy offsets for emissions from a specific activity, such as an international flight , or buy packages with names like “the green wedding carbon offset” and “balanced living bundle.”

But make sure you do your research. Examine the projects in the company’s portfolio. If they don’t list all projects and provide certifications, that’s a big red flag. Good projects should be permanent and enforceable. They must also be “additional” — efforts that wouldn’t happen if not funded by the offset, and that don’t simply shift emissions someplace else.

Read more about how offsets work and how to find reputable ones

Educating your peers is a great way to multiply your efforts. Share this article with your friends and family and help them take steps to make their lives a little more climate-friendly.

P.S. If you are a Post subscriber, you can “gift” this article — allowing anyone with the link to access it without the paywall — by clicking on the gift icon below.

• Spectacular nature and science images from Sony’s world photo awards April 8, 2024 Spectacular nature and science images from Sony’s world photo awards April 8, 2024
• Modern ants evolved alongside their ancient ancestors, study suggests April 7, 2024 Modern ants evolved alongside their ancient ancestors, study suggests April 7, 2024
• Sea horse research gets a boost from volunteer citizen-scientists March 30, 2024 Sea horse research gets a boost from volunteer citizen-scientists March 30, 2024

• Mobile Site
• Staff Directory
• Advertise with Ars

Filter by topic

• Biz & IT
• Gaming & Culture

Front page layout

Lower your footprint —

How to reduce our carbon footprint, like right now—here’s what you can do after you read this..

K. E. D. Coan - Nov 9, 2021 12:30 pm UTC

After the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) last month, it's easy to feel demoralized. With everything else in the news, it's also easy to focus on threats that are arguably more imminent, like the delta coronavirus variant. But the threat from the climate crisis is increasingly part of our everyday lives—and it's going to get worse.

As a result of insufficient action over the past several decades, the next 30 years will bring more extreme weather and a temperature rise of at least 1.5° C, no matter what we do. But—and there is a very important but —collective action now will decide whether the future is even worse than the IPCC's already grim forecast.

"The question now isn't whether we're going to avoid this," says Professor Michael E. Mann , a leading climatologist at Pennsylvania State University who has been a proponent of recognizing and combating climate change. "It's how bad are we willing to let it get."

Mann has a new book that describes how climate deniers have shifted tactics in recent years, going from saying there's nothing to worry about to suggesting that it's too late for our actions to have any impact. There has also been a concerted effort to shift attention to individuals rather than holding the biggest polluters accountable. But if we're to have any chance of a better climate future, a combination of both individual and collective action is the only way forward.

"We should all do what we can do to minimize our own environmental impact, which in many cases are things that make us healthier and save us money, too," says Mann. "But the most important thing we can do is use our voices in every way possible—to make climate part of your daily conversation so that there is this larger public awareness and pressure on our policymakers to do the right thing."

So, if you're not yet prepared to surrender to an increasingly dire climate future, here are a few reminders that there's a lot you can do—starting with things you can do as soon as possible. There is, of course, no one-size-fits-all approach, and everyone has to work within their own circumstances—but every contribution is a step in the right direction.

Change the conversation

Unprecedented wildfires, floods , cold weather , and " virtually impossible " heat domes have become regular events. The effects are no longer looming in the future—we're mired in the consequences of the climate crisis right now. Extreme weather and disasters, which are clearly attributable to human activity, are the new normal, and they will be for decades to come (if not longer).

These events aren't the most uplifting topics of conversation, but working toward solutions can be. The old saying, "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it," has been true in the past, but we now know that people really can do something about it. So, as a first step, if you find any worthwhile information, share it—with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, social networks, and anyone else. Asking questions, sharing ideas, and joining conversations are all ways to motivate yourself and others .

If there are any young people in your life, there are resources to help them learn about the climate as well—an understanding that can't be taken for granted in all school systems.

"There is an effort by polluters and right-wing politicians who work on their behalf to promote climate change denialism in our schools—in a way that mirrors the efforts by creationists to water down the teaching of evolution," says Mann, who is also a member of the board for the National Center for Science Education . "This is potentially the greatest threat that our children and grandchildren face, and misinforming them intentionally about that is deeply immoral—so I would encourage people to contribute to any of the organizations making sure that kids are getting taught the actual science of climate change."

Make your next meal climate-friendly

Even if the world cuts fossil fuel use tomorrow, food production alone is estimated to produce enough emissions to further increase global temperatures by 1.5° C to 2° C. Beef and dairy are the biggest contributors—particularly in the US. Cutting just these two foods may have more impact than any other single action an individual can take. However, there's no need to become vegan overnight or even ever; any reduced consumption will help.

Beyond avoiding cattle, there are resources to help determine which meats have the lowest impact (spoiler: poultry is best). Pescatarians aren't in the clear—farmed and wild crustaceans can have a larger carbon footprint than pork. Aquaculture certifications are still evolving, but other resources are available for fine-tuning the sustainability of seafood platters. In general, mollusks and smaller fish like sardines are among the best options.

If you need motivation beyond saving the world, increasing evidence shows that plant-based diets are healthier . (Plus, just look how adorable cows can be.)

In addition to what we do eat, keeping an eye on what we don't eat can also help the environment. As of the last USDA estimate in 2014, over 30 percent of the US food supply gets tossed. The global figure is also approximately 30 percent—totaling around 1.3 billion metric tons of otherwise edible food. With malnutrition still a world health crisis, systemic changes to the food industry are critical to addressing this problem. But, in the meantime, both the FDA and the EPA have tips on how to cut food waste on an individual level.

Choose climate-conscious fashion

Moving on to what you wear... according to the World Economic Forum, the fashion industry is responsible for 10 percent of humanity's carbon emissions. What's even more egregious is that an estimated 85 percent of newly produced clothing ends up in landfills or gets left in toxic, explosive heaps. Organizations like the Ellen MacArthur Foundation are working toward systemic changes to the fashion industry to promote longer-lasting and more easily recycled clothing, as well as using nontoxic manufacturing processes. But as a more immediate solution, buying fewer, better-quality clothes (or even used fashion) and buying sustainable brands can curb the fashion industry's carbon footprint.

reader comments

Channel ars technica.

To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories .

• Backchannel
• Newsletters
• WIRED Insider
• WIRED Consulting

Laurie Clarke Grace Browne

The practical ways to reduce your carbon footprint (that actually work)

The history of the ‘carbon footprint’ is a complicated one. The term itself refers to the total carbon emissions of all your everyday activities – your drive to work, the food you eat, how you heat your home. But did you know who first popularised it? Over two decades ago, the oil giant BP, one of the highest-emitting companies in the world, promoted the snappy phrase as part of a marketing campaign, with the underlying goal of pushing the responsibility for reducing emissions onto the individual. Over time, the idiom has been co-opted by gigantic corporations in order to divert attention from their similarly gigantic greenhouse gas emissions, and shift the blame onto the everyman.

The average person in the UK has a carbon footprint of about 5.5 tonnes per year – global greenhouse gas emissions are about 50 billion tonnes . So efforts to lower your personal impact on climate change will likely be a drop in the ocean. In the grand scheme of things, your personal carbon footprint, no matter how small it is, will not have a massively tangible impact on the climate crisis – even if you follow all these actions to a tee, your overall impact will still be minimal. Preventing the worst of the climate crisis will require systemic, policy-based change, and many of the biggest sources of emissions come from processes over which the average individual has zero control. You’ve probably heard the statistic that 70 per cent of all emissions since 1988 were released by just 100 companies.

But that doesn't mean you should throw in the towel and only travel by private jet. Aligning your everyday actions with your values can have a ripple effect: it can encourage others around you to take action too, which can actually lead to real change. One survey found that 75 per cent of respondents had changed their attitudes to flying and climate change as a result of people they knew who were flying less due to climate concerns, and half said they were flying less.

And go beyond personal actions like forgoing plastic straws – direct your energy towards fighting for systemic change. Take part in climate activism: join protests, sign petitions, talk to your friends and family. Use your vote: one study found that voting Conservative in the last Canadian election effectively tripled your carbon footprint overnight. Contact your local political representative and tell them why you think action on climate change is important ( here’s a template for the UK. ) Donate to effective climate charities . Divest from fossil fuels: move your assets to a bank that doesn’t support the fossil fuel industry .

And remember: this burden is not shared equally. For example, the average carbon footprint of someone in the US is around 16 tonnes a year – someone in Rwanda emits just under one tonne. The richest ten per cent of the world – those who earn over $38,000 (£27,545) – is responsible for half of global emissions between 1990 and 2015. All of these actions will have the most impact if taken by the wealthy, who are overwhelmingly the highest emitters.

Flying accounts for a huge proportion of an individual’s annual carbon footprint – particularly if you’re a habitual or long-haul flyer. A long-haul return flight between London and New York emits 1.7 tonnes of carbon dioxide – over three times the amount that someone living in Ghana will emit in a year. And while many airlines offer the option to “offset” your flight, the consensus is that offsets, which outsource the emissions reduction to other sectors, don’t actually have much of an impact: one analysis found that less than five per cent of offsets in 2020 removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

How much carbon would taking a train instead of flying really save? EcoPassenger provides a comprehensive guide to different modes of transport and their various carbon impacts. For example, from London to Budapest, the train journey – albeit taking a gruelling 21 hours – produces the least carbon emissions, at 45.8kg of CO2. This is exceeded by both car (227.3kg) and plane (224.7kg). Train expert The Man in Seat 61 , has calculated the carbon reductions involved in taking trains over planes for popular routes across the world. He found that travelling from London to Paris by Eurostar instead of plane results in slicing carbon emissions by 91 per cent.

However, while train over bus may generally hold true, it can depend on where you’re travelling. The National Geographic tracked how much carbon would be expelled by different methods of transport between Toronto and New York and the results are somewhat surprising. An hour and a half plane journey is the least energy efficient mode, but the train forfeited first place to the humble Greyhound bus. This is because the Amtrak train releases a high volume of diesel fuel emissions. In Europe and other places, trains are more environmentally friendly. For example, the Eurostar is one of the cleanest ways to travel, producing just 0.006kg CO2 per km per passenger.

Andy Greenberg

Boats are another mode of transport where counterintuitive logic can seep in. While boats might generally be considered fairly environmentally friendly, this isn’t always the case. In fact, a study found that a certain type of boat, the Large RoPax passenger ferry, was actually more polluting than taking a first class flight (0.39kg of CO2 per Km per person compared to 0.32kg CO2 per km per person). However, a different type of foot passenger ferry releases much lower levels, about 0.18kg of CO2 per km, and is ranked as one of the cleanest ways to travel

If you do have to fly, make sure to pick economy class, because the carbon burden is shared among more passengers. Flying first class is associated with carbon emissions nine times more than economy.

Go plant-based

The food you eat has a massive impact on the climate. Food production is responsible for a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions, and meat and dairy are the two biggest culprits, accounting for around 14.5 per cent . The Lancet medical journal published a study that called on Europeans to reduce their red meat consumption by 77 per cent in order to avoid “catastrophic damage to the planet”.

What would happen if the whole world went vegan? A study from Oxford University estimated there would be a 49 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from food production if we all followed our vegan friend’s advice. On an individual basis, research showed that a vegan’s diet is the most carbon light ( creating 6.4 pounds CO2 per day ), while a diet heavy in meat is also the heaviest in carbon (15.8 pounds CO2-eq per day). While different estimates vary, it’s generally agreed that you could cut your carbon footprint by around 20 per cent by switching to a vegan diet.

You may have heard from the Well, Actually faction of society that vegetables are more carbon intensive to produce than certain types of meat. However, this wisdom rests on a per calorie or weight calculation, and the inane assumption that someone might binge on a ribeye steak’s worth of lettuce. In fact, a 2018 study by Oxford University that looked at 40 common foods and their greenhouse gas emissions couldn’t find any animal products that were less environmentally taxing than their plant-based alternatives.

But if you can’t face going fully meat free, the best meats to cut down on are from sheep and cows, the animals that produce the most atmosphere frying methane. Research from Oxford University found that if every family in the UK swapped out a red meat-based meal for a plant-based alternative just once a week, the environmental impact would be equivalent to taking 16 million cars off the road.

Eating local – meaning food grown near you that hasn’t travelled millions of miles – actually doesn’t massively impact your carbon footprint, despite what you may have heard. This is because transporting food doesn’t play a significant role in a food’s final carbon footprint. An analysis from Our World in Data found that transport accounts for only six per cent of emissions from food, while producing dairy, meat and eggs accounted for 83 per cent.

And following all these rules is pretty much redundant if you then go on to waste food; a meta-analysis from 2018 found that food waste accounted for six per cent of greenhouse gas emissions. “Around the world, and in the UK, we waste over a quarter of the food that's produced and all of that food has a carbon footprint. Things like milk for instance, which we waste huge volumes of, have a pretty high carbon footprint,” says Reay. “By not overbuying, and not over serving at mealtimes, and keeping to use by dates, we can reduce that food waste and start having a really significant impact on our carbon footprint.”

Make your home more energy-efficient

Homes make up about 15 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions in the UK. So if you’re looking to shrink your carbon footprint, start at home.

To reduce your house’s carbon footprint, the most effective thing to do is switching to green heating and electricity. But understandably, this may be too costly for a lot of people. The next best thing to do is make sure your home is well-insulated. Trapping heat effectively is a surefire way to trim down your energy usage – the biggest producer of carbon emissions in the home. Make sure heat drains like gusty lofts and window frames are fully stoppered up. Beyond this you can make additional efforts to draught proof your house – by blocking the edges of doors and windows for example. Replacing an inefficient gas boiler can yield important energy gains, and another tip is replacing halogen bulbs with more energy efficient LED bulbs.

When it comes to short distances, defaulting to a car quickly racks up your carbon output. For distances over a thousand kilometers, driving alone actually has a higher carbon footprint per kilometer than flying the same distance. Going carless for one year could reduce your emissions by about 2.4 tonnes of carbon dioxide .

But for many, it’s important to acknowledge that alternatives are limited: for people based in more rural areas, or those underserved by public transport, a car might be the only option to get around. But for city dwellers, there is generally always a better, more carbon-friendly alternative. Weigh up your options: can you take a bus, tube or tram? Walk? Cycle? If you are in ownership of a car, you can spread your carbon burden by inviting people to share your commute.

If you are a frequent car user, consider switching to an electric car. Although the electricity you feed into your vehicle will be partly produced by non-renewable energy, electric vehicles (EVs) are much more efficient, meaning overall CO2 emissions are lower. The lifetime emissions for an EV in Europe are between 66 and 69 per cent lower compared to that of a fossil fuel-powered car.

However, the embedded carbon of a new electric vehicle has to be taken into account. The CO2 produced in manufacturing the car might be higher than the lifetime emissions of the vehicle depending on how often you use it. It might be better to instead maintain your current vehicle and aim to cut down your usage.

Any new purchase comes with an embedded carbon price tag. “The embodied carbon in everything we buy, particularly single use or throw away stuff, has a real, big impact on our climate,” says Reay. This is especially pertinent for items we only use sporadically, for example lawnmowers or power drills.

“If you think about your phone, it's all the components – all those metal and plastic parts – and all of the energy that's got into it,” Reay says. “It has quite a big carbon footprint, and we're buying a new one each year.” Indeed, Apple has released figures showing that 80 per cent of a product’s carbon footprint is wrapped up in its production process, rather than the energy it consumes once it’s completed. Planned obsolescence means that we’re cycling through new handsets faster than ever before, with many of the discards simply being thrown in the bin. Reuse and reduce should form the pillars of your sustainable ideology.

And fast fashion – exemplified by the likes of £5 dresses from Primark and Zara’s weekly stock rotation – is hugely harmful to the planet. Aside from the production process itself – which expels 1.2bn tonnes of CO2 a year (more than the aviation and shipping industries combined) – the wear-once-then-toss attitude permeating high street fashion means that racks of flimsy clothes are quickly transformed into one million tonnes of waste a year , much of will be incinerated or added to landfill. Although difficult to do an exact calculation on the amount of carbon saved in buying second hand versus buying new (this would need to take into account factors such as the intensity of the production process, and how many times the piece of clothing had already been worn), research from WRAP found that extending the average life of clothes by just three months up to two years and five months would result in a five to ten per cent reduction in carbon, water and waste footprints of the items.

Although once the biggest doctrines of your classic eco-warrior, recycling only goes so far – three years of recycling can be wiped out by a return flight to Berlin from London. So it’s tempering our voracious consumerism that can make the biggest impact. And when it comes to brands or labels that brand themselves as “sustainable”, keep in mind that the most sustainable option is just buying less stuff.

Have fewer children

This one is controversial. Yes, having fewer children does in fact lower your overall carbon footprint. One study estimates that having one fewer child is estimated to save as much as 58.6 tonnes of carbon emissions a year (if the potential future emissions of a descendant were calculated based on historical rates and heredity). But the same co-author of that study has said that if you want to have children, go ahead and do it. The timeframe to stop the worst effects of climate change is so tight, reducing population will not be how we’re going to solve the climate crisis.

• 🌡️ Sign-up to WIRED’s climate briefing: Get Chasing Zero
• We finally know the true toll of all those bad Slacks
• A strange Covid-19 origin theory is gaining traction
• How to lose that lockdown weight the right way
• Supercharge your chats with these WhatsApp tricks
• The draconian rise of internet shutdowns
• A radical plan to treat Covid’s mental health fallout
• The 100 hottest startups in Europe in 2021
• 🔊 Subscribe to the WIRED Podcast. New episodes every Friday

This article was originally published by WIRED UK

Karen Williams

Rhett Allain

David Kushner

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

• View all journals
• Explore content
• About the journal
• Publish with us
• Sign up for alerts
• RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT
• 07 April 2020

Thousands of studies reveal the best ways to cut your carbon footprint

Switching to a car-free lifestyle is one of the most effective ways to reduce carbon impact. Credit: Getty

Ditching cars altogether is one of the most effective steps that people can take to shrink their carbon footprint, according to a sprawling analysis of changes that individual consumers can make to cut their carbon emissions.

Access options

Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals

Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription

24,99 € / 30 days

cancel any time

Subscribe to this journal

Receive 51 print issues and online access

185,98 € per year

only 3,65 € per issue

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Nature 580 , 307 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-01045-w

Environ. Res. Lett. (2020)

Download references

• Climate change

The rise of eco-anxiety: scientists wake up to the mental-health toll of climate change

News Feature 10 APR 24

What happens when climate change and the mental-health crisis collide?

Editorial 10 APR 24

Iran frees scientists who studied big cats in surprise move

News 09 APR 24

Junior Group Leader Position at IMBA - Institute of Molecular Biotechnology

The Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) is one of Europe’s leading institutes for basic research in the life sciences. IMBA is located on t...

Austria (AT)

IMBA - Institute of Molecular Biotechnology

Open Rank Faculty, Center for Public Health Genomics

Center for Public Health Genomics & UVA Comprehensive Cancer Center seek 2 tenure-track faculty members in Cancer Precision Medicine/Precision Health.

Charlottesville, Virginia

Center for Public Health Genomics at the University of Virginia

Husbandry Technician I

Memphis, Tennessee

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital (St. Jude)

Lead Researcher – Department of Bone Marrow Transplantation & Cellular Therapy

Researcher in the center for in vivo imaging and therapy.

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Quick links

• Explore articles by subject
• Guide to authors
• Editorial policies

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

• LISTEN & FOLLOW
• Apple Podcasts
• Google Podcasts
• Amazon Music

Your support helps make our show possible and unlocks access to our sponsor-free feed.

Take on climate change at home and cut carbon emissions. Here's how

Dan Charles

Climate change is here and there's little we can do to reverse the damage already done, but we can avoid future increases in global temperature that will help the earth – and our lives on it – for generations to come.

Explore Life Kit

This story comes from Life Kit , NPR's family of podcasts to help make life better — covering everything from exercise to raising kids to making friends. For more, sign up for the newsletter and follow @NPRLifeKit on Twitter .

Homes and commercial buildings account for about a third of the country's greenhouse gas emissions , because it takes energy to heat and cool them and to power all the gadgets we've got plugged in. Much of that energy, whether it's electricity from a power plant far away or heat from a gas furnace in your basement, comes from burning fossil fuels, which releases greenhouse gases.

But you can change that. "If you want to do something about climate change, your home is among the most important places to look," says Donnel Baird, CEO of BlocPower , a startup company that's carrying out energy upgrades of buildings in several cities, including New York.

Start with simple steps.

Rather than relying on a thermostat to control the temperature, try natural ventilation to cool your home in summer. Kaz Fantone for NPR hide caption

We talked to experts and collected tips for how to proceed. Rohini Srivastava , a senior researcher at the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, says it makes sense to start with small, simple and cheap steps that save energy.

For instance, there's that energy-control device called a thermostat. "I would start off with heating and cooling my space smartly," Srivastava says. That could mean relying more on natural ventilation to cool your home in summer while turning the thermostat down during the night in winter and staying cozy with more blankets instead. If you don't fight the seasons quite so aggressively, your heater and air conditioner won't have to work so hard.

Another simple fix: Seal the cracks and holes around the house that allow air to blow through. You may have to learn about caulking and weatherstripping, but you can pick up all you need to know at your local hardware store.

5 Tips To Help You Pick The Best Lightbulb For Your Room

Finally, if you have old-style incandescent light bulbs in your house, go buy LEDs instead . And stop electronic devices such as televisions and laptop computers from sipping power all night long. Plugging them into a power strip makes it easy to disconnect them at night, and a "smart power strip" will even do it for you.

When you don't own the equipment, get creative.

If you pay your own utilities, you often can buy clean electricity. Kaz Fantone for NPR hide caption

Bigger moves to cut energy use often involve major appliances such as furnaces and water heaters, and that's an obstacle for people who don't actually own that equipment.

It's a real hurdle, but even renters and condo owners have some options.

For instance, if you're paying your own utilities, you often can buy clean electricity. In many states, including California, Texas and most of the Northeast, you can get your power from companies that purchase wind or solar electricity and add it to the grid for you to use. In many places you can also buy a share in a solar project nearby called "community solar."

Eating Less Meat Helps The Environment. Here Are Recipes To Help

You may even be able to put a little pressure on your landlord or condo association. "We want you to open up a conversation with the owner and/or manager of your building," BlocPower's Baird says. "Are they saving you enough money by using modern green energy technologies that can reduce your monthly utility bill? "

To help you figure out what might be possible in your building, BlocPower has a website that lets anyone enter basic information about their building and then offers energy-saving recommendations.

Take a close look at the biggest energy hogs in your home.

Switching to a more efficient appliance can make a big difference in energy consumption. Kaz Fantone for NPR hide caption

Some of the biggest changes you can make to reduce your carbon footprint involve big-ticket items such as furnaces, air conditioning units and water heaters. If any of these appliances are old, they're probably a lot less efficient than the latest technology. A switch may also provide an opportunity to shift from gas, which inevitably releases carbon dioxide, to electricity, which is becoming cleaner as electric utilities shut down coal-burning plants and shift toward zero-carbon sources such as solar and wind.

Fighting Climate Change From Home

• Keeping food scraps from landfills can help the environment. You can do that by composting .
• Cutting back on the amount of meat you eat (even just a little) can have a big impact. More here .
• Most parents agree that kids should be learning about climate change. Here's how to talk to them about it .
• Fast fashion takes a huge toll on the environment. Here's how to cultivate a more sustainable closet .

"You want to turn your building into a Tesla; just like Tesla is taking fossil fuel engines out of vehicles, you want to take fossil fuel equipment out of your home," Baird says.

An efficient alternative to gas heating is often an electric heat pump, which can handle your cooling as well. Heat pumps work on the same principle as a refrigerator; they can move heat from outdoors to indoors, or the other way around. They'll heat your home in winter and cool it in summer. There also are water heaters that use heat pumps. In the past, heat pumps have not worked well when the weather gets really cold, but the technology has improved dramatically in recent years.

They cost thousands of dollars though, and deciding whether to make the switch can be complicated.

Get some help and advice from the pros.

A home energy audit can point out ways to increase the efficiency of your space. Kaz Fantone for NPR hide caption

You may need some help figuring out exactly what makes sense to do in your particular house. In many cases, utilities offer rebates to encourage people to buy more efficient equipment, and "they might have recommendations for contractors who can come in and help you understand ... what's the best option," Srivastava says.

You might also consider a home energy audit. In some cases, these may be subsidized by utilities or local governments. Otherwise, they're likely to cost around $400 to $500.

Cheng Vang of the Center for Energy and Environment in Minnesota trains energy auditors. He says an auditor will have a long list of items to check, starting with insulation in the attic and walls and air leaks. Auditors will check all the systems to see how efficient they are. They'll probably do a "blower door test," which sucks air out of the house to detect hidden air leaks.

The audit will lay out various options for improving a building's performance. Sometimes auditors will go further and provide a rough estimate for how much each option will cost and how much it will save in utility bills — or greenhouse emissions.

See if your house can generate its own electricity.

A solar company should be able to draw up a proposal that lays out the cost and the effectiveness of solar for your home. Kaz Fantone for NPR hide caption

Solar panels on rooftops used to be a novelty, but in some places they're now quite common. Baird says that for many companies, "solar installation is very, very sophisticated and very straightforward. They use satellite imagery to look at your roof. They can see if you have a tree that's going to shade part of the solar panel. So it's one of the simpler things that you can do."

Whether these systems are affordable will vary tremendously, because some places, such as Washington, D.C., offer generous financial incentives. But a solar company should be able to draw up a proposal that lays all that out.

If you have the space and the sunlight and the money, you can supply your home with its own clean power — at least while the sun is shining.

The podcast version of this episode was produced by Clare Lombardo . Josh Newell provided engineering support.

We'd love to hear from you. Leave us a voicemail at 202-216-9823 or email us at [email protected] .

For more Life Kit, subscribe to our newsletter .

• Life Kit: Sustainability
• renewable energy
• climate change

News from the Columbia Climate School

From the series sustainable living, the 35 easiest ways to reduce your carbon footprint.

Reduce your carbon footprint with these 35 easy tricks.  Photo: MilicaBuha

In the face of the recent   National Climate Assessment report on the threats of climate change, the Trump administration continues to try to roll back environmental policies. Individuals, however, can make a difference by reducing their personal greenhouse gas emissions. While there are many ways to do this and save energy—such as insulating your home, putting up solar panels, and planting trees—the following are the simplest and easiest changes you can make. They require little effort or financial investment.

First calculate your carbon footprint

Your carbon footprint is the amount of greenhouse gases—including carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, fluorinated gases and others—that you produce as you live your life. The Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project  determined that in order to hold the global temperature rise to 2˚C or less, everyone on earth will need to average an annual carbon footprint of 1.87 tons by 2050. Currently, the average U.S. per capita carbon footprint is 18.3 tons. By comparison, China’s per capita carbon emissions are 8.2 tons. We all have a ways to go to get to 1.87 tons.

Calculate your carbon footprint at carbonfootprint.com to find out how you’re doing. The EPA’s carbon footprint calculator can show how much carbon and money you will save by taking some of these steps.

Here are some of the easiest ways you can start to shrink your carbon footprint.

Photo: BeckyStriepe

1. Eat low on the food chain. This means eating mostly fruits, veggies, grains, and beans. Livestock —meat and dairy—is responsible for 14.5 percent of manmade global greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from feed production and processing and the methane (25 times more potent than CO2 at trapping heat in the atmosphere over 100 years) that beef and sheep belch out. Every day that you forgo meat and dairy, you can reduce your carbon footprint by 8 pounds—that’s 2,920 pounds a year. You can start by joining Meatless Mondays .

2. Choose organic and local foods that are in season. Transporting food from far away, whether by truck, ship, rail or plane, uses fossil fuels for fuel and for cooling to keep foods in transit from spoiling.

3. Buy foodstuffs in bulk when possible using your own reusable container.

4. Reduce your food waste by planning meals ahead of time, freezing the excess and reusing leftovers.

5. Compost your food waste if possible. (If you live in New York City, you can find a compost drop-off site here.

Photo: JessicaKayMurray

6. Don’t buy fast fashion. Trendy, cheap items that go out of style quickly get dumped in landfills where they produce methane as they decompose. Currently, the average American discards about 80 pounds of clothing each year, 85 percent of which ends up in landfills. In addition, most fast fashion comes from China and Bangladesh, so shipping it to the U.S. requires the use of fossil fuels. Instead, buy quality clothing that will last.

7. Even better, buy vintage or recycled clothing at consignment shops.

8. Wash your clothing in cold water. The enzymes in cold water detergent are designed to clean better in cold water. Doing two loads of laundry weekly in cold water instead of hot or warm water can save up to 500 pounds of carbon dioxide each year.

9. Buy less stuff! And buy used or recycled items whenever possible.

10. Bring your own reusable bag when you shop.

11. Try to avoid items with excess packaging.

12. If you’re in the market for a new computer, opt for a laptop instead of a desktop . Laptops require less energy to charge and operate than desktops.

13. If shopping for appliances, lighting, office equipment or electronics, look for Energy Star products , which are certified to be more energy efficient.

14. Support and buy from companies that are environmentally responsible and sustainable.

15. Do an energy audit of your home. This will show how you use or waste energy and help identify ways to be more energy efficient.

16. Change incandescent light bulbs (which waste 90 percent of their energy as heat) to light emitting diodes (LEDs). Though LEDs cost more, they use a quarter of the energy and last up to 25 times longer. They are also preferable to compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) bulbs, which emit 80 percent of their energy as heat and contain mercury.

17. Switch lights off when you leave the room and unplug your electronic devices when they are not in use.

18. Turn your water heater down to 120˚F. This can save about 550 pounds of CO2 a year.

19. Installing a low-flow showerhead to reduce hot water use can save 350 pounds of CO2. Taking shorter showers helps, too.

20. Lower your thermostat in winter and raise it in summer. Use less air conditioning in the summer; instead opt for fans, which require less electricity. And check out these other ways to beat the heat without air conditioning.

21. Sign up to get your electricity from clean energy through your local utility or a certified renewable energy provider. Green-e.org can help you find certified green energy providers.

Transportation

Because electricity increasingly comes from natural gas and renewable energy, transportation became the major source of U.S. CO2 emissions in 2017. An average car produces about five tons of CO2 each year (although this varies according to the type of car, its fuel efficiency and how it’s driven). Making changes in how you get around can significantly cut your carbon budget.

Photo: SFBicycleCoalition

22. Drive less. Walk, take public transportation, carpool, rideshare or bike to your destination when possible. This not only reduces CO2 emissions, it also lessens traffic congestion and the idling of engines that accompanies it.

23. If you must drive, avoid unnecessary braking and acceleration. Some studies found that aggressive driving can result in 40 percent more fuel consumption than consistent, calm driving.

24. Take care of your car. Keeping your tires properly inflated can increase your fuel efficiency by three percent; and ensuring that your car is properly maintained can increase it by four percent. Remove any extra weight from the car.

25. When doing errands, try to combine them to reduce your driving.

26. Use traffic apps like Waze  to help avoid getting stuck in traffic jams.

27. On longer trips, turn on the cruise control, which can save gas.

28. Use less air conditioning while you drive, even when the weather is hot.

29. If you’re shopping for a new car, consider purchasing a hybrid or electric vehicle . But do factor in the greenhouse gas emissions from the production of the car as well as its operation. Some electric vehicles are initially responsible for more emissions than internal combustion engine vehicles because of manufacturing impacts; but they make up for it after three years. This app  rates cars based on their mileage, fuel type and emissions from both the production of the car and, if they are EVs, from generating the electricity to run them.

30. If you fly for work or pleasure, air travel is probably responsible for the largest part of your carbon footprint. Avoid flying if possible ; on shorter trips, driving may emit fewer greenhouse gases.

Photo: Deeksha

32. Fly nonstop since landings and takeoffs use more fuel and produce more emissions.

33. Go economy class. Business class is responsible for almost three times as many emissions as economy because in economy, the flight’s carbon emissions are shared among more passengers; first class can result in nine times more carbon emissions than economy.

34. If you can’t avoid flying, offset the carbon emissions of your travel.

Carbon offsets

A carbon offset is an amount of money you can pay for a project that reduces greenhouse gases somewhere else. If you offset one ton of carbon, the offset will help capture or destroy one ton of greenhouse gases that would otherwise have been released into the atmosphere. Offsets also promote sustainable development and increase the use of renewable energy.

This calculator estimates the carbon emissions of your flight and the amount of money needed to offset them. For example, flying economy roundtrip from New York to Los Angeles produces 1.5 tons of CO2; it costs $43 to offset this carbon.

You can purchase carbon offsets to compensate for any or all of your other carbon emissions as well.

The money you pay goes towards climate protection projects. Various organizations sponsor these projects. For example, Myclimate funds the purchase of energy efficient cookstoves in Rwanda, installing solar power in the Dominican Republic, and replacing old heating systems with energy efficient heat pumps in Switzerland. Cotap  sustainably plants trees in India, Malawi, Mozambique, Uganda and Nicaragua to absorb CO2; you can sign up for monthly offsets here. Terrapass  funds U.S. projects utilizing animal waste from farms, installing wind power, and capturing landfill gas to generate electricity. It also offers a monthly subscription for offsets.

Get politically active

Photo: ScottBeale

35. Finally—and perhaps most importantly since the most effective solutions to climate change require governmental action— vote! Become politically active and let your representatives know you want them to take action to phase out fossil fuels use and decarbonize the country as fast as possible.

Get our newsletter

Related posts.

70 Leave a Reply

thank you for this information, I do my share but could improve. As the richest people on earth use more carbon their should pay carbon tax.

I do agree with you Kalpna, the richest people use an average of 1000x times more (the richer the more they use), since they have mansions (requires a lot more power), boats, private aeroplanes etc. Their Co2 emissions are through the roof, so carbon tax for the rich (especially ultra rich) would go a huge way to offsetting their extravagant lifestyles and the world in general and wouldn’t even impact them hardly at all.

In your list of “ways to reduce your carbon footprint” I notice that you forgot to mention the single most important thing a family can do: have one fewer children. Do I sense fear of stating the unpopular?

Popular or not, you may be wrong because people are both the cause of and solution to all their problems. People are not wolves. With wolves and chickens, the more wolves: the fewer chickens, and the fewer wolves: the more chickens. With people, it is just the opposite: the more people you get more chickens not less. That extra kid may contribute to sustainablility.

I see your viewpoint. If one is living sustainably and encourages other people to do so, the benefits of that person living on the planet (through getting other people to reduce their environmental impact) likely exceeds the personal carbon footprint of that person.

Or getting rid of family pet, 30% of CO’3 related to meat production

Family pet = meat production? Benefits of pets is tremendous – safety, assist handicapped, therapy animals, provide comfort and companionship, reduce blood pressure and anxiety, etc .If you are referring to the fact that they eat pet foods, most pet foods are made from meat scraps (parts not sold for human consumption) and include vegetables. Also, changes in feed for farm animals has reduced gas emissions.

I don’t think that a family pet can be produced to meat but you have the right idea

ANIMAL HATER

Thanks for the tips. However, #32 which advises non-stop flying is unlikely to be true most of the time as non- stop flights tend to burn large quantities of fuel carrying the additional fuel mass. In general a 50/50 split is the most fuel efficient way to take a long flight.

Maybe we should consider adding one more idea. #36. Save carbon rich material from turning into CO2. Reduce your carbon footprint by keeping dead plant around longer. A leaf falls on the ground and is decomposed this year. I dry a leaf and put it a book and can be there in 100 years.

This is what the Japanese government does: if you build a house of wood, you get a huge cheque of about $8,000USD from the government for storing CO2 in your house.

Your point about eating less meat, er maybe even going full vegan is incorrect. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter one thing what you eat. Meat might be responsible for more greenhouse gasses, but for vegitarians they cut down millions of acres of forest eacht year to provide the room to grow their crops (Just look at the soy farms in Brazil and the palm olive fields in Malaysia). Deforestation causes far more greenhouse gas emission than cattle, and it also takes away the only means by which CO2 can be removed from the air. This problem …  Read more »

We can both agree that deforestation is a big problem for climate change. However, it takes 12 pounds of grain to make 1 pound of beef. It is therefore much more efficient, and requires less land and deforestation, if we just eat the grain itself. It’s like cutting out the middleman, only the middleman = cows 🙂

Other interesting stats here: http://holdthebeef.org/#new-page-4

cows can and do eat grass. Grass is a huge CO2 sink. Buy grass fed. Broccoli will use more land and give you less nutrition. Hooved animals walked this earth in large numbers before humans concentrated them in fences and farms.

Actually 70 to 75% of the world’s soy is used for animal feed for chickens, pigs, cows and farmed fish. After beef, which is #1, soy is the second largest cause of deforestation.

I am a vegan and have solved the problem of soy and palm oil. I don’t use either, and am a healthy vegan.

Solution could be to stop over eating, veg or meat and stop wasting food. I think food industry should also be penalized. One of the culprits in my opinion are supermarkets. They buy cheap and more and waste a lot as their pricing takes wasting into account. Local govt should monitor and penalize if they waste food items and simultaneously reduce the expiry date of the food items, this will deter industry to mass produce anything edible. These are scalable and I believe would be very effective.

I’m an Ag student and I’m actually doing some research for an Ag Issues project for FFA and I noticed that you might be thinking of this the wrong way. I grew up on a commercial cattle ranch and I obviously agree with you that cutting out meat isn’t the way to go. Growing up in a rural farmland area and being a member of FFA I have always thought of the crop industry and the cattle/meat industry as a united industry: the Agricultural Industry. But I of course realize that not everyone has this experience. I don’t know if …  Read more »

Acarnes, this is really poor logic. Cows do “naturally” produce GHGs. But we have 94.8 million cows in the US. That’s almost 1 cow for every 3 people. There is nothing natural about industrial agriculture, and quantity of the GHG source is more important than whether or not it existed in some capacity pre-industrialization. As someone mentioned above, it takes 12 lbs of grain to make 1 lb of beef (not to mention water!). If more people move to substitute more plants for beef, you can feed the same amount of people with less cows, as that 12 lbs of …  Read more »

Can’t believe anyone would give a thumbs down for facts.

Only 6% of the crop grown on land cleared in Brazil for soya production, goes to feed people. 94% goes to feed animals and chickens to provide food for meat eaters. It takes much less land to feed people directly with plant food than it would to grow the food to feed the animals with which to feed those people. If we all are a vegetarian or vegan diet we would need less land and more could be left as wild forest to absorb and store carbon.

Hey Patric, I just think that your forgetting that we use a large areas to grow crops to then feed live stock, much more then it would take to feed the human population. Also cows produce methane.

they cut down those forests to make room for livestock it takes a lot less room for a vegetarian or vegan diet than one that has meat I am not vegan or vegetarian but you have a thing backwards.

Hi Patric, I definitely see what you are saying with regards to Soy production. Indonesian and Malaysian Rainforest are cut down for both palm oil and soy production. This accounts for around 10% of the problem each, which is still a significant proportion. Beef production, however, is 85% of the problem and a lot of Soy Beans are grown as cattle feed as grazing ground is not possible without the rainforest. This means that beef and dairy production are the huge contributors to climate change as they also include a vast proportion of the requirement for soy. If veganism isn’t …  Read more »

Hello there! Terrific points about energy conservation and carbon footprint reductions. Props to the author(s)! I happen to run a blog devoted to renewables and energy efficiency and thought one of my articles about energy audit tools might be useful to your readers if you incorporate it in this article.

Here it goes: https://www.everysolarthing.com/blog/energy-audit-tools/ There are no ads or affiliate links whatsoever.

Either way, keep up the important work of spreading a word about environmentally friendly lifestyle.

How can I reduce my carbon footprint and still be warm

Lots of options. Get a programmable thermostat and set it so that you are comfortable but not crazy hot or cold; seal air leaks in your home; add insulation; don’t leave doors & windows open when running furnace or AC; reduce the temperature setting of your hot water heater to 120 F; choose to live close to where you work and shop so that you can walk, ride a bike, or take public transit; show up at public meetings to advocate for mixed use zoning, higher density zoning, public transit; choose renewable energy if your state/city allows you to choose …  Read more »

A good old fashioned sweater.

I know people who keep the heat at 80 and wear a T-shirt around inside when its 20 degrees out. Its a reasonable sacrifice to make to live at a comfortable 65, and if you can’t handle that, Goodwill has sweaters for cheap.

buy thrifted clothing !!!

Can you say more about how using reusable bags reduces the carbon footprint please? we are trying to pass a bag ban in my town and need all the solid scientific data we can get.

Going politically active doesn’t necessarily lower your carbon footprint, it can force the entire country’s carbon footprint down, and as a result, yours. For example, if you voted for a law to shut down a coal powered power plant and replace it with a solar or wind farm, you would be cutting down on an entire organization’s carbon footprint, and not just your own.

Thanks a lot for the tips.. by the way, you mention that better to wash in cold water.. what will happen if we wash with warm water?is there any risk?

I don’t think there’s any risk except that it takes energy to heat water, therefore higher carbon footprint

This is very informative always trying to cut down on my impact especially since we never know when we’re gonna need filtered air don’t want it to be in my life time but at this rate it might

We all need to work harder to save our environment

Finally an article that actually lays out what each of us can do. The problem seems so overwhelming.

Yes it may do but all helps even just small things. Just thinking about what we can do will lead to positive changes be it small to start with but may be a big thing in the near future.

I think all of these re great ideas, but to add one, i would like to say that we try to make clothes out of the scraps of cloth that are going to the landfill.

And repair your clothes

hello, i am in 4rth grade, and my idea is that we try to get things that will fill the landfill, so when we don’t buy them, they will go to the landfill. when we buy fancy cloths, that is wasting water, which is not good, but old cloths are used, so you are not using new ones!

I see your point but another point of view is, if you start buying the product constantly, the company will produce more, and the more product you make the more Co2 is produced through the factories.

people need to keep protesting in Brazil so the president of Brazil can stop doing bad stuff to the earth

hi i am in 4th grade and i think you should turn of all the light when you leave the house,use self chargers to charge your phones,and have solar panels insted of wasting electricety.

ride a bike or walk if youare going somewere.also if it is a mile drive if ir is less then walk or drive

hi i’m Becca and i’m in 4th grade my idea is i think we need to stop cutting down trees because it uses up a lot of units

we have to try to help the planet

I am wondering about point 12. Do you have any more information about why a laptop should be more efficient than a desktop. I thought its just the same parts put together in a different housing.

Desktops are plugged in so can use whatever power they like and function well. Laptops need to be portable so the longer the battery life, the better. Therefore, a laptop needs to be more eco to increase their sales as people buy laptops with longer battery life.

Just came upon this site in search of ways I can reduce my own carbon footprint and found some good ideas that I will try to implement. I have found that corporations, in their search of profits, tend to move their manufacturing off shore to jurisdictions where there are little or no environmental rules and then import these products back to western countries. I believe that we need a Carbon Footprint Tax on goods imported from polluting countries and that this tax be dedicated solely to reducing national carbon footprints eg. Converting coal fired generating plants to gas etc. Not …  Read more »

what does getting politically active have to do with my carbon footprint ?

Going politically active doesn’t necessarily lower your carbon footprint, it can force the entire country’s carbon footprint down, and as a result, yours. For example, if you voted for a law to shut down a coal powered power plant and replace it with a solar or wind farm, you would be cutting down on an entire organization’s carbon footprint, and not just your own.

I do my part and after reading this article, I feel my husband and I definitely exceed these points. We hardly go out, so therefore we are not driving, we shower twice a week, we wash clothes on cold, (we don’t have that many loads because we don’t go out so therefore it’s basically pjs and underwear we are washing, we haven’t travelled in 18 years, we hardly eat meat, (we don’t eat much as it is), we do not buy clothing and use the clothes we have whether they are worn out or not, where we live, (Hudson Valley, …  Read more »

Thank you so much i needed this ◕‿◕

This is a helpful article and thank you. I am curious, at the institutional level, what are top tier schools like Columbia doing to demonstrate their commitment to going green? Limiting staff air travel, requiring alternating in office and WFH staff schedules, etc. These institutions are leading the charge in thought, which is incredibly important, but are they also implementing these ideas more broadly?

Hi Kella, thanks for your interest! You can read an overview of Columbia’s sustainability initiatives here: https://sustainable.columbia.edu/

Good Information on carbon footprints reduction. Actually everybody is nowadays aware that how to reduce the carbon footprints, but the question is? are we really honest in following the same? Lets commit that we will do atleast our part and if everyone will do his part… than the mother earth will be green and healthy!

I disagree with the suggestion to buy a laptop over a desktop, a laptop has a much lower life cycle and is not easily upgradable. If you got a desktop instead, while you might use more electricity, it is better due to avoiding more computer parts being thrown away. Desktops being upgradeable means you can swap parts that need to be upgraded instead of buying a whole new system everytime it becomes unusable. For example a monitor does not become unusable at the same rate as a CPU, but by getting a laptop you end up getting a new monitor …  Read more »

Thanks for sharing! Avoiding flying is hard. But the pandemic has had a huge impact on air travel and we are seeing more and more of our clients (honeymooners) take road trips. Hopefully this has helped reduce their carbon footprint.

If u become vegan u will have a lower carbon footprint

Agree…. but we also have to stop burning fossil fuels, deforestation, and cement production. If we can do this, only then carbon footprint can be reduced.

Stop shopping at Trader Joe’s. Most of their packaged goods are made in Turkey, China, Vietnam, Bulgaria, etc. Orange carrot juice made in Turkey in glass bottles shipped to your local TJ’s and sold for 2.99 is a carbon disaster. TJ’s is mostly frozen dinners, highly packaged and processed foods, many with artificial flavoring and colors, high sodium and sugar and non-local produce wrapped individually in plastic and stryofoam. Walmart has better governance and transparency. Avoid Trader Joe’s at all costs.

thank you for helpimg me on a assinment i am going to make the world a better place

growing your own food and owning a few chickens is a really good way to help I think. Usually eggs from commercial farms are mass produced and are less quality.

Don’t buy toys that require batteries.

Live healthfully. Healthy living & preventative care saves lots of resources.

This means cultivating a healthy body. Keeping a healthy mind

The healthcare system is full of high consumption (huge industry sector, single use everything, high energy resources.). I’m grateful resources exist but it’s best to consciously live the best you can in hopes of needing it as little as possible.

Animal feed is now being used that produces less methane in cows.

Btw, if you get breast cancer, the first thing you are told is do NOT eat soy. Many products include soy; oils labeled ‘vegetable oil’ are often 100% soy.

Also, not kidding: we tried plant based ‘fake meat’ and we had indigestion and gas for days.

Let’s go with Gore’s plan – less people. Not sure how he plans to achieve that.

Al gore has done really well with this ‘carbon offset’ business. He went from being worth $2 mil to hundreds of millions. His house in Nashville uses huge amounts of energy.

oh shoot guys this is a major problem. we have to….. CHANGE it’s so nice people care about this subject, soon all we’re gonna here about is this.

i think everyone should start to be more observant and have more respect for the things and people that put this world into shape. I also think pollution is one of the main problems and some people can fix that but chose not too and it has damaged our world.

News from the Columbia Climate School

The 37 Easiest Ways to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint (Animated Graphic)

There are lots of ways individuals can make a difference on climate change, and the animated graphic below shows that they don’t have to take a lot of time or effort. For more information, read the article that accompanies this animated graphic.

A text-only transcript is available below the graphic. 

Text-only transcript:

Solving climate change requires big changes across our society. Although we can’t directly control what legislation gets passed in Congress, making personal choices that help the planet can feel empowering and encourage others to take action, leading to broader cultural and societal shifts.

There are many ways individuals can help—such as insulating your home, putting up solar panels, and planting trees—but the following are the simplest and easiest changes you can make. They show that making a difference doesn’t have to cost a lot of time or money.

Food • Compost your food waste, or find a drop-off point. • Eat less meat and more fruits, veggies, grains, and beans. • Reduce food waste through meal planning and freezing leftovers. • Buy in bulk, with a reusable container when possible. • Choose organic and local foods that are in season.

Clothing • Wash your clothing in cold water. • Buy vintage or recycled clothing. • Don’t buy fast fashion.

Shopping • Support companies that are environmentally responsible. • Buy used or recycled items whenever possible. • Opt for a laptop instead of a desktop when buying a new computer. • Look for Energy Star products, which are more energy efficient. • Buy less stuff. • Bring a reusable bag. • Avoid excess packaging.

Home • Use fans instead of air conditioning when possible. • Switch off lights, and unplug devices when they are not in use. • Sign up to get your electricity from clean energy. • Change incandescent light bulbs to LEDs. • Lower your thermostat in winter, and raise it in summer. • Install a low-flow showerhead to reduce hot water use. • Take shorter showers. • Turn your water heater down to 120˚F. • Do an energy audit to identify ways to be more energy efficient.

Transportation • Avoid flying if possible. On shorter trips, driving may emit fewer greenhouse gases. • Fly nonstop. Landings and takeoffs use more fuel. • Go economy class, which is more fuel efficient. • Offset the carbon emissions of your travel. • Drive less if possible. Walk, take public transportation, carpool, rideshare, or bike instead. • Combine errands to reduce driving. • Use cruise control, which can save gas. • Avoid unnecessary braking and acceleration, which waste gas. • Avoid traffic jams by using apps like Waze. • Use less air conditioning while you drive. • Take care of your car to increase fuel efficiency. • Consider purchasing a hybrid or electric vehicle if you’re shopping for a new car.

Get politically active • Vote, and join community groups that push for change at the local, state, and federal levels. The most effective solutions to climate change require governmental action.

Related Posts

Protecting Our Planet: 5 Strategies for Reducing Plastic Waste

Key Ocean Current Contains a Warning on Climate

Using Nature to Help the Climate: 4 Ways That Work

Celebrate over 50 years of Earth Day with us all month long! Visit our Earth Day website for ideas, resources, and inspiration.

Get the Columbia Climate School Newsletter →

Latest Stories

Today's picks.

• History & Culture
• Environment
• Gory Details
• Photographer

Discover More on Disney+

• Queens with Angela Bassett
• Arctic Ascent with Alex Honnold
• The Space Race
• Genius: MLK/X
• A Real Bug's Life with Awkwafina
• Incredible Animal Journeys with Jeremy Renner
• TheMissionKeyArtDisneyPlusCard
• Animals Up Close with Bertie Gregory
• Secrets of the Elephants
• The Territory
• Never Say Never with Jeff Jenkins
• Extraordinary Birder with Christian Cooper
• A Small Light

Port Protection Alaska

Wicked tuna, april 2024 issue, in this issue.

• Photography

The National Geographic Society Mission

National geographic’s nonprofit work.

The National Geographic Society invests in innovative leaders in science, exploration, education and storytelling to illuminate and protect the wonder of our world.

• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• Your US State Privacy Rights
• Children's Online Privacy Policy
• Interest-Based Ads
• About Nielsen Measurement
• Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information
• Nat Geo Home
• Attend a Live Event
• Book a Trip
• Inspire Your Kids
• Shop Nat Geo
• Visit the D.C. Museum
• Learn About Our Impact
• Support Our Mission
• Advertise With Us
• Customer Service
• Renew Subscription
• Manage Your Subscription
• Work at Nat Geo
• Sign Up for Our Newsletters
• Contribute to Protect the Planet

Copyright © 1996-2015 National Geographic Society Copyright © 2015-2024 National Geographic Partners, LLC. All rights reserved

Here are the most effective things you can do to fight climate change

PhD Student, University of Leeds

Disclosure statement

Max Callaghan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

University of Leeds provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation UK.

View all partners

Limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels requires reaching net zero emissions by the middle of this century. This means that, in less than three decades, we need to reverse more than a century of rising emissions and bring annual emissions down to near zero, while balancing out all remaining unavoidable emissions by actively removing carbon from the atmosphere.

To help speed this process as individuals, we’ve got to do everything we can to cut down our use of fossil fuels. But many people aren’t aware of the most effective ways to do this. Thankfully, the latest report by the UN climate change panel IPCC devotes a chapter to all the ways in which changes in people’s behaviour can accelerate the transition to net zero.

The chapter includes an analysis of 60 individual actions which can help fight climate change, building on research led by Diana Ivanova at the University of Leeds – and to which I contributed. We grouped these actions into three areas: avoiding consumption, shifting consumption and improving consumption (making it more efficient). The charts below, produced for the IPCC report , show what we found.

What to avoid

By far the most effective things to avoid involve transport. Living without a car reduces greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 2 tonnes of CO₂ emissions per person per year, while avoiding a single long distance return flight cuts emissions by an average of 1.9 tonnes. That’s equivalent to driving a typical EU car more than 16,000km from Hamburg, Germany to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia and back.

Since the vast majority of the world’s population do not fly at all – and of those who do, only a small percentage fly frequently – fliers can make very substantial reductions to their carbon footprints with each flight they avoid.

What to shift

But living sustainably is not just about giving things up. Large reductions in emissions can be achieved by shifting to a different way of doing things. Because driving is so polluting, for example, shifting to public transport , walking or cycling can make an enormous change, with added benefits for your personal health and local air pollution levels.

Likewise, because of the high emissions associated with meat and dairy – particularly those produced by farming sheep and cows – shifting towards more sustainable diets can substantially reduce your carbon footprint. A totally vegan diet is the most effective way to do this, but sizeable savings can be made simply by switching from beef and lamb to pork and chicken.

What to improve

Finally, the things we do already could be made more efficient by improving carbon efficiency at home: for example by using insulation and heat pumps , or producing your own renewable energy by installing solar panels . Switching from a combustion car to an electric one – ideally a battery EV, which generates much larger reductions in emissions than hybrid or fuel cell EVs – will make your car journeys more efficient. Plus, its effect on emissions will increase as time goes by and the amount of electricity generated by renewables grows.

In the race to net zero, every tonne of CO₂ really does count. If more of us take even a few of these suggestions into account, we’re collectively more likely to be able to achieve the ambitious goals set out in the Paris climate agreement . Of course, these changes will need to be backed by major political action on sustainability at the same time.

If we’re to use less fossil fuel energy, the use of fossil fuels needs to be either restricted or made more expensive. The social consequences of this need to be carefully managed so that carbon pricing schemes can benefit people on lower incomes: which can happen if revenues are redistributed to take the financial burden off poorer households.

But there’s a whole lot more that governments could do to help people to live more sustainably, such as providing better, safer public transport and “ active travel ” infrastructure (such as bike lanes and pedestrian zones) so that people have alternatives to driving and flying.

There’s no avoiding the fact that if political solutions are to address climate change with the urgency our global situation requires, these solutions will limit the extent to which we can indulge in carbon-intensive behaviours. More than anything, we must vote into power those prepared to make such tough decisions for the sake of our planet’s future.

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like? Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 10,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

• Fossil fuels
• Climate change
• Renewable energy
• Sustainability
• Public transport
• Sustainable living
• climate mitigation
• Greenhouse gas emissions (GHG)

Faculty of Law - Academic Appointment Opportunities

Operations Manager

Senior Education Technologist

Audience Development Coordinator (fixed-term maternity cover)

Lecturer (Hindi-Urdu)

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

California Today

How Readers Are Reducing Their Carbon Footprint

Whether biking around town or adopting a meatless diet, Californians describe how they are reducing their impact.

By Soumya Karlamangla

Thirty years ago, the temperature in Los Angeles typically reached 90 degrees 56 days a year. By 2072, climate models suggest there could be 87 days annually when the temperature hits that mark.

This jump in extreme heat days is a consequence of human-induced climate change, but it’s not the only one. Warming weather is also contributing to sea level rise, worsening wildfires and droughts, and a host of other problems.

Over the past few weeks, you’ve been telling us your strategies for reducing your carbon footprint , including composting, avoiding single-use plastic and adopting a vegetarian diet. We’ve been soliciting your responses to prepare for a live event The New York Times is hosting in San Francisco examining our collective response to the climate challenge.

Here’s a sampling of what you shared, lightly edited for clarity:

“I’m only driving if I absolutely can’t reach my destination on my bike or public transportation. With our climate, that’s easy. It’s at least a quadruple win: I protect our air quality, reduce traffic, get some exercise, and save money. It’s a little challenging at first and then it’s normal. I love being able to stop and smell an iris or a rose as I pedal through a neighborhood, to sense a slight incline that I never noticed in my car, and to feel the breeze in my face. And, it makes me happy.” — Shannon Rose McEntee, Palo Alto

“I moved to California last summer and I am more aware than ever of the threats that climate change poses to our beautiful state. Major changes I have made have been cutting water use whenever possible and using my electricity primarily within the super off-peak time periods set by my provider. I’m looking into solar now so I can produce my own clean energy.” — Barton Lynch, San Diego

“ Many of my friends are married and considering babies. A big part of the decision revolves around what their child’s quality of life would be due to climate change. What will it be like to live on the planet 85 years from now? Many are getting dogs.” — Shauncey Durkin, San Francisco

“In the interest of decreasing our load on this fragile planet, we have given up our large gas-powered S.U.V. and are now driving only our hybrid sedan. Since we are a one-car household, we consolidate trips out and about to complete as many tasks as possible in a single trip.

We wear our clothes just a little longer, so laundry is reduced. We do not run the water while brushing our teeth. We have resurrected the old saw, ‘If it’s yellow.’ I’m sure we’ll evolve even further as we look critically at our lives, and will learn something from the messages from other California readers.” — Barbara Bowden, Palo Alto

“I’ve lived in California for 45 years and each decade has brought more awareness and with it, behavioral changes regarding trying not to add to the problem of our finite global climate system. In the ’80s I switched to farmers’ markets for produce to eliminate unnecessary shipping. In the ’90s, while living in L.A., I moved closer to work to cut driving times, and even started riding my bike to work when I could. Eventually I moved to San Luis Obispo and opened a farmers’ market-centered restaurant to promote locally grown foods. Moving to a smaller town also allowed for more walking and biking.

In the past decade, we installed rooftop solar and switched to plug-in hybrids, utilizing the generous U.S. tax rebates available and California incentives to switch to electric. This past year, with more choices and incentives, we bought a fully electric car. On a more personal scale, my husband and I eliminated red meats from our diet last year and try to go meatless at least half the time. Once we got used to it, a meat-free diet didn’t seem that restricting.” — Charles Myers, San Luis Obispo

If you read one story, make it this

The closest hurricane to hover near Southern California in almost a quarter-century is hitting Baja and could lead to flash floods in the San Diego area, as well as winds that could fan wildfires. But the residual humidity may also help mitigate fire risk.

The rest of the news

Homeless camp: Caltrans began removing about 80 people and their property from a homeless encampment along Wood Street in Oakland after a federal judge sided with the state, CBS Bay Area reports.

Guns: The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed its previous ruling that California’s ban on semiautomatic rifle sales to adults younger than 21 was unconstitutional, The Los Angeles Times reports.

Microplastics: California water regulators unanimously approved requirements for testing microplastics in drinking water sources, CalMatters reports.

Heat wave: High temperatures, treacherous terrain and winds combined to fuel the spread of two large wildfires in California, as the state endured another day under an oppressive heat wave.

Student loan forgiveness: Forgiven student loans might be taxable under current California state rules, The Los Angeles Times reports.

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

Extreme weather : Riverside County, already facing a growing wildfire, was placed under multiple extreme weather advisories as a tropical storm threatened to bring high winds, lightning, flooding and mudslides to the area.

Political race: In politically competitive Orange County, two Asian American candidates are facing off to win the support of the growing Asian American electorate.

Golden Globes: The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has added 103 new international, nonmember voters to its ranks, The Los Angeles Times reports.

Oil spill: The Texas company operating the pipeline that caused a massive oil spill in the waters off Huntington Beach agreed to pay nearly $5 million in fines and penalties, The Los Angeles Times reports.

CENTRAL CALIFORNIA

Investigation delay: Chief Paco Balderrama of the Fresno Police said “system failures” within the Police Department were to blame for a delayed investigation into a former school principal accused of striking a student, The Fresno Bee reports.

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

Indigenous land: Oakland officials plan to grant an Indigenous group the right to exclusively use about five acres of city land in Joaquin Miller Park, The San Francisco Chronicle reports.

Psychedelics: The San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a resolution decriminalizing psychedelics , including magic mushrooms and ayahuasca, becoming the latest U.S. city to decriminalize the substance, Vice reports.

What we’re eating

Pomegranate salad.

Where we’re traveling

Today’s tip comes from Merideth Hartsell-Cooper, who lives in Sacramento:

“When folks think of Sonoma, they inevitably think of wine. But there’s much more. For lifelong learners, amateur historians, and folks who revel in overlooked gems, Sonoma is home to a diamond: Sonoma State Historic Park , which encompasses the Vallejo Home, trails, and in downtown Sonoma, Mission San Francisco de Solano and the Sonoma Barracks. There are shops and restaurants to enjoy; while you’re in the area, drive a scenic 20 minutes to Jack London State Historic Park , where you will find more trails; the beautiful cottage Jack London and his wife Charmian shared and decorated with artifacts from their many globe-trotting adventures; and of course, the ruins of Wolf House, the Londons’ dream house. When you’ve had your fill of natural beauty and history, you can unwind with the aforementioned wine.”

Tell us about your favorite places to visit in California. Email your suggestions to [email protected] . We’ll be sharing more in upcoming editions of the newsletter.

Californians: Have growing concerns about climate change affected how you live your life? Have you made any changes? If so, we want to hear about them. (Are you driving less, eating differently or changing your job?)

Email us at [email protected] . Please include your name and the city you live in.

This is part of a live event that The Times is hosting in San Francisco on Oct. 12 examining our collective response to the climate challenge. Learn more.

And before you go, some good news

Students returning to classes at Santa Barbara City College over the past few weeks have been painting a mural on campus celebrating diversity.

The mural is a project by the college’s Umoja program, a resource for enhancing the cultural and educational experience of Black and African American students, KCLU reports.

“Students can see that we are making an effort to show positive Blackness here on campus and that they have a safe place to just be themselves,” said Alicia Meyer, the student program adviser for the program.

Keenan Kelton, a student at the college, said it had been difficult to have classes online during the pandemic.

“But once I actually started coming into school, I didn’t really see too many Black students here,” Kelton told KCLU. “It’s good to see that even though there’s not many of us, we have this collective here and we can come out and do things like paint this mural.”

Thanks for reading. We’ll be back on Monday. Enjoy your weekend.

P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword .

Briana Scalia and Maia Coleman contributed to California Today. You can reach the team at [email protected] .

Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox .

Soumya Karlamangla is the lead writer for the California Today newsletter, where she provides daily insights and updates from her home state. More about Soumya Karlamangla

5 ways to remove carbon and tackle the climate crisis

Carbon removal is increasingly viewed as a key step on the road to achieving net zero by 2050. Image:  Unsplash/Joseph Barrientos

.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo{-webkit-transition:all 0.15s ease-out;transition:all 0.15s ease-out;cursor:pointer;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;outline:none;color:inherit;}.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo:hover,.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo[data-hover]{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo:focus,.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo[data-focus]{box-shadow:0 0 0 3px rgba(168,203,251,0.5);} Emma Charlton

.chakra .wef-9dduvl{margin-top:16px;margin-bottom:16px;line-height:1.388;font-size:1.25rem;}@media screen and (min-width:56.5rem){.chakra .wef-9dduvl{font-size:1.125rem;}} Explore and monitor how .chakra .wef-15eoq1r{margin-top:16px;margin-bottom:16px;line-height:1.388;font-size:1.25rem;color:#F7DB5E;}@media screen and (min-width:56.5rem){.chakra .wef-15eoq1r{font-size:1.125rem;}} Climate Change is affecting economies, industries and global issues

.chakra .wef-1nk5u5d{margin-top:16px;margin-bottom:16px;line-height:1.388;color:#2846F8;font-size:1.25rem;}@media screen and (min-width:56.5rem){.chakra .wef-1nk5u5d{font-size:1.125rem;}} Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale

Stay up to date:, climate change.

Listen to the article

• Carbon removal is increasingly viewed as a key step on the road to achieving net zero by 2050.
• Using trees, soil, farming techniques, the ocean and direct air capture can all reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and help achieve climate goals.
• Many World Economic Forum partners and technology pioneers are working in this space, including Climeworks.

Carbon emissions are driving the climate crisis, so we have a choice – we either reduce the amount of carbon we emit down to zero or we remove carbon from the atmosphere.

To get to net zero, in the quickest way possible, we need to do both.

Carbon removal is increasingly viewed as a key step on the road to achieving net zero by 2050. Experts say that simply reducing CO2 emissions will not get the world to that target – without carbon removal, net zero is practically impossible .

So how does it work?

This is where the terminology gets a bit complicated. Carbon removal is not a catch-all. It refers to removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere , while carbon capture and use or storage (CCUS) captures carbon from burning fossil fuels, which doesn’t directly reduce atmospheric carbon levels.

The Global Risks Report 2023 ranked failure to mitigate climate change as one of the most severe threats in the next two years, while climate- and nature- related risks lead the rankings by severity over the long term.

The World Economic Forum’s Centre for Nature and Climate is a multistakeholder platform that seeks to safeguard our global commons and drive systems transformation. It is accelerating action on climate change towards a net-zero, nature-positive future.

Learn more about our impact:

• Scaling up green technologies: Through a partnership with the US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, John Kerry, and over 65 global businesses, the First Movers Coalition has committed $12 billion in purchase commitments for green technologies to decarbonize the cement and concrete industry.
• 1 trillion trees: Over 90 global companies have committed to conserve, restore and grow more than 8 billion trees in 65 countries through the 1t.org initiative – which aims to achieve 1 trillion trees by 2030.
• Sustainable food production: Our Food Action Alliance is engaging 40 partners who are working on 29 flagship initiatives to provide healthy, nutritious, and safe foods in ways that safeguard our planet. In Vietnam, it supported the upskilling of 2.2 million farmers and aims to provide 20 million farmers with the skills to learn and adapt to new agricultural standards.
• Eliminating plastic pollution: Our Global Plastic Action Partnership is bringing together governments, businesses and civil society to shape a more sustainable world through the eradication of plastic pollution. In Ghana, more than 2,000 waste pickers are making an impact cleaning up beaches, drains and other sites.
• Protecting the ocean: Our 2030 Water Resources Group has facilitated almost $1 billion to finance water-related programmes , growing into a network of more than 1,000 partners and operating in 14 countries/states.
• Circular economy: Our SCALE 360 initiative is reducing the environmental impacts of value chains within the fashion, food, plastics and electronics industries, positively impacting over 100,000 people in 60 circular economy interventions globally.

Want to know more about our centre’s impact or get involved? Contact us .

Carbon removal can either happen via nature-based solutions or tech-based solutions – or a combination of both. Here are some examples:

Afforestation and reforestation

The clue is in the name with this one. And the answer is trees: planting new ones – afforestation – or restoring and managing existing forests – reforestation.

The World Economic Forum’s Uplink initiative challenged ecopreneurial start-ups to provide innovative and scalable solutions for sustainable forest management and wood products, with the winners including Fairventures Social Forestry , which works with local communities to establish agroforestry plantations on degraded areas.

2. Farming and soil sequestration

Farming techniques like no-till farming, cover cropping and agroforestry can be used to help enhance the carbon content in soil, which locks carbon away from the atmosphere.

SandX and CarboSoil are two Uplink innovator companies that seek to enhance soil fertility for the long term and support the goals of the Saudi Green Initiative of rehabilitating and reforesting throughout the Middle East.

3. Ocean-based removal and blue carbon ecosystems

Promoting the uptake of carbon dioxide by marine ecosystems and organisms, as well as conserving and restoring coastal ecosystems like mangroves, seagrasses and salt marshes, all fall under this heading. So does restoring and conserving wetlands, which are highly effective at sequestering carbon.

Blue carbon – carbon stored in aquatic ecosystems – can store as much as five times as much carbon per square foot as land-based ecosystems.

As well as using ecosystems like these as a natural sink, ways of enhancing carbon removal with technology are also under discussion, like mechanical and chemical ocean carbon dioxide removal .

Seawater carbon extraction, or electrochemical carbon dioxide removal (CDR), is one of the main ways. It aims to remove the carbon dioxide in ocean water and store it elsewhere, like the ocean form of direct air capture and storage.

4. Direct air capture (DAC)

Processes and approaches that remove carbon dioxide from the air come under this category and are often expensive and technologically difficult to scale. These technologies extract carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere so that it can be permanently stored or used for other applications.

Many countries and regions are advancing DAC technologies , including the US – which announced new funding in 2022 under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) – the EU, the UK, Japan and Canada.

Climeworks , Carbon Capture and Carbon Engineering are three companies currently working on direct air capture.

5. Carbon mineralization

This one is nature-based – occurring when carbon dioxide becomes a solid mineral, for example when certain rocks are exposed to carbon dioxide. While that’s something that happens slowly over time naturally, scientists are working on speeding the process up so that more carbon dioxide can be removed and permanently stored in this way.

Challenges with carbon removal

These are some of the ways to remove carbon from the atmosphere and help get us on track for net-zero emissions. Even so, many challenges remain.

“Carbon dioxide removal at a climate-significant scale is one of the most complex endeavours we can imagine,” say Holly Jean Buck and Roger Deane Aines, authors of CDR Primer . It requires “interlocking technologies, social systems, economies, transportation systems, agricultural systems, and, of course, the political economy required to fund it”.

Have you read?

How (and why) to boost carbon capture, usage and storage to move towards net zero, we need to start treating carbon capture and storage the same way as hydrogen. here's why, why industrial clusters are key to unlocking the potential of carbon capture solutions, don't miss any update on this topic.

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

Related topics:

The agenda .chakra .wef-n7bacu{margin-top:16px;margin-bottom:16px;line-height:1.388;font-weight:400;} weekly.

A weekly update of the most important issues driving the global agenda

.chakra .wef-1dtnjt5{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-flex-wrap:wrap;-ms-flex-wrap:wrap;flex-wrap:wrap;} More on Climate Change .chakra .wef-nr1rr4{display:-webkit-inline-box;display:-webkit-inline-flex;display:-ms-inline-flexbox;display:inline-flex;white-space:normal;vertical-align:middle;text-transform:uppercase;font-size:0.75rem;border-radius:0.25rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;line-height:1.2;-webkit-letter-spacing:1.25px;-moz-letter-spacing:1.25px;-ms-letter-spacing:1.25px;letter-spacing:1.25px;background:none;padding:0px;color:#B3B3B3;-webkit-box-decoration-break:clone;box-decoration-break:clone;-webkit-box-decoration-break:clone;}@media screen and (min-width:37.5rem){.chakra .wef-nr1rr4{font-size:0.875rem;}}@media screen and (min-width:56.5rem){.chakra .wef-nr1rr4{font-size:1rem;}} See all

From São Paulo to Venice: 15 cities with ambitious zero-carbon projects

Victoria Masterson

April 12, 2024

The world is facing a 70% supply shortfall in low-carbon buildings, new report says – here’s why

April 11, 2024

Earth Day: What is it, when is it and why is it important?

Lindsey Ricker and Hanh Nguyen

Explainer: Why some countries are aiming for ‘net-negative’ emissions

Daisy Dunne

April 10, 2024

Is climate inaction a human rights violation?

John Letzing and Minji Sung

April 9, 2024

Tropical forest loss slows, and other nature and climate stories you need to read this week

Joe Myers and Meg Jones

April 8, 2024

How to reduce your carbon footprint

Dana Haine and Grant Parkins of Carolina's Center for Public Engagement with Science share ways to reduce your personal carbon footprint and explain how little steps can make a difference.

A single person can’t turn back the clock on climate change, but everybody making small steps toward reducing their carbon footprint can go a long way.

“You don’t have to be perfect,” said Grant Parkins of Carolina’s Center for Public Engagement with Science . “It’s helpful if everybody just does a little bit better.”

Parkins and Dana Haine have been helping North Carolinians make steps to reduce their carbon footprints through the UNC Institute of the Environment ‘s outreach programs in the Center for Public Engagement with Science.

“We are tasked with taking the environmental science research coming out of the University and making it meaningful to different audiences,” said Haine, the institute’s K-12 science education manager. “We’re trying to get current environmental science and environmental-health science out to the audiences who can use it to inform their work.”

For Earth Day, the two educators shared advice on reducing your carbon footprint and taking steps toward helping our environment.

Think before you buy

The carbon emitted through the lifecycle of a product is a person’s secondary carbon footprint. Whether it’s the plastic your orange juice comes in or the refrigeration it requires to keep it fresh, every product has a hidden energy behind it, Haine said.

“A lot of our consumer decisions impact that secondary carbon footprint,” she said. “All of these products use energy, and most of the time, that energy comes from fossil fuels.”

Haine suggests consumers stop and think about the entire lifecycle of products and where fossil fuels may come into play before purchasing. Think about how the product was likely created, how it was transported to the store, how it’s being stored and what will happen to it when you’re finished with it. Then consider if there are alternative options that remove some fossil fuels from the process.

A primary culprit for our secondary footprints is single-use plastic. Cutting down on plastic water bottles is a given, but how often do you put fruit or vegetables in a plastic bag that will ultimately end up inside another plastic bag? Or how about those plastic shampoo bottles that get tossed when they’re empty. Those single-use plastics are rarely recycled, ultimately winding up in a landfill, and they also required some form of energy to be created in the first place, adding to carbon emissions.

“There’s a lot of single-use plastics that people aren’t thinking about,” said Parkins, the director of the Center for Public Engagement with Science’s Energy Literacy, Engagement and Action Program.

Adopt green eating habits

Reducing food waste can help the environment, but so can changing what you’re eating and when you’re eating it.

Food comes with a secondary carbon footprint, from the resources needed to farm cattle to transporting the food across the country or world. Eating locally and seasonally can reduce the emissions created by transportation.

“If you’re eating locally, you’re probably eating seasonally,” Parkins said. “Eating strawberries in the middle of December probably has a greater impact on your carbon footprint than eating them in late May.”

Working more plants into your diet will also reduce the amount the carbon emissions created by your meals because the carbon emitted from raising animals is higher than growing crops.

When it comes to adjusting your eating habits, making small, incremental steps toward more plant-based meals can make a difference.

“There are different things that you can do to make it fit for how your family eats,” he said. “Instead of going eight meals a week with beef, make it four meals a week with beef and four with plant-based protein.

Work together

While individual steps to reduce your carbon footprint can make headway in helping to reduce overall carbon emissions, working together with local businesses and community members can make an even greater impact, Haine said.

Whether it’s working to spur positive environmental changes or helping others reach their environmental goals, Haine said we’ll get further if our improvements extend beyond just our own habits and into larger decision-making.

“Individuals alone aren’t going to solve our problems when it comes to climate change,” Haine said. “We have to have a systemic change, which means changing policy and behaviors. Individuals have a role in that in the sense of choices that we make to lower our carbon footprint, but also to serve as positive role models to others.”

School of Education students networked in Raleigh with representatives from 11 state agencies.

Global studies scholar aspires to diplomacy

After earning a master’s degree, Kat Goodpaster became assistant director of Carolina’s Russian Flagship Program.

Public Service Awards go to 7 people, 2 groups

The Carolina Center for Public Service honored work on health disparities, refugee aid and more.

How to accomplish almost any goal

Paschal Sheeran’s research has found that we successfully achieve our goals only half the time. Here he shares three steps to go from dreaming to doing.

How to have happier relationships

Barbara Fredrickson studies the psychology of positive emotions, including love. Her research offers tips to build happier relationships and bring more love into our lives.

Share on Mastodon

Subscribe to Anthropocene's Newsletters

Join thousands of researchers, policymakers, designers, and educators who rely on Anthropocene to keep up to date on the latest sustainability and climate science and innovations.

Forward-Thinkers Wanted!

Newsletters Newsletters Science Dispatch (weekly) Fixing Carbon (twice a month)

Forward Thinkers Wanted

Sign up for Anthropocene's free newsletters

DAILY SCIENCE

To get people to reduce their carbon footprint, we need to address inequality

Let the best of Anthropocene come to you.

Awareness of inequality is threaded throughout many conversations about climate change: Some people produce more carbon emissions than others, for example. And some people will be more affected by climate change than others. All of this is widely known and well accepted.

There’s also lots of talk about how people need to change their behavior to reduce their carbon footprint. But in these discussions, acknowledgement of inequality is almost absent. That needs to change, a pair of researchers in the UK argue in a new commentary.

“Modelling studies show that unprecedented reductions in inequalities for both wealth and emissions are necessary to secure decent living conditions within safe planetary boundaries,” Charlotte Kukowski of the University of Cambridge and Emma Garnett of the University of Oxford write in the paper, which appears in the journal Nature Climate Change .

The researchers’ inspiration for the piece came from “being part of policy and research conversations which would come up with big lists of how we could get people—particularly people on lower incomes—living healthier and more sustainable lives, and ‘reducing inequality’ was almost never mentioned,” Garnett says.

That blank spot exists in the scientific literature, too. “We found that research often overemphasizes individual behavior change through targeting individuals’ knowledge, attitudes, or motivation,” says Kukowski. “However, individuals don’t choose their behaviors in isolation.”

For example, older, poorly insulated houses require more energy to heat than newer homes. These older dwellings are often occupied by renters, many with low incomes. But in the UK, government subsidies to improve insulation are only available to homeowners—so renters have little control over how well insulated their dwelling is.

Inequality can involve not just money but also social resources, time, political influence, or access to low-carbon options. All these forms of inequality mean that it is harder for some people to adopt low-carbon behaviors than it is for others.

For example, plant-based meats are associated with lower carbon emissions but are more costly than animal products. Beans and grains are a cheap source of climate-friendly protein—but may require more time and effort to prepare. Public transit services tend to be poor in rural areas, making low-carbon transportation less feasible for rural populations.

“We need policy to come in and regulate big polluters and oil companies, whose expansion is incompatible with a livable climate, and make it feasible for individuals to change their behavior by making the lower-carbon options like public transport and plant-based diets more available, affordable, attractive and socially acceptable,” Kukowski says.

“We have to reduce inequality to give everyone more equal means to participate in reaching Net Zero,” adds Garnett.

Campaigns to encourage behavior change should focus on helping people overcome barriers to action—not just providing information, the researchers argue. They suggest policies such as improving public transportation and other public services could help reduce barriers to climate action, as could moving to a four-day work week to give people more time (as well as cut spending on high-emission activities such as commuting).

However, research about how inequality intersects with climate-friendly behavior is lacking, the authors note. “It would be great to see work that identifies specific barriers that people face when trying to adapt high-impact behaviors, i.e., those that make the biggest difference in terms of emissions like driving and flying less and adopting largely plant-based diets,” says Kukowski. “This work could then help target these barriers specifically for different population groups to make the changes we need to see as feasible as possible for everyone.”

Source: Kukowski C.A. and E.E. Garnett “ Tackling inequality is essential for behaviour change for net zero .”  Nature Climate Change 2023.

Image: Shutterstock

Our work is available free of charge and advertising. We rely on readers like you to keep going. Donate Today

What to Read Next

Tylenol, now from palm trees instead of petroleum

The ubiquitous medicine’s active ingredient is made today from crude oil-derived chemicals, but a greener route to relieving aches and pain is possible

 Anthropocene Team

Does that FSC label on forest products actually buy better wildlife protection in the jungles of Central Africa?

Sometimes maligned as greenwashing, new research found FSC-certified forestry effectively protects wildlife in tropical forests.

 Warren Cornwall

Climate scientists experiment with connecting people in the present with people in the future

A new study describes the shape of intergenerational altruism, and suggests a simple way to activate it—at least among half the population.

 Sarah DeWeerdt

Get the latest sustainability science delivered to your inbox every week

Newsletters Science Dispatch (weekly) Fixing Carbon (twice a month)

You have successfully signed up

We will never share your email address unless you allow us to do so.  View our  privacy policy . Easy unsubscribe links are provided in every email.

Share This Article

Subscribe or renew today

Every print subscription comes with full digital access

Science News

It’s possible to reach net-zero carbon emissions. here’s how.

Cutting carbon dioxide emissions to curb climate change is possible but not easy

Curbing climate change means getting more electricity from renewable sources, such as wind power.

Erik Isakson/ Tetra images/Getty Images

Share this:

By Alexandra Witze

January 27, 2023 at 7:00 am

Patricia Hidalgo-Gonzalez saw the future of energy on a broiling-hot day last September.

An email alert hit her inbox from the San Diego Gas & Electric Company. “Extreme heat straining the grid,” read the message, which was also pinged as a text to 27 million people. “Save energy to help avoid power interruptions.”

It worked. People cut their energy use. Demand plunged, blackouts were avoided and California successfully weathered a crisis exacerbated by climate change. “It was very exciting to see,” says Hidalgo-Gonzalez, an electrical engineer at the University of California, San Diego who studies renewable energy and the power grid.

This kind of collective societal response, in which we reshape how we interact with the systems that provide us energy, will be crucial as we figure out how to live on a changing planet.

Earth has warmed at least 1.1 degrees Celsius since the 19th century, when the burning of coal, oil and other fossil fuels began belching heat-trapping gases such as carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Scientists agree that only drastic action to cut emissions can keep the planet from blasting past 1.5 degrees of warming — a threshold beyond which the consequences become even more catastrophic than the rising sea levels, extreme weather and other impacts the world is already experiencing.

The goal is to achieve what’s known as net-zero emissions, where any greenhouse gases still entering the atmosphere are balanced by those being removed — and to do it as soon as we can.

Scientists say it is possible to swiftly transform the ways we produce and consume energy. To show the way forward, researchers have set out paths toward a world where human activities generate little to no carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases — a decarbonized economy.

The key to a decarbonized future lies in producing vast amounts of new electricity from sources that emit little to none of the gases, such as wind, solar and hydropower, and then transforming as much of our lives and our industries as possible to run off those sources. Clean electricity needs to power not only the planet’s current energy use but also the increased demands of a growing global population.

Once humankind has switched nearly entirely to clean electricity, we will also have to counter­balance the carbon dioxide we still emit — yes, we will still emit some — by pulling an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and storing it somewhere permanently.

Achieving net-zero emissions won’t be easy. Getting to effective and meaningful action on climate change requires overcoming decades of inertia and denial about the scope and magnitude of the problem. Nations are falling well short of existing pledges to reduce emissions, and global warming remains on track to charge past 1.5 degrees perhaps even by the end of this decade.

Yet there is hope. The rate of growth in CO 2 emissions is slowing globally — down from 3 percent annual growth in the 2000s to half a percent annual growth in the last decade, according to the Global Carbon Project , which quantifies greenhouse gas emissions.

There are signs annual emissions could start shrinking. And over the last two years, the United States, by far the biggest cumulative contributor to global warming, has passed several pieces of federal legislation that include financial incentives to accelerate the transition to clean energy. “We’ve never seen anything at this scale,” says Erin Mayfield, an energy researcher at Dartmouth College.

Though the energy transition will require many new technologies, such as innovative ways to permanently remove carbon from the atmosphere, many of the solutions, such as wind and solar power, are in hand — “stuff we already have,” Mayfield says.

How to hit net-zero carbon emissions by 2050

In a 2021 report, the International Energy Agency described the steps necessary to ensure that by 2050 the amount of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere globally balances the amount being taken out. This chart shows how carbon dioxide emissions would have to drop across sectors to bring planetwide emissions from roughly 34 billion metric tons annually to net-zero.  

The current state of carbon dioxide emissions

Of all the emissions that need to be slashed, the most important is carbon dioxide, which comes from many sources such as cars and trucks and coal-burning power plants. The gas accounted for 79 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2020. The next most significant greenhouse gas, at 11 percent of emissions in the United States, is methane, which comes from oil and gas operations as well as livestock, landfills and other land uses.

The amount of methane may seem small, but it is mighty — over the short term, methane is more than 80 times as efficient at trapping heat as carbon dioxide is, and methane’s atmospheric levels have nearly tripled in the last two centuries. Other greenhouse gases include nitrous oxides, which come from sources such as applying fertilizer to crops or burning fuels and account for 7 percent of U.S. emissions, and human-made fluorinated gases such as hydrofluorocarbons that account for 3 percent.

Globally, emissions are dominated by large nations that produce lots of energy. The United States alone emits around 5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide each year. It is responsible for most of the greenhouse gas emissions throughout history and ceded the spot for top annual emitter to China only in the mid-2000s. India ranks third.

Because of the United States’ role in producing most of the carbon pollution to date, many researchers and advocates argue that it has the moral responsibility to take the global lead on cutting emissions. And the United States has the most ambitious goals of the major emitters, at least on paper. President Joe Biden has said the country is aiming to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Leaders in China and India have set net-zero goals of 2060 and 2070, respectively.

Under the auspices of a 2015 international climate change treaty known as the Paris agreement, 193 nations plus the European Union have pledged to reduce their emissions. The agreement aims to keep global warming well below 2 degrees, and ideally to 1.5 degrees, above preindustrial levels. But it is insufficient. Even if all countries cut their emissions as much as they have promised under the Paris agreement, the world would likely blow past 2 degrees of warming before the end of this century. 

Every nation continues to find its own path forward. “At the end of the day, all the solutions are going to be country-specific,” says Sha Yu, an earth scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and University of Maryland’s Joint Global Change Research Institute in College Park, Md. “There’s not a universal fix.”

But there are some common themes for how to accomplish this energy transition — ways to focus our efforts on the things that will matter most. These are efforts that go beyond individual consumer choices such as whether to fly less or eat less meat. They instead penetrate every aspect of how society produces and consumes energy.

Such massive changes will need to overcome a lot of resistance, including from companies that make money off old forms of energy as well as politicians and lobbyists. But if society can make these changes, it will rank as one of humanity’s greatest accomplishments. We will have tackled a problem of our own making and conquered it.

Here’s a look at what we’ll need to do.

Make as much clean electricity as possible

To meet the need for energy without putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, countries would need to dramatically scale up the amount of clean energy they produce. Fortunately, most of that energy would be generated by technologies we already have — renewable sources of energy including wind and solar power.

“Renewables, far and wide, are the key pillar in any net-zero scenario,” says Mayfield, who worked on an influential 2021 report from Princeton University’s Net-Zero America project , which focused on the U.S. economy.

The Princeton report envisions wind and solar power production roughly quadrupling by 2030 to get the United States to net-zero emissions by 2050. That would mean building many new solar and wind farms, so many that in the most ambitious scenario, wind turbines would cover an area the size of Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma combined.

How much solar and wind power would we need?

Achieving net-zero would require a dramatic increase in solar and wind power in the United States. These maps show the footprint of existing solar and wind infrastructure in the contiguous United States (as of 2020) and a possible footprint for a midrange scenario for 2050. Gray shows population density of 100 people per square kilometer or greater.

Such a scale-up is only possible because prices to produce renewable energy have plunged. The cost of wind power has dropped nearly 70 percent, and solar power nearly 90 percent, over the last decade in the United States. “That was a game changer that I don’t know if some people were expecting,” Hidalgo-Gonzalez says.

Globally the price drop in renewables has allowed growth to surge; China, for instance, installed a record 55 gigawatts of solar power capacity in 2021, for a total of 306 gigawatts or nearly 13 percent of the nation’s installed capacity to generate electricity. China is almost certain to have had another record year for solar power installations in 2022.

Challenges include figuring out ways to store and transmit all that extra electricity, and finding locations to build wind and solar power installations that are acceptable to local communities. Other types of low-carbon power, such as hydropower and nuclear power, which comes with its own public resistance, will also likely play a role going forward.

More renewable electricity globally

Renewable energy sources, such as solar, wind and hydropower, account for a larger share of global electricity generation today than they did in 2015. The International Energy Agency expects that trend to continue, projecting that renewables will top 38 percent in 2027.

Get efficient and go electric

The drive toward net-zero emissions also requires boosting energy efficiency across industries and electrifying as many aspects of modern life as possible, such as transportation and home heating.

Some industries are already shifting to more efficient methods of production, such as steelmaking in China that incorporates hydrogen-based furnaces that are much cleaner than coal-fired ones, Yu says. In India, simply closing down the most inefficient coal-burning power plants provides the most bang for the buck, says Shayak Sengupta, an energy and policy expert at the Observer Research Foundation America think tank in Washington, D.C. “The list has been made up,” he says, of the plants that should close first, “and that’s been happening.”

To achieve net-zero, the United States would need to increase its share of electric heat pumps, which heat houses much more cleanly than gas- or oil-fired appliances, from around 10 percent in 2020 to as much as 80 percent by 2050, according to the Princeton report. Federal subsidies for these sorts of appliances are rolling out in 2023 as part of the new Inflation Reduction Act , legislation that contains a number of climate-related provisions.

Shifting cars and other vehicles away from burning gasoline to running off of electricity would also lead to significant emissions cuts. In a major 2021 report , the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine said that one of the most important moves in decarbonizing the U.S. economy would be having electric vehicles account for half of all new vehicle sales by 2030. That’s not impossible; electric car sales accounted for nearly 6 percent of new sales in the United States in 2022, which is still a low number but nearly double the previous year .

Make clean fuels

Some industries such as manufacturing and transportation can’t be fully electrified using current technologies — battery powered airplanes, for instance, will probably never be feasible for long-duration flights. Technologies that still require liquid fuels will need to switch from gas, oil and other fossil fuels to low-carbon or zero-carbon fuels.

One major player will be fuels extracted from plants and other biomass, which take up carbon dioxide as they grow and emit it when they die, making them essentially carbon neutral over their lifetime. To create biofuels, farmers grow crops, and others process the harvest in conversion facilities into fuels such as hydrogen. Hydrogen, in turn, can be substituted for more carbon-intensive substances in various industrial processes such as making plastics and fertilizers — and maybe even as fuel for airplanes someday.

In one of the Princeton team’s scenarios, the U.S. Midwest and Southeast would become peppered with biomass conversion plants by 2050, so that fuels can be processed close to where crops are grown. Many of the biomass feedstocks could potentially grow alongside food crops or replace other, nonfood crops.

Solar and wind power trends in the United States

The amount of electricity generated from wind and solar power in the United States has surged in the last decade. The boost was made possible in large part by drops in the costs of producing that energy.

Cut methane and other non-CO 2 emissions

Greenhouse gas emissions other than carbon dioxide will also need to be slashed. In the United States, the majority of methane emissions come from livestock, landfills and other agricultural sources, as well as scattered sources such as forest fires and wetlands. But about one-third of U.S. methane emissions come from oil, gas and coal operations. These may be some of the first places that regulators can target for cleanup, especially “super emitters” that can be pinpointed using satellites and other types of remote sensing .

In 2021, the United States and the European Union unveiled what became a global methane pledge endorsed by 150 countries to reduce emissions. There is, however, no enforcement of it yet. And China, the world’s largest methane emitter, has not signed on.

Nitrous oxides could be reduced by improving soil management techniques, and fluorinated gases by finding alternatives and improving production and recycling efforts.

Sop up as much CO 2 as possible

Once emissions have been cut as much as possible, reaching net-zero will mean removing and storing an equivalent amount of carbon to what society still emits.

One solution already in use is to capture carbon dioxide produced at power plants and other industrial facilities and store it permanently somewhere, such as deep underground. Globally there are around 35 such operations, which collectively draw down around 45 million tons of carbon dioxide annually. About 200 new plants are on the drawing board to be operating by the end of this decade, according to the International Energy Agency.

The Princeton report envisions carbon capture being added to almost every kind of U.S. industrial plant, from cement production to biomass conversion. Much of the carbon dioxide would be liquefied and piped along more than 100,000 kilometers of new pipelines to deep geologic storage, primarily along the Texas Gulf Coast, where underground reservoirs can be used to trap it permanently. This would be a massive infrastructure effort. Building this pipeline network could cost up to $230 billion, including $13 billion for early buy-in from local communities and permitting alone.

Another way to sop up carbon is to get forests and soils to take up more. That could be accomplished by converting crops that are relatively carbon-intensive, such as corn to be used in ethanol, to energy-rich grasses that can be used for more efficient biofuels, or by turning some cropland or pastures back into forest. It’s even possible to sprinkle crushed rock onto croplands, which accelerates natural weathering processes that suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

Another way to increase the amount of carbon stored in the land is to reduce the amount of the Amazon rainforest that is cut down each year. “For a few countries like Brazil, preventing deforestation will be the first thing you can do,” Yu says.

When it comes to climate change, there’s no time to waste

The Princeton team estimates that the United States would need to invest at least an additional $2.5 trillion over the next 10 years for the country to have a shot at achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. Congress has begun ramping up funding with two large pieces of federal legislation it passed in 2021 and 2022. Those steer more than $1 trillion toward modernizing major parts of the nation’s economy over a decade — including investing in the energy transition to help fight climate change.

Between now and 2030, solar and wind power, plus increasing energy efficiency, can deliver about half of the emissions reductions needed for this decade, the International Energy Agency estimates. After that, the primary drivers would need to be increasing electrification, carbon capture and storage, and clean fuels such as hydrogen.

The trick is to do all of this without making people’s lives worse. Developing nations need to be able to supply energy for their economies to develop. Communities whose jobs relied on fossil fuels need to have new economic opportunities.

Julia Haggerty, a geographer at Montana State University in Bozeman who studies communities that are dependent on natural resources, says that those who have money and other resources to support the transition will weather the change better than those who are under-resourced now. “At the landscape of states and regions, it just remains incredibly uneven,” she says.

The ongoing energy transition also faces unanticipated shocks such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which sent energy prices soaring in Europe, and the COVID-19 pandemic, which initially slashed global emissions but later saw them rebound.

But the technologies exist for us to wean our lives off fossil fuels. And we have the inventiveness to develop more as needed. Transforming how we produce and use energy, as rapidly as possible, is a tremendous challenge — but one that we can meet head-on. For Mayfield, getting to net-zero by 2050 is a realistic goal for the United States. “I think it’s possible,” she says. “But it doesn’t mean there’s not a lot more work to be done.”

More Stories from Science News on Climate

Polar forests may have just solved a solar storm mystery

Heat waves cause more illness and death in U.S. cities with fewer trees

‘On the Move’ examines how climate change will alter where people live

Climate change is changing how we keep time

Waterlogged soils can give hurricanes new life after they arrive on land

Cold, dry snaps accompanied three plagues that struck the Roman Empire

Many but not all of the world’s aquifers are losing water

Numbats are built to hold heat, making climate change extra risky for the marsupials

Subscribers, enter your e-mail address for full access to the Science News archives and digital editions.

Not a subscriber? Become one now .

•   Weather

Search location by ZIP code

How to reduce your carbon footprint.

Debunk myths around climate solutions and learn the most affective individual actions

• Copy Link Copy {copyShortcut} to copy Link copied!

GET LOCAL BREAKING NEWS ALERTS

The latest breaking updates, delivered straight to your email inbox.

Climate pessimism is a very real and understandable feeling which leaves people feeling hopeless and frustrated about the state of the climate crisis. However, instead of wallowing in feelings of disenfranchisement, there are several individual actions that can be taken to reduce an individual’s negative effect on the environment.

The evidence of the speed and seriousness of climate change is without doubt. The last ten years have been the hottest on record , with 2023 being the warmest. The level of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased by 150% since pre-industrial levels, according to NASA.

One way to measure the impact of an individual or entity’s actions is through a carbon footprint. A carbon footprint is the total amount of greenhouse gases produced by said individual or entity. The United States has a large carbon footprint, creating 11% of the world’s carbon emissions in 2022 and has historically emitted more emissions than any other country. Carbon footprint is highly linked to wealth and inequality, with the richest in the world contributing the most to climate change. Between 1990 and 2015, the richest 10% of the world accounted for more than half of the world's emissions, and the top 1% pumped out 15% of the world’s emissions.

Individual actions and small changes to lifestyles can be made that will reduce a person’s carbon footprint. However, not all adjustments are equally effective and with so many options, it can be confusing choosing which lifestyle changes will be the most beneficial to the environment.

According to a study in Science, the three most impactful and most recommended actions to reduce carbon footprint were having less children, taking less flights, especially long-haul, and living car-free. In a developed country, having just one fewer child saves a whopping 58.6T of emissions. Deciding not to take a transatlantic flight per year saves 1.6T of emissions and living car free saves 2.4T. Other impactful changes are eating a plant based diet and powering your home on green energy as well as investing in making your home more energy efficient through smart meters and insulation.

While there is healthy debate surrounding the power of individual actions as opposed to sweeping government or corporate change, individuals do hold power to reduce their emissions, especially those from wealthy countries which contribute disproportionately to the problem. Taking changes to reduce individual carbon footprints can negate climate pessimism, and help people feel better about doing their part to solve the problem.

How to reduce your carbon footprint

C limate pessimism is a very real and understandable feeling which leaves people feeling hopeless and frustrated about the state of the climate crisis. However, instead of wallowing in feelings of disenfranchisement, there are several individual actions that can be taken to reduce an individual’s negative effect on the environment.

The evidence of the speed and seriousness of climate change is without doubt. The last ten years have been the hottest on record , with 2023 being the warmest. The level of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased by 150% since pre-industrial levels, according to NASA.

One way to measure the impact of an individual or entity’s actions is through a carbon footprint. A carbon footprint is the total amount of greenhouse gases produced by said individual or entity. The United States has a large carbon footprint, creating 11% of the world’s carbon emissions in 2022 and has historically emitted more emissions than any other country. Carbon footprint is highly linked to wealth and inequality, with the richest in the world contributing the most to climate change. Between 1990 and 2015, the richest 10% of the world accounted for more than half of the world's emissions, and the top 1% pumped out 15% of the world’s emissions.

Individual actions and small changes to lifestyles can be made that will reduce a person’s carbon footprint. However, not all adjustments are equally effective and with so many options, it can be confusing choosing which lifestyle changes will be the most beneficial to the environment.

According to a study in Science, the three most impactful and most recommended actions to reduce carbon footprint were having less children, taking less flights, especially long-haul, and living car-free. In a developed country, having just one fewer child saves a whopping 58.6T of emissions. Deciding not to take a transatlantic flight per year saves 1.6T of emissions and living car free saves 2.4T. Other impactful changes are eating a plant based diet and powering your home on green energy as well as investing in making your home more energy efficient through smart meters and insulation.

While there is healthy debate surrounding the power of individual actions as opposed to sweeping government or corporate change, individuals do hold power to reduce their emissions, especially those from wealthy countries which contribute disproportionately to the problem. Taking changes to reduce individual carbon footprints can negate climate pessimism, and help people feel better about doing their part to solve the problem.

READ MORE: How to reduce your carbon footprint

CHECK OUT WPTZ: Get the latest Plattsburgh and Burlington news of the day. See the stories making headlines, and get the latest weather report online, anytime.