Ecological Footprint

    So it seems that it would take 4.8 Earths to provide everyone with enough resources if they all lived like me. I don't find this at all surprising, especially when the pie chart showed that the largest contributor to this for me was a combination of services and transportation. I wasn't quite sure what it meant by services but I definitely understand the transportation part. My car does get fairly descent gas mileage however I do drive every Tuesday and Thursday from Menifee to Riverside to Norco and back in addition to driving from Menifee to Riverside and back every Wednesday and to Norco and back every Friday for school. Not to mention I typically spend my weekends in either Orange County or Los Angeles county.
    Given all of this, I can definitely see why my travels might have a pretty large impact on the environment. One of the things I have already done to help combat this is commute with one of my classmates who also lives out in the Temecula Valley. He is in the same class as I am at Norco on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and has a different class than the one I have just prior to that one at Riverside (while I am also at Riverside).
    One of the suggestions that was given to me when I decided to explore the options was to take public transportation. This would reduce my ecological footprint by 0.2 earths. However, as much as it is a nice thought, I don't see how this would be feasible as I live sort of out in wine country and the nearest bus stop to my house is about five miles away.
    The only other option that I can think of aside from continuing to carpool with my buddy is to get a more fuel efficient car. Which sounds a little ridiculous on the face of it but I am going to be in the market for a new vehicle soon anyway as I have already had my car for four years and it now has just under 200,000 miles on it (no, that is not a typo. I really have put 200,000 miles on my car in four years).


  As I am writing this, I am slowly being put to sleep by the song from the www.footprintnetwork.org/calculator website playing in the background.
                          It is very relaxing.


   The other thing that the pie chart told me was that I was using a lot of services. I wasn't quite sure what it meant by that, as I could find a lot of stuff that the quiz referenced that I would consider to be services. When I went to explore scenarios it told me that if solar panels provided most of the electricity for my house that it would reduce my ecological footprint by 0.1 Earths. This however, made very little sense when I considered the fact that about 95% the electricity that we use in our house already is being provided by solar panels (which was something that I had already told the quiz).