What is Carbon Footprint?

The Carbon Footprint is “the measure of the impact of all greenhouse gases produced by our activities (individual, collective, eventual and products) on the environment ». An important analysis is that carbon footprint has increased substantially in medium and high countries and only a small part in low countries. According to James Lovelock, it is most likely that there will be a drastic reduction in human population as a result of climate changes that are already inevitable, changes that among other things, do not allow food production for a population of current dimensions.

Industrial Revolution : Gave rise to an increase in mass consumption generating problems for climate change.

Due to the growing concentration of greenhouse gases, the temperature of Earth’s atmosphere has risen steadily causing :

• Sea level rise
• Catastrophic climate events increasing, alteration of rainfall regimes (more severe torrential downpours and droughts), etc…

UNEP and WMO 1998 intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) are responsible for :

• Analize scientific information on climate change
• Environmental and socioeconomic impacts
• Proposals formulation

The human footprint in greenhouse gases

According to UN « greenhouse gases (GHG) are produced naturally and are essential for the survival of human beings and millions of other living forms since by preventing part of the sun’s heat from spreading towards the space, they make the earth habitable. After more than a century and a half of industrialization, deforestation and large scale agriculture, the amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have increased to levels never seen in three million years. If population, economics and living standards -with the associated increase in consumption- grow, so will the accumulated level of emissions of this type of gases ».

« There are three facts that scientifics insist on and that are extremely useful to understand in a better way the root and scale of the problem :

• The concentration of GHG in Earth’s atmosphere is directly related to the global average temperature ;

• This concentration has been progressively increasing since the beginning of the industrial revolution and with it, planet’s temperature ;

• The most abundant GHG, about two thirds of all GHG’s types, is carbon dioxide (CO2) resulting from the burning of fossi fuels ».

We invite you to calculate your carbon footprint here: https://huelladeciudades.com/AppHCCali/main.html