{"id":17917,"date":"2019-09-15T17:47:15","date_gmt":"2019-09-15T17:47:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=17917"},"modified":"2019-09-16T10:51:25","modified_gmt":"2019-09-16T10:51:25","slug":"5-charts-show-how-your-household-drives-up-global-greenhouse-gas-emissions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/5-charts-show-how-your-household-drives-up-global-greenhouse-gas-emissions\/","title":{"rendered":"5 charts show how your household drives up global greenhouse gas emissions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Morteza Taiebat<\/a>, University of Michigan<\/a><\/em> and Ming Xu<\/a>, University of Michigan<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

As the public conversation about climate change gets increasingly serious, many Americans may be wondering: How do my individual choices affect climate change?<\/p>\n

Household consumption \u2013 food, housing, transportation, apparel and other personal services \u2013 is an important contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Everything you eat or wear, or every time you drive, you add to the global total emissions. The typical American\u2019s annual per capita carbon footprint<\/a> is over five times the world per capita average.<\/p>\n

A study<\/a> by our research team<\/a>, including Kaihui Song<\/a>, Shen Qu<\/a> and Sai Liang<\/a>, published on September 10, sheds light on the global carbon footprint of U.S. households.<\/p>\n

1. Some activities have a bigger impact<\/h2>\n

We looked at data from 1995 to 2014 from the U.S. Consumer Expenditure Survey<\/a>, as well as the World Input-Output Database<\/a>. We looked at the total global warming potential of all greenhouse gas emissions, not just carbon dioxide, as measured in their \u201ccarbon dioxide equivalent.\u201d<\/p>\n

We found that over 20% of all U.S. emissions are directly attributed to household consumption. If you consider indirect emissions, this figure is closer to 80%.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s zoom in on the latest available annual numbers, mostly from 2009, which give a better sense of these staggering impacts.<\/p>\n

U.S. households generate 5.43 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions every year. About 82.3% of those emissions are produced domestically.<\/p>\n

The remaining emissions are generated outside the U.S. These emissions come from global supply chains. For instance, the family car might have been manufactured abroad. So emissions from manufacturing of the car are created outside the U.S., but the emissions from tailpipe are domestic.<\/p>\n