Andrew Hui 1b pre conference simulation blogs.

Sep 13, 2017 by Andrew Hui

1. What part of your ecological footprint most surprised you?

The part of my ecological footprint that surprised me the most has to be my food with a 0.8 GHA. This surprised me a lot because I did not expect the food I consumed to have this sort of effect on me ecological footprint. I believe some of the food that made by GHA this high are the meat products that my parents commonly buy. My parents love to buy meat at grocery store's such as T&T and Costco and freeze mass amounts of them for soup and congee. Another factor could be the amount of food that my parents buy that come from foreign countries mostly China since my parents are Chinese. An example of this would be moon cakes which are a cake filled with lotus paste and commonly eaten during Mid Autumn festival and Chinese new year. These cakes are usually made in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong where they're then exported to Canada for sale.

1. How did your footprint compare to your city’s average (if available) and your country’s average?

My ecological footprint was 4.1 hectares per capita where the average carbon footprint for an Edmontonian in 2012 (The only data I could find) was 7.1 hectares per capita. The average ecological footprint for a Canadian was 6.78 hectares per capita. What I learned from this data is that while we slowly going into renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power we can do much better to lower our ecological footprint. The amount of non-local food that we eat can also be lowered to help lower our ecological footprint. We can also use public transportation more to lower and ecological footprint with news coming that Edmonton will soon transition out of using diesel fueled buses in a few years.

1. Find a location with a smaller carbon footprint from yours, within your own country if possible. What is different about this community from your own? What can you learn from this?

I haven't been able to find one as for all the Canadian city's I searched they just provide guides on how to reduce your ecological footprint

1. What parts of your footprint do you feel is possible to reduce? What parts don’t?

I feel that I can reduce my mobility footprint as I can take public transit more but I can not see myself reducing the rest because my parents don't really believe in reducing their ecological footprint as long as they can survive.

1. Read this article about large companies, individual actions, and climate change: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/08/just-90-companies-are-blame-most-climate-change-carbon-accountant-says. What do you think are the limits and possibilities in affecting climate change by the reduction of individual footprints?

2. Climate Challenge - Link

This small game challenges players to manage a European country’s response to climate change through various policies, while also trying to convince other nations to reduce their own CO2 emissions.

(The climate challenge didn't work on my computer because my computer couldn't download flash)

3. Water Footprint Calculator -Link (Global North Schools), Link (Global South Schools)

This tool allows students to calculate their water footprint, based on their lifestyle and the part of the world they live in. Tell students to pick a city that is comparable to theirs (only a few cities are included).Where you surprised by how much water you consumed?

( For me it just gave me a map)

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