Yer Carbon Footprint is a 23-chapter, fu-referenced guide tae measuring and reducing yer environmental impact — biggit on peer-reviewed emission factors, no vibes. 58 data tables. Five real case studies. A 30-day plan. Forty-sax languages.
The Paris Agreement implies a personal budget o roughly 2 tonnes of CO₂e per year — aboot 5.48 kg a day. Here is how that compares tae where maist folk actually are.
It is the difference between difficulty and catastrophe for billions o f people. Most books leave warming as an abstraction. This one gives an entire chapter to what each fraction of a degree actually does — to crops, coastlines, water, and the temperature at which outdoor work becomes medically dangerous.
| Impact domain | At +1.5 °C |
|---|
Scenario figures are drawn from IPCC assessment reports and the peer-reviewed impact literature, as compiled in Chapter 2B.
“Behind each fraction of a degree lies a cascade of specific, human-scale consequences: the frequency with which a farmer in Maharashtra loses her crop to drought, the height of floodwater in a Bangkok apartment building, the temperature at which outdoor labor becomes medically dangerous in Phoenix.”
Every emission factor in the book traces to a published source. Two of the 58 tables, reproduced here in full.
Grams of CO₂e per passenger-kilometre
Sources: EEA, IPCC, manufacturer LCA reports. Aviation includes a ~2× radiative forcing multiplier for contrails, water vapour and NOₓ at altitude.
Grams of protein delivered per kg CO₂e — higher is better
Primary source: Poore & Nemecek (2018), global averages from peer-reviewed lifecycle assessments.
Most climate books stop at the problem. This one starts there and keeps going — into your plate, your commute, your thermostat, your wardrobe, and then into a plan you can follow.
How scientists actually calculate emissions, what an emission factor is, how to build a personal baseline — and why most online calculators mislead.
A complete guid tae food emissions covering 19 seafood types, fermented foods, seasonal produce and protein efficiency — plus a practical roadmap for changing what ye eat.
Twelve transport modes compared per kilometre, real EV models with real grid intensities, manufacturing footprints, and whaur rail genuinely beats flying.
Heating sources ranked by CO₂e per kWh, heat pump versus gas boiler oer 15 years, grid intensity by kintra, insulation, solar and storage.
Embodied carbon in phones, laptops, appliances, furniture and claes — and whit the circular economy actually saves, material by material.
A personal carbon budget, a 30-day detox, a year-by-year trajectory — then the chapter on whaur individual action stops and systemic change taks ower.
The specific phrase "carbon footprint," referring tae greenhouse gas emissions, gained widespread currency in the early 2000s — and its popularization is entangled wi a controversial chapter in corporate history. The oil company BP ran a major advertising campaign between 2004 and 2006 that introduced a "carbon footprint calculator" tae the public and encouraged individuals tae calculate and reduce their personal emissions. The campaign was criticized by climate activists who argued it shifted responsibility frae the fossil fuel industry onto individuals, making consumers feel personally culpable for problems caused by structural forces far beyond ony one person's control.
Here is one way tae think about it: if ye stacked 55 billion tonnes of CO₂ in solid blocks, each the size of a shipping container, the stack would stretch frae Earth tae the Moon and back — mony times ower. Every year. Without pause. That is whit our global economy emits, continuing a trend that has accelerated almost without interruption since the first coal-fired steam engine began turning wheels in eighteenth-century Britain.
At the personal level, food is typically the single largest or second largest contributor tae an individual's carbon footprint, depending on hoo much they fly. For someone who doesnae travel by air frequently, food is almost certainly the number one lever. And unlike hame heating or transport infrastructure — which often require significant capital investment or depend on unavailable alternatives — diet is something maist folk in wealthier nations hae the ability tae change right now, the day, wi little cost and potentially significant co-benefits for health and wellbeing.
Individual action is necessary but no sufficient. The carbon budget numbers mak this mathematically clear: even if ilka person in the developed world adopted the maist aggressive individual lifestyle changes available — vegan diet, no flying, electric car, heat pump, maximum insulation — the resulting emission reductions would be significant but would still fall short o the 1.5 °C target without concurrent system-level change.
The 80/20 rule applies tae carbon. A smae number o changes delivers 50–60% o the achievable reduction — and several o them save money rather than costing it.
| Action | Annual saving | Difficulty | Cost |
|---|
Five folk, five kintras, five completely different highest-impact actions. The book walks each through a multi-year trajectory wi real numbers.
A large SUV, a big suburban hoose and a meat-heavy diet. Year one is diet and tariff; the capital investments — EV, solar, heat pump — come later. A 59% cut, still no at target, but profound.
No car, maistly vegetarian, flat-share — the "environmentally friendly" life. Four international flights a year swamp aathing o it. His case proves the highest-impact action is rarely the obvious one.
Nae public transit, an auld petrol Golf, a gas-heated village hoose. German BAFA grants an KfW loans mak the heat pump the decisive move — capital, no willpower.
Twal domestic an fower international flights a year, a' work. He cannae unilaterally stop. His chapter is aboot employer-level change, no personal virtue.
Awready low, thanks tae the MRT an nae car. Her air conditioning is no a luxury but a climate necessity — a mindin that identical behaviour carries different costs in different places.
Chapter 4 builds yer ain baseline; Chapter 17 turns it intae a year-by-year budget; Chapter 18 gets ye started in 30 days.
The book is an act of translation, no invention. Thae are the datasets underneath it — a' o them public, a' o them checkable.
Kilograms of CO₂e per kilogram of food, as global averages frae peer-reviewed lifecycle assessments across thousands of farms.
Grams of CO₂e per passenger-kilometre. Aviation figures include the radiative forcing multiplier of roughly 2× for contrails, water vapour and NOₓ at altitude.
Grams of CO₂e per kilowatt-hour of useful heat or electricity delivered, wi national grid intensities gien country by country.
Lifecycle embodied carbon frae raw material extraction through manufacturing and assembly, for phones, laptops, appliances and furniture.
Annual CO₂e per capita on a consumption basis — imports and exports allocated tae the country of consumption, no production.
CO₂e conversion on a common warming scale: methane at 25×, nitrous oxide at 298× ower 100 years — which is why beef scores sae high without burnin fossil fuel directly.
Tha gach deasachadh na eadar-theangachadh slàn — chan e geàrr-chunntas — mar Kindle eBook agus paperback. Tha English agus French air an reic an-dràsta; thèid an còrr fhoillseachadh mean air mhean.
Gach cànan eile a tha Amazon a’ cur taic ris. Eadar-theangachaidhean slàn de na 23 caibideilean uile — chan e geàrr-chunntasan — gan foillseachadh mean air mhean mar a thèid an dearbhadh.
A software developer, entrepreneur, and advocate for accessible climate science. He is the creator of Decarbonr, an iOS app that helps thousands of people track and reduce their daily greenhouse gas emissions through a data-driven interface.
His interest in carbon accounting grew from a conviction that the complexity of climate science was keeping most people from engaging meaningfully with the problem. Decarbonr was born from that conviction: peer-reviewed emissions data in the hands of anyone with a smartphone, no environmental science degree required. This book is the next step — the context, the science, the specific numbers, and the practical steps, in one volume.
Twenty-three chapters, fifty-eight data tables, and a plan that starts tomorrow mornin.