Day 22: Carbon Prints

I’m not exactly sure what my carbon footprint looks like, other than it would have to be a strappy wedge-heel grinding its presence into the ecosystem. I do believe that I am leaving a mark on the environment every time I leave something running. A computer, a television, a lamp…

I like the idea of the Butterfly Effect – that the simple flapping of a butterfly’s wings on one side of the world can affect weather patterns on the other. It’s kind of scary in a way, though, when I wonder if our progress and growth of industry and commercialism, our insatiable “need for speed” perhaps contributes to tsunami and earthquakes in third world countries. No, I haven’t studied it. I’m just sayin’…my SUV is a lot bigger than a butterfly…

At the very least, I should try to do my part to benefit the earth. Oh, don’t get me wrong…I love my computers and the big televisions and my bubbly fish tank, and I wouldn’t put my children in a car smaller than what I have now. But perhaps there are little things I can do along the way to lessen my footprint, like using more eco-friendly bulbs in my fixtures, turning off the computer when I’m finished using it, unplugging things as I go along.

A footprint says we’ve been here, that we stood in this place….we existed. It doesn’t tell much else about us, really. But I’m struck by the fact that a footprint is unintentional, and signifies only the fact that a place was trod. Let me leave a handprint: something that says I worked here, I contributed, I left my small corner of the world better than the way I found it, and I did it for the benefit of more than myself.