Introductory Blog

My name is Allison Stafford and I am a student at Riverside Community College. I am starting this blog as an assignment for an Environmental Science class that I am currently taking. For this first blog I will give a little information about myself and calculate my carbon footprint. I am 22-years old and have been at RCC for nearly 3 years. I plan to transfer this fall to major in Environmental Studies. Environmental issues have always been an interest to me and has become the basis of my academic goals. I know that there are solutions to the problems that face our environment, but feel that there are significant hurdles that these solutions need to overcome in order to be effective. Facing these hurdles is what I wish to do with my career. I was born in Orange, Ca. and have moved to various places throughout the Inland Empire before finally ending up in Riverside living with a wonderful couple named Beth and Gary who are letting me live with them while I attend school. I have 4 sisters, 1 brother, 2 nephews and 1 niece. I grew up with all sorts of animals as pets including cats, dogs, horses, various birds, rabbits, etc. Beth and Gary only have two little puppies which is a change of environment for me. When I was in high school I became an apprentice falconer for a year. Falconry is the sport of training, caring for, and hunting with birds of prey. It is an incredible sport and I miss it terribly, but it is very time consuming and not feasible for college students. I would describe myself as outdoorsy, one of my favorite places to go hiking is Azusa Canyon, especially in the spring.

Now I will calculate my carbon footprint using the website footprintnetwork.org. After answering a number of questions such as what I eat, where I live, my use of energy, how I travel, and how much I shop the website calculates that it would take 5.2 planet earths to sustain 1 planet full of me. The areas that appear to have the least impact are fishing grounds, built up land, and grazing land. This is probably due to my vegetarian diet and tenancy to buy locally and organic. Crop land and energy land are areas that I appear to have more impact. I think this is due to my housing and consumption such as buying clothes and books. The area with the biggest impact is energy land. I think that this is most likely due to how energy inefficient the house I live in is. I asked Beth how much their electric bill normally is and she said it usually runs around $400. The house was built around 1914 so there is not much that can be done unless they invest in something such as solar panels. Another problem is how far I usually have to drive because I work in Corona, CA which is about 20 miles away from where I live. Now that I know how much it costs to do nearly anything in my house, I will definitely be paying close attention to how often I use energy at home.