The Idea

We wake up every day to stare despondent at the morning enveloped in blankets of smog. Summers were always burning, but now even the winter is a little hot under the collar and seems to be in no mood to cool off. It is increasingly obvious to us that our natural environment, which makes life possible, is severely stressed.

The global scientific community has reached a similar, and decisive, conclusion - Global Warming IS occurring and it IS influenced greatly by the release of greenhouse gases from human activities. But the breaking news is that the cloud of ambiguity about responsibility for the deteriorating quality of the environment has started to disperse. It is clear now that the primary accountability rests entirely on the individual - not industry, not policies, not governments, not politicians, not leaders, but purely the individual.

Embracing the idea that the empowered individual, armed with rigorously researched knowledge, can alter those life choices that have a severe impact on the environment, we have embarked on this journey to stimulate the process of rectifying our fractured relationship with Nature.

REALISE! MINIMISE! NEUTRALISE!

As we confront the question: "what must we know, and do, most expediently, given our complex matrix of relationships with the environment", we realized that we do not even have an accurate tool to REALIZE - to measure the global warming impact of our specific lifestyle as a resident of this country.

The Personal Carbon Footprint Calculator

The Indian Carbon-Footprint Calculator fills this gap. The guiding principle of the Basic Carbon Calculator is 'ease of use'. At the end of this 5 minute exercise, you will get a number that, we hope, will make you pause and think a little about your energy, fuel and food usage - which at present happen almost automatically, without a second thought.

We also hope that this will encourage you to join us as we take the next steps to MINIMIZE, and then to NEUTRALIZE, the effects of years of imbalance between our consumption and Nature's ability to sustain.

But you might ask, "What difference can an individual make?"

The expression "drop by drop you can fill an ocean" is apt here. Every bit of carbon-footprint adds to that ocean's level and we are at risk of drowning in our self-created ocean; but correspondingly every bit not added or subtracted is a drop out of that very ocean.

So step up and together we can empty the oceans - footprint by footprint