In this "green" or eco era, one tends to come across fresh "green" terminology. It may not be fresh. For environmentalists or those in the field, the terms may be familiar. I came across the idea of a carbon footprint life cycle. Living organisms have life cycles, but a carbon footprint? The concept is that a carbon footprint, the amount of greenhouse gases that a person releases into the atmostphere, can capture all possible causes, however minor, of their greenhouse gas emissions. Given that calculating all possible causes of a carbon footprint can be an anal and lengthy process, the more efficient path to take is to calculate your direct emissions, or emissions from owned sources. In the U.S., the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions are power companies. For a powerplant, direct emissions are emissions from sources they own. Powerplants burn fossil fuels which are full of carbon that when burned (or oxidized) spew carbon dioxide into the atmostphere. Indirect emissions would be the emissions that come from sources that the power company does not own. So if a powerplant gets an electricity bill from ConEd, it does not own or produce the electricity but it still used it, so indirectly, it impacted the environment. For a homeowner, I guess direct would be burning gas in a stove to cook food. The majority of emissions for homeowners is indirect. They don't produce electricity but they use it and by using electricity, they indirectly impact the environment.
So the next time I think about aging and growth, perhaps The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, I will think about another life cycle, the carbon footprint life cycle.
