Your carbon footprint is simply an estimate of how much carbon dioxide you produce as a result of your daily lifestyle.  Besides the obvious CO2 you produce through breathing, chances are that the products you consume, the energy you use to drive, heat your home, or power your electronic devices all add to your carbon footprint.  When we process fossil fuels to make things (like fertilizer and plastics), CO2 is released into our environment.  Burning gasoline in our cars also produces CO2.  Enormous increases in CO2 in our environment lead to changes in our climate and are disastrous to our health.  The good news is that once we’re aware of our carbon footprint, there are steps we can take to reduce it.  Here are three of our favorite Carbon Footprint calculators:

Yahoo! Green. Our favorite carbon footprint calculator is Yahoo! Green’s tool.  The Yahoo! tool helps families determine their carbon footprint and plan for ways to reduce it.

The Nature Conservancy.  The Nature Conservancy has an easy to use Carbon Footprint calculator that takes a more proactive approach to calculating your carbon footprint.  The Nature Conservancy tool asks for things you are already doing to offset your carbon footprint, and then provides a comparison of your footprint with that of the average in the U.S. and the world.

Ecological Footprint. Ecological Footprint is a more in-depth quiz that provides your footprint information in terms of the number of earths we’d need if everyone had the same carbon footprint as ours.  This is a startling but effective result.  Try it yourself