Your age and your CO2 footprint

When I teach about carbon accounting, the first thing I do is get students to look at their own CO2 footprint. This typically means going to a website and putting in some information on your lifestyle. I read an article from the Economist a while back which outlined the differences in CO2 emissions based on age. The study was based on US data on nine types of consumption—including electricity use, driving cars, buying clothes and food. The amount of money spent on each was used to estimate a CO2 footprint by age. According to the article the 60-64 age group produces the most CO2, and this group is going to get larger in number over the coming years. You can click on the link to read the full article and see a nice graphical depiction of CO2 footprint by age