NYC’s carbon footprint visualized in turquoise bubbles

A carbon footprint — or the amount of carbon-based greenhouse gases an individual, product or business produces — can be difficult to visualize and therefore difficult for people to personally to take into account.

So to provide us with tangible, everyday context, Carbon Visuals and the Environmental Defense Fund produced a video that transforms each metric ton of carbon dioxide expelled by humans, cars, and buildings in New York City into a turquoise bubble.

Each bubble, Mashable notes, holds a diameter of 33 feet. As New Yorkers collectively produce 54,349,650 million tons a year (though mostly coming from buildings), they calculated that it would result in one sphere full of atmospheric pollution every second.

By the end of the day, that would result in enough spheres to blanket the entire city.

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But New Yorkers are still making strides. Emissions in the city of 8.2 million dropped 12 per cent between 2005 and 2010. And though the densely packed metropolis still produces a high level of greenhouse gases, the City of New York is working to reduce that carbon footprint by 30 per cent by the time 2017 rolls around.

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