Measure honestly
How scientists actually calculate emissions, what an emission factor is, how to build a personal baseline — and why most online calculators mislead.
All ten editions now on Amazon
Everyone tells you to shrink it. Nobody tells you by how much.
Your Carbon Footprint is a 23-chapter, fully referenced guide to measuring and reducing your environmental impact — built on peer-reviewed emission factors, not vibes. Fifty-eight data tables. Five case studies. A 30-day plan you can start tomorrow.
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English edition
Your Carbon Footprint
Amazon store
23Chapters, front-loaded with data
58Referenced data tables
10Complete language editions
30Day carbon detox plan
The problem, stated honestly
Most of us emit three to eight times our fair share.
The Paris Agreement implies a personal budget of roughly 2 tonnes of CO₂e per year — about 5.48 kg a day. Here is how that compares with where most people actually are.
Paris-compatible target
2.0 tthe budget
Global average today
6.0 t3×
United States average
16.0 t8×
Australia average
17.0 t8.5×
Since you opened this page, the world has emitted
0
tonnes of greenhouse gases (CO₂e)
At about 55 billion tonnes a year, that is roughly 1,740 tonnes every second. Your fair share for the whole of today: 5.48 kg.
The carbon budget in plain language. For a 50% chance of staying below 1.5 °C, the remaining global budget is roughly 400 billion tonnes of CO₂. Current emissions run at about 55 billion tonnes a year — around seven years of budget. That does not mean disaster in seven years. It means emissions must fall now, rapidly and consistently, not stop at some future date.
Chapter 2B · Life in a warming world
The difference between 1.5 °C and 3 °C is not a number.
It is the difference between difficulty and catastrophe for billions of people. Most books leave warming as an abstraction. This one gives an entire chapter to what each fraction of a degree actually does — to crops, coastlines, water, and the temperature at which outdoor work becomes medically dangerous.
+1.5°C
| Impact by 2100 | +1.5 °C | +2 °C | +3 °C | +4 °C |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sea level rise | 0.3–0.6 m | 0.4–0.8 m | 0.6–1.2 m | 1.0–2.0 m |
| Coral reefs surviving | 10–30% | <1% intact | Functionally gone | Functionally gone |
| People in water stress | +271 million | +500 million | +2 billion | >2 billion |
| Crop yield (tropical) | −9% | −18% | −25 to −35% | −30 to −50% |
| Heat-unsafe zones | Manageable | Severe in the tropics | Large tropics / subtropics | Huge zone, 3.5 billion people |
| Climate refugees | 100–200 million | 200–400 million | 500 million – 1 billion | 1–3 billion |
| Species extinction rate | Serious | Severe | Mass-extinction level | Geological scale |
| Adaptation | Costly but works | Stretched near its limit | Overwhelmed in many regions | Fails in many systems |
Scenario figures are drawn from IPCC assessment reports and the peer-reviewed impact literature, as compiled in Chapter 2B.
“Behind each fraction of a degree lies a cascade of specific, human-scale consequences: the frequency with which a farmer in Maharashtra loses her crop to drought, the height of floodwater in a Bangkok apartment building, the temperature at which outdoor labor becomes medically dangerous in Phoenix.”
Chapter 2B — Life in a Warming World
The data
Numbers precise enough to actually decide with.
Every emission factor in the book traces to a published source. Two of the 58 tables, reproduced here in full.
6.0 kg200 g beef burger
0.18 kg200 g lentil burger or dhal
The single most impactful swap in the book. Doing it twice a week saves about 600 kg CO₂e a year — 30% of the entire Paris-compatible annual budget, from one recurring decision.
Making the numbers real
A tonne of CO2e means nothing until you can picture it.
92 treesWhat it takes to absorb a whole 2-tonne annual budget. One tree absorbs about 21.77 kg CO₂e a year.
2.8 tA return flight London–New York, per passenger. More than an entire year's sustainable budget from one trip.
8.7 tA return flight London–Sydney, per passenger — more than four times the annual budget.
13 kmThe driving distance in an average petrol car that matches one beef hamburger (~2.5 kg CO₂e).
85 kgManufacturing a single smartphone — about four trees' annual absorption.
60 : 1The gap between the highest- and lowest-emission common foods: beef at 29.9 kg CO₂e per kg, vegetables at 0.5.
What you'll actually learn
From the science to your Saturday shopping list.
Most climate books stop at the problem. This one starts there and keeps going — into your plate, your commute, your thermostat, your wardrobe, and then into a plan you can follow.
Food, in forensic detail
A complete food emissions guide covering 19 seafood types, fermented foods, seasonal produce and protein efficiency — plus a practical roadmap for changing what you eat.
Every way you move
Twelve transport modes compared per kilometre, real EV models with real grid intensities, manufacturing footprints, and where rail genuinely beats flying.
The home you heat
Heating sources ranked by CO₂e per kWh, heat pump versus gas boiler over 15 years, grid intensity by country, insulation, solar and storage.
Everything you own
Embodied carbon in phones, laptops, appliances, furniture and clothing — and what the circular economy actually saves, material by material.
A plan, then leverage
A personal carbon budget, a 30-day detox, a year-by-year trajectory — then the chapter on where individual action stops and systemic change takes over.
Read before you buy
Four passages, unedited.
Chapter 1
What Is a Carbon Footprint?
The specific phrase “carbon footprint,” referring to greenhouse gas emissions, gained widespread currency in the early 2000s — and its popularization is entangled with a controversial chapter in corporate history. The oil company BP ran a major advertising campaign between 2004 and 2006 that introduced a “carbon footprint calculator” to the public and encouraged individuals to calculate and reduce their personal emissions. The campaign was criticized by climate activists who argued it shifted responsibility from the fossil fuel industry onto individuals, making consumers feel personally culpable for problems caused by structural forces far beyond any one person's control.
1 / 4Chapter 2
The Climate Crisis in Numbers
Here is one way to think about it: if you stacked 55 billion tonnes of CO₂ in solid blocks, each the size of a shipping container, the stack would stretch from Earth to the Moon and back — many times over. Every year. Without pause. That is what our global economy emits, continuing a trend that has accelerated almost without interruption since the first coal-fired steam engine began turning wheels in eighteenth-century Britain.
2 / 4Chapter 5
The Hidden Emissions on Your Plate
At the personal level, food is typically the single largest or second largest contributor to an individual's carbon footprint, depending on how much they fly. For someone who does not travel by air frequently, food is almost certainly the number one lever. And unlike home heating or transport infrastructure — which often require significant capital investment or depend on unavailable alternatives — diet is something most people in wealthy nations have the ability to change right now, today, with little cost and potentially significant co-benefits for health and wellbeing.
3 / 4Chapter 19
Community, Advocacy, and Systemic Change
Individual action is necessary but not sufficient. The carbon budget numbers make this mathematically clear: even if every person in the developed world adopted the most aggressive individual lifestyle changes available — vegan diet, no flying, electric car, heat pump, maximum insulation — the resulting emission reductions would be significant but would still fall short of the 1.5 °C target without concurrent system-level change.
4 / 4Chapter 17 · Building your personal carbon budget
The ten highest-leverage actions, ranked and costed.
The 80/20 rule applies to carbon. A small number of changes delivers 50–60% of the achievable reduction — and several of them save money rather than cost it. The dashed line marks 2 tonnes: a whole year's Paris-compatible budget.
ActionDifficultyCost
Cut all long-haul flights2–8 t a year
High
Saves money
Switch to a vegan diet1.5–2 t a year
High
Saves money
Switch from a petrol car to an EV1.5–2.5 t a year
Medium
$15–40k (offset by incentives)
Install a heat pump (replacing gas)1–2 t a year
Medium
$8–15k (before grants)
Replace a car commute with transit1–2 t a year
Medium
Saves money
Go flexitarian (from meat-heavy)0.9–1.5 t a year
Low–Medium
Saves money
Install an insulation package0.5–2 t a year
Low–Medium
$3–15k
Install solar panels0.5–1.5 t a year
Medium
$7–15k (before incentives)
Switch to a renewable energy tariff0.3–1 t a year
Very low
Same or slightly higher
Keep electronics two years longer~0.2 t a year
Low
Saves money
Appendix · Five composite portraits
The same advice does not work for everyone.
Five people, five countries, five completely different highest-impact actions. The book walks each through a multi-year trajectory with real numbers.
Sarah
Denver, USA · marketing manager
24.5 → 10 tover five years
A large SUV, a big suburban house and a meat-heavy diet. Year one is diet and tariff; the capital investments — EV, solar, heat pump — come later. A 59% cut: still not at target, but profound.
Ahmed
London, UK · software developer
61%of his footprint is flying
No car, mostly vegetarian, a flat-share — the “environmentally friendly” life. Four international flights a year swamp all of it. His case shows the highest-impact action is rarely the obvious one.
Maria
Rural Bavaria, Germany · teacher
Heatingand diet dominate
No public transit, an old petrol Golf, a gas-heated village house. German BAFA grants and KfW loans make the heat pump the decisive move — capital, not willpower.
James
Sydney, Australia · consultant
15.3 of 27 tfrom flights
Twelve domestic and four international flights a year, all for work. He cannot unilaterally stop. His chapter is about employer-level change, not personal virtue.
Lin
Singapore · financial analyst
Contextchanges the maths
Already low, thanks to the MRT and no car. Her air conditioning is not a luxury but a climate necessity — a reminder that identical behaviour carries different costs in different places.
And then, you.
Wherever you are
Ch. 4 → 17 → 18baseline, budget, first 30 days
Chapter 4 builds your own baseline; Chapter 17 turns it into a year-by-year budget; Chapter 18 gets you started in 30 days.
Where the numbers come from
Every emission factor is traceable.
The book is an act of translation, not invention. These are the datasets underneath it — all of them public, all of them checkable.
Food emissions
Kilograms of CO₂e per kilogram of food, as global averages from peer-reviewed lifecycle assessments across thousands of farms.
Poore & Nemecek (2018)
Transport emissions
Grams of CO₂e per passenger-kilometre. Aviation figures include the radiative-forcing multiplier of roughly 2× for contrails, water vapour and NOₓ at altitude.
EEA · IPCC · manufacturer LCA reports
Energy & heating
Grams of CO₂e per kilowatt-hour of useful heat or electricity delivered, with national grid intensities given country by country.
IEA · Ecoinvent · national energy agencies
Embodied carbon in goods
Lifecycle embodied carbon from raw material extraction through manufacturing and assembly, for phones, laptops, appliances and furniture.
Apple, Samsung, Google environmental reports · Ecoinvent · Carbon Trust
National footprints
Annual CO₂e per person on a consumption basis — imports and exports allocated to the country of consumption, not production.
Our World in Data · Global Carbon Project · World Bank (2023–24)
Warming potentials
CO₂e conversion on a common warming scale: methane at 25×, nitrous oxide at 298× over 100 years — which is why beef scores so high without burning any fossil fuel directly.
IPCC assessment reports
Table of contents
Twenty-three chapters, from first principles to 2050.
- 01What Is a Carbon Footprint?
- 02The Climate Crisis in Numbers
- 2BLife in a Warming World — What Each Degree Really Means
- 03How Scientists Measure Emissions
- 04Understanding Your Personal Baseline
- 05The Hidden Emissions on Your Plate
- 06The Complete Food Emissions Guide
- 07Transforming Your Diet — A Practical Roadmap
- 08How We Move and Why It Matters
- 09Your Car's Carbon Story
- 10Flying, Public Transit, and the Future of Travel
- 11Heating, Cooling, and Your Energy Bill
- 12The Road to a Zero-Carbon Home
- 13Electricity, Renewables, and the Grid
- 14The True Cost of Everything You Own
- 15Fashion, Clothing, and Textiles
- 16The Circular Economy — Buy Less, Buy Better
- 17Building Your Personal Carbon Budget
- 18The 30-Day Carbon Detox Plan
- 19Community, Advocacy, and Systemic Change
- 20Emerging Technologies That Could Save Us
- 21A Vision for 2050
- 22Decarbonr — The App That Powers This Book
- AAppendices — reference tables, five case studies, further reading
Ten editions · on sale now
One book. Ten complete translations.
Every edition is the whole book — all 23 chapters and 58 tables — not a summary. Kindle and paperback in every language; hardcover in German, Italian, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. Open a cover to turn the book in your hands.
EnglishEN
Your Carbon Footprint
FrenchFR
Votre Empreinte Carbone
GermanDE
Ihr CO2-Fußabdruck
SpanishES
Tu Huella de Carbono
ItalianIT
La Tua Impronta di Carbonio
PortuguesePT
Sua Pegada de Carbono
DutchNL
Uw Koolstofvoetafdruk
DanishDA
Dit Kulstofaftryk
NorwegianNO
Ditt Karbonspor
SwedishSV
Ditt Koldioxidavtryck
This page is also available in 45 other languages. Thirty-six further translations of the full book are complete and publish progressively as each is proofed.
About the author
Stephane Sprauer
Software developer & founder of DecarbonrWriting on climate, data and the gap between the two
A software developer, entrepreneur, and advocate for accessible climate science. He is the creator of Decarbonr, an iOS app that helps thousands of people track and reduce their daily greenhouse gas emissions through a data-driven interface.
His interest in carbon accounting grew from a conviction that the complexity of climate science was keeping most people from engaging meaningfully with the problem. Decarbonr was born from that conviction: peer-reviewed emissions data in the hands of anyone with a smartphone, no environmental-science degree required. This book is the next step — the context, the science, the specific numbers, and the practical steps, in one volume.
“The data exists. The challenge is making it accessible — turning scientific emission factors into something you can actually use at breakfast.”Stephane Sprauer
Honest answers
Before you buy.
Is this another book telling me to feel guilty?
No. Chapter 1 opens by explaining that the phrase “carbon footprint” was popularised by an oil company campaign that shifted blame onto consumers — and Chapter 19 states plainly that individual action alone cannot hit the 1.5 °C target. The book's position is that individual and systemic change are both necessary and not in opposition.
Do I need a science background?
No. Every technical term is defined where it first appears, and every number is translated into something physical — trees, kilometres driven, days of television. The data is rigorous; the reading is not.
How current are the figures?
Emission factors are drawn from the most recent published datasets available at the time of writing, with national footprint data from 2023–24 and grid intensities from current national energy agency reporting. Where a figure is a range or an estimate, the book says so.
Which languages and formats can I buy?
All ten editions — English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish — are on sale as Kindle eBooks and paperbacks. The German, Italian, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish editions are also in hardcover. Each one is a complete translation, not a summary.
Is the content the same in every format?
Yes — identical text, tables and appendices. The print interior is typeset for the page; the Kindle edition reflows to your screen.
Which Amazon store do the links open?
The one for your country, worked out when the page loads. You can change it in the Editions section; your choice is remembered on this device. Each edition has the same Amazon product number in every store, so the link lands on the right book wherever you shop.
Do I need the Decarbonr app to use the book?
No. The book is complete on its own; Chapter 22 describes the app for readers who want ongoing tracking, but every calculation in the book can be done with a pen.
Stop guessing. Start measuring.
Twenty-three chapters, fifty-eight data tables, and a plan that starts tomorrow morning.