Let’s talk about the Elephant in the Room
When talking about the amount of carbon dioxide we as humans are pumping into the atmosphere the numbers are so vast it is hard to wrap your head around it. For example, in 2007 the U.S. pumped a staggering 5.8 billion (5,838,381,000) metric tonnes of C02 into the atmosphere (second only to China). So what exactly is five billion, eight-hundred and thirty eight million, three hundred and eighty one thousand metric tonnes of an odorless, colourless gas anyways? Well here is another way to think about it. The average African elephant ways roughly 4.5 tonnes, so doing a little math we can calculate that the weight of the U.S.’s C02 emissions in elephants would be 1.2 billion (1,297,418,000)!
1.2 billion elephants! That’s a lot of colourless, odorless C02, and that’s just from the US. for one year, and it’s continually increasing! Now that’s something you can wrap your head around.
I borrowed this ideas from a video on youtube. Have a look: