ABSTRACT
Carbon accounting, or carbon footprinting , is a hybrid of life-cycle analysis and the ecological footprint that measures the total quantity of greenhouse gases emitted by an entity-whether it be an individual, plant, fi rm, or geographic entity. As well as scholarly work on this subject (Pandey et al. 2011), numerous books and articles have been written for the general public, including, inter alia, How Bad Are Bananas? The Carbon Footprint of Everything by Mike Berners-Lee (2011) and the “The Cheeseburger Footprint” by Jamais Cascio (https://www.openthefuture.com/ cheeseburger_CF.html). This latter study uses detailed data on energy use in the food sector co-developed by Stockholm University and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (Carlsson-Kanyama and Faist n.d.) to construct an approximate picture of the magnitude of the greenhouse gases associated with this ubiquitous American product. The results are startling, as the author concludes that “the greenhouse gas emissions arising every year from the production and consumption of cheeseburgers is roughly the amount emitted by 6.5 million to 19.6 million SUVs. There are now approximately 16 million SUV’s currently on the road in the U.S.”
