My rough estimate of the CO2 created by driving to the polls to vote
in the US Presidential election is 36,000 metric tons of CO2.
I assumed 100 million voters, 5 vehicle miles per voter, 20 mpg.
I think the most uncertain factor I used is the vehicle miles per
voter. I don't have a good basis for estimating that.
There were 120 million votes casts in the last Presidential election,
but a good many were mail in ballots.
More mail in balloting would obviously reduce the carbon footprint of
voting. But mail in balloting is not allowed in many states, and it
is grossly under-utilized in most states. All voting is by mail in
Oregon. California and Colorado allow voters to sign up for permanent
mail in voting where the ballot is automatically sent to their address
for all elections.
Early voting in person may increase the carbon footprint, since there
are fewer early voting locations so the distance to the poll tends to
be longer. But this might be mitigated by combining errands in one
car trip.
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated
venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of
global environmental change.
Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the
submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not
gratuitously rude.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected]
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
