Carbon Footprint

How big is my Carbon Footprint and does it really matter?

I have fairly large feet (size 10 or 44 if you prefer) and use them to great extent to go walking when I can and to press on the pedals so they hit the metal as you glide along roads dodging speed cameras and speed bumps and just dodgy coppers, but does all this activity contribute to affecting the global incapacity of more carbon in the atmosphere?
I mean I need to work out how far I go. Perhaps on any given day, I may walk on average say 5km. I may drive perhaps upto 50km on average. So. Over a week this is 35km walking and 350km by car. Over a month it equates to on average 140km walking and 1,400km by car. Over a year then it may be that I walk 1,680km and drive 16,800km. Then what about public transport I use over the year? It depends on where I go, whether by train or bus. Perhaps I can add on another 6000km. Then perhaps I take the odd flight to Germany. Another 2,300km in the air. (well, less the 10km spent on the runways and taxiways!)

What about my global area of influence. The furthest north I have been is John O Groats in Scotland. The furthest east I have been is Lands End in Cornwall. The furthest south I have been is Malta in the mediterranean and the furthest west I have been is Rhodes (also in the med). So, then perhaps I can work out that I have placed particles of carbon over an area of 7,000,000 sq.km over the course of my life.

So in my 36 years I have perhaps travelled by foot and by vehicle something like 721,100km (+/- 10%)
This equates to 16 times the distance around the earth.

Now. How long does my carbon footprint last. If you were a carbon footprint detective could you trace my steps? Would they be a fixed imprint in the sand of time? I think the only evidence of my carbon footprint is the fact that I exist as a living human being. When I die, my body will be left somewhere in a grave. How much of a carbon footprint to corpses have. Skeletons hundreds of years old are found all the time. There is evidence of a person having once lived and worked and used fire and travelled and made their own unique individual influence on their world.

What about those footprints of long gone heroes? Masters of science and art, like Da Vinci and Einstein, who changed their world completely, and by their influence, the world changed for everyone else. Their carbon footprints still exist in the souls and minds, attitudes and abilities of everyone today.

Whatever I do today influences others for the future tomorrow. My footprint is placed indellibly in the sands of time. Written in God's book of life and forging future generations through my seed.

If I use less carbon, for heating and cooking then I would not last for long, particularly in these climes and especially in the winter. God made us, man, to live on the earth. Now to live, even in the basic hierarchy of need, we need to eat and we need shelter and we need warmth. All of these needs force us to generate carbon emissions. Thus it makes no sense to worry about footprints because unfortunately it is a fact of life.

How about communicating to God, praying for God to reduce carbon and to make the ice not melt and to make the seas not flood, but no. We want to do our own thing.

"It doesn't matter about anyone else, as long as I can have a good life and go where I want to go, then I am happy and who cares about others? oh, except you cannot do that because your carbon is too much, but it's ok for me, because I am stronger and richer and more famous than you "

Where is our freedom? What can we do? Even Prince Charles feels as though he shouldn't travel. Just think. In my 721,000km lifetime of travel, I bet over the whole time, I have used far less carbon than the lifetime of a jumbo jet which travels far further, or the travels of a ship which circumnavigate the globe year on year and carry tonnes of fuel just for one journey or the ships which crash and sink spilling their cargoes of fuel etc into the seas. My carbon footprint over my life is just a drop in the ocean of activity.
So I say, it doesn't matter. Let's enjoy our life, for God is in ultimate control.