Comments on: What’s the Carbon Footprint of my Checking Account? http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2008/11/20/what-is-the-carbon-footprint-of-my-checking-account/ Dispatches from the Youth Climate Movement Wed, 08 Feb 2012 06:09:05 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Aaron Kreider http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2008/11/20/what-is-the-carbon-footprint-of-my-checking-account/#comment-69294 Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:54:56 +0000 http://itsgettinghotinhere.wordpress.com/?p=7259#comment-69294 The calculator can be misleading if you don’t read the details and assume that it is calculating the TOTAL carbon footprint. It is not. It only looks at the impact of bank investments in oil/gas/coal.

Banks finance 1) other types of corporate spending that cause CO2 emissions, and 2) consumer spending (house construction, house improvements, car loans, etc). (And probably additional things that I’m forgetting).

A “low-carbon footprint” bank will have a much greater footprint than that given by the calculator (as will the high-carbon footprint banks). The calculator is useful for a narrow comparison (and for doing campaigns related to that), but not for measuring actual total footprint.

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