Carbon Footprint

How green are you?
Seems like a funny question.
Don't get me wrong. I don't mean how naive or easily deceived you are, nor do I mean how envious you are of others of what others have or possess.
If I can put it simply, are you a tree hugger? More pointedly, how large is your carbon footprint?
What is a carbon footprint you might ask.
Well, carbon footprint is the aggregate amount of CO2 each of us produce directly or indirectly each year. This could amount to approximately 10 metric tonnes (each year, my dear).. It is the total amount of carbondioxide we breath out, or expel as a result of excessive gas produced in the alimentary canal. (Sometimes referred to as flatulance, pang phooi (Chinese), kuntut (Malay), etc, etc), as well as gas produced by the cars we drive, or the amount of CO2 produced as we allow our appliances, viz. Plasma, or 200 watt lamps to burn unnecessarily every 24x7 with no end in sight. Incidentally the millions of heads of cattle, sheep, goats and pigs also produce greenhouse gases known as Methane. In fact, they produce more methane than we produce CO2, believe it or not. The good news is there are methane consuming bacteria that can digest the methane and turn it into a non reactive substance. That is a plus for our environment. Methane gas can also be used as fuel for home use for cooking as well as for the production of electricity.
How do we offset our carbonfootprint? How do we counter the excessive amount of CO2?
Trees, my dear. We grow more trees.
What is the connection between trees and the CO2 we produce? The trees absorb and store the CO2 in their wood and leaves and fruits as carbohydrates. They store these products during photosynthesis and in return give off O2 which is what we breathe in to stay alive. The expression is carbon sequestration, the storing of CO2 in the plant so that it will no longer be available to react with other gases. (locked up for good, in other words.)
Where are we going to find enough space to grow more, our backyards being so small? I already have five trees in mine. More would just see them remain stunted and depressed.
The other solution is to offset the CO2 we produce by paying some organisation to grow more trees in areas which have been deforestrated, not necessarily in our country; it could be a neighbouring country where the forest has been expoited for timber, for cash. How many trees? As many as the world can hold - as many as you can afford in dollar terms.
Think of what you can do for the health of the world and not just what you can exploit from mother earth.