Climate change may be the most significant environmental disaster facing humanity, but it is not the only one. In fact, humanity is already facing five others out of a total of nine possible disaster scenarios. With every line we cross, we jeopardize the planet’s ability to self-regulate.
This concept of planetary boundaries is useful to scientists, but less so to everyone else. Wrapping your head around an existential crisis every time is hard enough. Navigating another six, from biodiversity loss to microplastics? He might as well give up.
Not so fast, Christophe Girardier told TechCrunch. His startup, Glimpacthas a new app called MyGlimpact that he hopes will help people understand not only the extent of their environmental footprint, but also why they shouldn’t feel guilty about it.
The idea was to “give citizens a vision of the reality of the environmental crisis situation, which is not just climate change, but which is systemic,” Girardier said. “The real cause of the environmental crisis is partly the citizens, but not entirely. The first responsibility rests with the state, political decision-makers and companies.”
The free app, which doesn’t require an account to use, asks you about your lifestyle. Questions range from how you get around to what you eat, how you heat and cool your home, and how much clothing you buy in a typical year. There are two paths to take: You can answer a few simple questions per category and let the app guess some things to fill in the details, or you can choose to answer more detailed questions that leave less room for guesswork.
The MyGlimpact app then takes that data and runs it through the company’s cloud-based software, which assesses a person’s impact in each of 16 categories.
There, on the back end, it performs essentially the same number crunching that Glimpact provides to large corporations, which use the results to fill out environmental reports required by various governments and regulators. On the front end, the results in the application are simplified for the common man, who is told how many earth equivalents they need to support their lifestyle. TechCrunch had exclusive advance access to the app ahead of its launch on Thursday.
If everyone lived like me, we’d need the resources of 2.93 Earths, according to the app. My footprint is likely to be a little smaller. the app didn’t ask about the percentage of renewable energy my household uses (we subscribe to a community solar plan). MyGlimpact provides advice on where people can make changes that would reduce their footprint or where they could lobby politicians for change.
If nothing else, the app reinforced to me how much of an environmental impact I have on the society and economy in which I live. I have spent much of the last decade trying to make my lifestyle as environmentally friendly as possible. We drive electric vehicles and our commutes are virtually non-existent. We carry out when possible and eat meat sparingly. Our house has thick, heavily insulated walls and we are heated and cooled by a high efficiency heat pump. After all that, I barely managed to squeal under three Ges.
The idea of an environmental footprint, not just a carbon footprint, has been here for a while. MyGlimpact takes the idea and makes it more personal. The app could guide users a bit more on how to change their lifestyle and how to encourage politicians and companies to change. But for a first edition, it’s a powerful tool for anyone hoping to understand their place in the world.
