Living more sustainably is often associated with making lifestyle changes or sacrifices. However, research by Dr. Matthew Clement, associate professor of Sociology at Texas State, shows that making more sustainable choices and lowering our carbon footprint can lead to a higher quality of life.
“Quality of Life and the Carbon Footprint: A Zip-Code Level Study of the United States” — published in the Journal of Environment and Development — analyzed how carbon footprint emissions impacted the quality of life levels in different zip codes across the United States. The team looked at several life factors including population density, household income, household size, and unemployment, among others.
The study found that, at the zip-code level, larger carbon footprints were associated with a lower quality of life. So it might be the case that lowering society’s impact on the environment could help raise the quality of life for those communities. “[T]he negative slope estimate indicates that a reduction in society’s environmental impact has the potential to result in a higher quality of life,” the team wrote.
To make it easier for people to understand this relationship, Dr. Clement and his colleagues suggest emphasizing better quality of life standards instead of economic standards or subjective measurements of quality of life. This would help people see how lowering their carbon footprint would benefit them.
When people make more sustainable choices, it helps the community. Studies like this one help us better understand carbon emissions and motivate us to find ways to reduce them.