Help your children calculate their own carbon footprint by visiting a website like cooltheworld.com. They will be able to work their way through it by answering simple questions about their lifestyle and be offered advice on ways that they can cut back the amount of emissions that they produce.
Ask your child to imagine that the earth's natural resources are kept in a bucket. All of the natural resources that we have are in that bucket and once they are gone they are gone forever and there are no more to fill it up with. Tell them that the bigger our carbon footprint the more of the earth's natural resources we will use and that there will be less in the bucket. Tell them how important it is that the bucket never gets empty. Talk about it in ways that your child will understand. Even very young children will understand the bucket analogy.
Discuss with your child how much carbon dioxide is emitted by everyday tasks like using the car for short distances and leaving lights on in an empty room. For example one gallon of gasoline produces 19.4 pounds of CO2 emissions, but if you walked instead of using the car you would not produce any.
Encourage your child to look at ways of reducing their own carbon footprint. Give them a spot in the yard where they could grown their own food or encourage their school to run a competition for who can recycle the most.