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CLIMATE CHANGE: Most people now try to reuse and recycle to reduce consumption and CO2 emissions. However the massive reductions in global warming emissions needed to avoid dangerous climate change and maintain a decent standard of living will require major government actions both nationally and internationally as well as personal change. Humankind must urgently develop policies that will support and encourage cleaner technologies, energy efficient housing, transport and all consumables so that it only profits industry and business to develop and provide sustainable services that we can all access and so that polluting and planet destroying products and services are only loss making. You can make a real difference by lobbying your local and national politicians to make these policy changes and to agree with other governments world wide to do the same. You can also ask all the people you know or come into contact with to do the same. You can also lobby businesses to provide consumers with better information and more environmentally sustainable products and services. Here's a link to a campaigning coalition which keeps up to date on the latest issues and who and how to lobby. A very wide range of charitable and other organisations are involved in helping act against climate change because they recognise the wide ranging destruction it may cause to humanity and our environment if we let it: Oxfam WWF Friends of the Earth UNISON Women's Environmental Network Practical Action Christian Aid
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| UK Climate Change Commitments The climate change act 2008 has set very challenging targets for UK carbon reduction. However the mere setting of these targets in no way guarantees their achievement and neither do they ensure the essential global reductions in emissions. The Scottish government has also set very ambitious targets in the Scottish Climate Change Bill which was enacted in 2009 - including leading the world with a 42% emissions reduction target by 2020, 80% by 2050. The participation of very many people in Scotland in the consultation on the bill helped in achieving a strong bill and its unanimous passing in the parliament. But to achieve these commitments we need individual and community actions as well as government targets. |
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Basic background understanding First understand that what humans believe will drive rapid unwelcome climate change is too much of various gases in the atmosphere (greenhouse gases) - some particularly harmful ones are only produced synthetically by humans such as many refrigerant gasses - others such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide are part of the natural environment but modern human behaviour is causing very rapid increases in their concentrations beyond levels believed to have existed for the last few million years - i.e. higher then any levels in the whole of human existence. Increase in CO2 concentrations is due largely to use of fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas) both for transport and energy production in most human activities. Increases in methane and nitrous oxide concentrations are largely a result of increased agricultural production, increased meat and dairy consumption and increasing agricultural intensity using high levels of fertilisers as well as pesticides Frequently the size of human greenhouse gas emissions is referred to as a carbon footprint and the overall impact of resource impacts of people as their ecological or environmental footprint, sometimes just footprint. The size of the challenge: Approximate per capita tonnes CO2e carbon footprints: UK 10; China 5; India 1; Uganda 0.1 Estimated global average per capita tonnes CO2e carbon footprint needed by 2050 is under 2 (Stern) So in the UK we need to cut our carbon footprint by over 80% by 2050 to get it down to a fair share of global resources. The longer we delay cuts the greater the cuts will have to be since it's the total level of CO2e that counts so the longer we delay action the less likely we are to achieve the desired target... |
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Don't believe or understand the science? Here are some explanatory links, but don't get so caught up in the arguments that you fail to act! The Royal Society on Climate Change Sceptics' frequent comments responded to Starting on the Real Climate Site |
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Practical Actions: Practical action you can take apart from lobbying politicians and business to take climate change action... Don't think we're alone - plenty of Americans think they need to take urgent action too! Any alteration in your behaviour and lifestyle choices that will reduce your net emission of greenhouse gases is positive, most have the added benefit of being healthier and lower cost choices, here are some suggestions: |
| Home Energy: If you have
a loft make sure it's properly insulated, ditto cavity walls. Make
sure your hot pipes are insulated, insulating the cold pipes is a good
idea too, it helps avoid bursts in winter, keeps water cooler in summer
and helps avoid condensation issues.
Costs of insulation usually payback in 1 to 2 years through lower fuel
bills.
If you can, hang your washing outside to dry rather than tumble drying - it smells much nicer as well as saving energy. Boil only the amount of water you need in a kettle. If you have a freezer, defrost it regularly. Use low energy light bulbs (payback within a year?) and only have lights on when you need them. Ask yourself if you need all the lights you have - one of my kitchen light bulbs failed and I realised I didn't need to replace it as there was plenty enough light from the other. There is a growing range of effective low energy bulbs including LEDs which avoid problems with mercury use in the normal low energy fluorescent bulb. When replacing appliances, if the old one is in decent condition, try and make sure it's re-used by giving away/selling it, make sure new ones are rated at least A for energy efficiency, A+ is even better! Obviously only have appliances, chargers etc switched on and running when you actually need them. If you want to track your home energy use, to better understand where you can save most quickly, public libraries often have schemes for lending out smart meters and if yours doesn't yet you can probably easily persuade your local council/library to do so. You can also take part in online monitoring through sites such as www.imeasure.org.uk When considering new purchases consult the likes of "Which?" to make sure it's a decent product. Frequently local libraries have an online subscription you can use: Edinburgh Central Library (reference section) has one. |
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| Food Choices: Avoid food which has been
air-freighted... It's usually best to consume fresh, non processed food, however salad, green vegetables and soft fruits from outside Europe will have been flown to the UK, so are the cause of very high levels of emissions and should not be bought if you want to limit your footprint. Most people can reduce their food related emissions by eating less meat (especially beef and lamb) less processed food (ready made meals or sauces etc) and fewer soft drinks, bottles of water and alcoholic drinks. In the UK most tap water is v. good to drink and paying for bottled water is spending money that might be better spent on donations to water charities in developing countries rather then on increasing our emissions. A lot of processed foods contain damaging trans-fats. I excluded hydrogenated vegetable fat from my diet about 20 years ago, now the main stream media and medical profession have caught up with my health advice ;-) listen to http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00tpt0b . Soft drinks are generally bad for your health, especially low calorie ones which contain even more artificial sweetener than standard soft drinks. Artificial sweeteners break the connection between your body's sensation of sweetness and the delivery of fast calories thus damaging your natural feedback systems for control of your body's dietary needs. Cutting out most canned and bottled drinks not only saves on all that packaging and transport, but it's also even better for your health than it is for your wallet. If you find nature's water a little too bland, or has off tastes from the tap then keeping water in the fridge and adding a slice of citrus fruit makes a great taste. Adding a splash of milk or fruit to hot water also covers any off taste from minerals. It's also pretty easy to make your own soft drinks from wild elderflowers free in the hedge rows or whatever fruits take your fancy. You can use recycled wine and drinks bottles for storage as long as you sterilise them first - easy to get the kit from home brewing shops. Plenty of recipes online and children love doing it as a fun activity. Children also love getting involved in home cooking and home baking - they're generally much more interested in healthy eating if they've been involved in making it. |
| Transport:
Where practical walk or cycle instead of taking car, bus or train. Use public transport where possible instead of private car. Become involved in car sharing schemes to reduce individual trips - also has social benefits! Where driving is essential adopt an economic driving style - generally time is lost in town driving by poor driving at junctions, speeding between traffic lights and accelerating and then braking between speed bumps is a waste of time as well as fuel and annoying to pedestrians and residents. Economic driving style can improve fuel efficiency by 10-20% depending on how profligate you were in the first place. Avoid flying - probably the hardest choice to make when market distortions often make it a lot cheaper than the surface transport alternative - so maybe back to campaigning to make the environmental choice economically preferable! |
| Buying "stuff":
I guess most people realise that our whole economic system is based on growing consumption. Unfortunately there's a fundamental problem with this concept - the planet has a limited size and right now it's estimated that in the UK we consume (on average) stuff that would need 2 to 3 planets to supply if the rest of the world population lived as we do... Ways to cut our environmental impact and still live well are: - focusing on getting more of our pleasure from relationships and community interaction than from buying stuff... - repairing rather than replacing stuff - using websites like freecycle and ebay to make sure things we no longer have use for can be used by someone else rather than thrown out - websites such as http://www.greenmetropolis.com/index2.asp help to re-use books and other products - using charity shops to donate your unwanted goods to and to purchase clothes etc... - taking part in local community groups such as wildlife and conservation groups, transition towns, carbon conversations etc. Search any of these terms on google and see where you end up... |
| Housekeeping: The good news is most expensive home cleaning products are unnecessary, to keep a place clean, water is the most effective solvent - soap is a great help and heat can make water more effective. Remember all the hospital MRSI bug scares etc? Well warm water and soap was found to be the best way to wash your hands, no need for this paranoid alcohol gel stuff, just proper careful hygiene. For fat and oil removal detergent is v useful. Cheapest possible malt vinegar is good and effective for limescale removal as well as environmentally friendly. Then it's a bit of elbow grease that makes the difference. I believe "eco" detergents are little better than other's in their biodegradability etc., although refilling plastic containers rather then getting new all the time is obviously sensible. Sometimes a bit of bleach can be handy, but regular use does cause water pollution downstream. We use less than 1litre a year in total between 3 of us. Perfumes in home cleaning products are best avoided as first of all they cover up if there's a bad smell, whereas what you want is to find the bad smell and clean it up rather than cover it up and leave the bugs festering. Also perfumes can easily generate allergies as they tend to be bioactive chemicals and not something it's wise to sprinkle willy-nilly into your environment. Fridge cleaning should just involve a bit of sodium bicarbonate (can also be used in other cleaning) - which is cheap when you buy it in quantity and is food safe plus not leaving any contaminating smells that can taint food. Liquid soaps and shower gels - maybe not so bad on the environment if you reuse the containers, but are there refill systems supplied for domestic use? Even when re-using the containers they are still worse than the traditional bar soap and a lot more expensive - if you find bar soap gets to be a mess, you could sort out a sensible soap holder rather than resorting to liquid soaps... Fabric softeners are best avoided - having worked for one of the major soap/detergent multinationals I can tell you that the principle on which half of them work results in them attracting dirt much faster so clothes need washing more often and the other half (or possibly all) make things like towels ridiculously nonabsorbent and inefficient. Having some firm texture in your towel is pretty healthy for rubbing yourself dry and saves on the purchase of those bizarre body brush things some people are into. The packaging, chemical processing and transport resources saved if people gave up fabric softeners would be pretty big as my company shares are making pretty good money out of this rather unnecessary product. What about dust mite allergy and all that stuff? I believe the best way to avoid problems with these is keep a place well hoovered and avoid keeping the place warm/hot all the time. A good bit of chilling over the winter helps kill off all the nasties. A friend of mine has a very sensitive skin condition and major problems with dust and tells me that as soon as she comes into my house she can sense it's no problem with dust. Since I don't dust very often at all, it's certainly not that there isn't any dust, however there's no overheating, I let it get cold when everyone is out in winter and don't use any spray products, air-fresheners or the like, so when the place smells really fresh it is and when it doesn't the problem is generally easily identified. According to Mintel the UK household cleaning products market is valued around £2.6billion - that's about £40 per UK resident spent every year - I'd say in my house we spend about half that between 3 of us, so some people are putting an awful lot of money - and dodgy chemicals literally down the drain. |
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