Personal Action

We are all part of the global warming problem. We all make and impact: we all have a carbon footprint. We all need to start being part of the solution. This page aims to point you in the direction of some personal changes that you can make to help reduce the impact of climate change. It's partly about what you do in your personal life, the choices you make, the things you do...and don't do. It is also about electing the right leaders and making sure they build the sustainable infrastructure that we need to live in.

When I first created these Environment Pages I proposed the following plan of personal action to deal with the climate change issue:

Stop wasting energy - realise that at the moment, especially in the UK, use of electricity, heating, transport, etc. is mainly using fossil fuels. Hence producing carbon dioxide and adding to global warming. For a start we surely need to get rid of any energy wasting habits.
Meanwhile get informed - hopefully these updated pages (e.g. Emissions Targets and Consequences) will help, I have certainly learned a lot more recently. Getting things in perspective helps: to understand how quickly we need to act and where to best target our efforts.
Then start changing your lifestyle and get politically active - I don't mean to get heavy but this problem is not going away. Even if all other sectors of the UK change (e.g. business and energy supply), we still need to reduce our domestic and personal transport use to be more sustainable. This is partly though our personal choices and partly by working together and getting our politicians to make the right decisions.

Getting things in perspective

My original Environment Pages tried to offer an informed set of ideas about how each of us can make a difference. It was a simplistic starting point, and I tried to cut through as much of the "green wash" and spurious information as I could but still fell into traps, for example noting the hype about turning off mobile phone chargers. Fortunately, 2 years have gone by since the original pages, and Professor David MacKay has published his excellent book Sustainable Energy - without the hot air on-line.

This will give you a great sense of perspective, and is a much better source of information than I can hope to achieve in this simple website. In David's book he converts all aspects of energy use (from cars, to heating, to phone chargers) and energy production (from potential renewable sources). Throughout the book he discusses energy in terms of "kilo Watt hours (kWh) per day", which is useful as it relates to the same unit that we all read from our gas or electric meters [i] .

In the following pie chart I have summarised David's findings for the (equivalent) daily energy use of "typical moderately-affluent person". What would your chart look like?

Pie chart capturing the results from David MacKay's book.

I measured a the electricity requirements of a few household appliances. Some of my findings are presented here. Notice that I have converted energy use into "mugs-of-tea equivalent" (i.e. the amount of energy it takes to boil water for a mug of tea). For reference there are 33 mugs of tea to the kilowatt hour, which I think is a nice unit of energy to think about when comparing appliances in the home or office. Alternatively you can work with the estimate that 0.75 miles in an average car is equivalent to 1 kWh.

Changing your lifestyle

Here are a few personal changes you might want to consider. There are loads of webpages and books, with hundreds ideas of things you can do to make a difference. I hope this will highlight some of the more important ideas. Hopefully the information that you have seen so far will give you a good idea about where is best to target your efforts, from reducing car / plane travel to cutting down on the amount of stuff you buy...or maybe you need to find efficient replacement for some of the things that you own.

You may be interested to join the 10:10 campaign. It pushes the simple message: cut your carbon footprint by 10% in 2010. If you haven't done much so far to cut out energy wasting habits, you should find this really easy. I guess the key is not to let it slip when the year is over.

What about carbon off-setting? This section argues that carbon off-setting is not such a good idea. A quick fix to alleviate your guilt does not encourage you to change your lifestyle. However, if you do have some spare cash to give to a good cause, you might want to think about helping to protect the rainforests.

Don't forget about adaptation

Even if we manage to completely stop all emissions of greenhouse gases right now, we can't undo the changes we have already made. We have increased the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by 50% over the past 250 years. The way the atmosphere works means that its reactions are likely to be delayed so the changes are only starting to show themselves.

The emissions targets that we are working to will hopefully stabilise carbon dioxide concentrations at 450 to 550 ppm. That is between 60% and nearly 100% more than before the industrial revolution. The climate will change as a consequence so you probably want to think about things that you might need to do to adapt to the changes?

You definitely must keep yourself informed.
Do you live near a river or the coast? If you do, note that incidences of flooding are likely to become more extreme and happen more often (if you live in England or Wales check out the flooding pages of the Environment Agency's website).
Can you cope with heat waves? Do you know any vulnerable neighbours or family members? Could you cope with water shortages (from drought) at the same time?