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Global Warming Prevention
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Antarctica
Fact File index | What's
it like in Antarctica? page 1
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Cold and survival: Humans | Hypothermia | Food | Food 2 | Clothing | Penguins |
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Climate / Weather graphs: Comparisons | Australian Coastal | Deep South | Ozone hole |
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Climate Change: Global Warming | GW Antarctica | Misconceptions | Carbon sinks | Carbon cycle | Prevention | Carbon Offsetting | Tree Planting |
 You'll find plenty of
lists of how to "save the world" in easy steps, and a lot of them are fiddly little things that
it's a problem to remember and sometimes a pain to do. There's also the
fact that some make a huge difference, others, while terribly
worthy may be wiped out by that light-bulb you forgot to turn off last
night.I thought I'd make it easier and in particular focus on the biggies - that make the largest difference, if you want to re-use supermarket bags as well even better, but if you don't do those listed here, you're not really making much of an effort. It comes down to reducing the amount of greenhouse gases you are personally responsible for releasing. Some are obvious, drive a car - carbon dioxide (CO2) comes out of the exhaust, some are less obvious, buying just one new shirt instead of two that you don't really need for instance saves on CO2 emissions in its production and transport. So here goes, roughly in some kind of order.
Switch your brain on, take an interest in the world, it's an ecosystem that you're part of - not on the outside of. While technology may provide cushions and barriers, when Mother Nature turns her mighty wheels, nothing, but nothing is going to stop them. Sticking your head in the sand may be temporarily comforting, but ultimately disastrous as a survival technique. I can't remember where I first heard this, so can't attribute the quote properly, I've changed it a bit but it's relevant here.
Make sure you're in 1 or 2 and definitely not group 3.
So how bad is it? A single long-haul return flight, say from the UK to Australia, South America or the Far East can release about as much CO2 as driving 15,000 miles in a fairly standard 1.6L car on your own (and yes that is per person, you don't divide it by all the people on the plane). The average annual mileage by a motorist in the UK is about 10,000, so one long-haul airline round trip is the same as 18 months of normal motoring - and wipes out an awful lot of eco-friendly bike-riding in a single stroke. All of these thing produce about the same amount of CO2
The second largest energy user is frequently the heating of a living or working environment. The scope for reducing energy usage is less so than refrigeration, but still considerable. Ways to do this:
Get it from the tap and you will prevent the huge amount of fossil fuels consumed in transporting bottles of water to and from the supermarket, millions of tonnes of water unnecessarily transported over millions of road-miles. You will also help to avoid all those billions of one-trip plastic bottles needed. If you want your tap water to be even cleaner, you can get a filter jug, or for greater convenience a water filter under the sink so it comes straight out of the tap super-filtered.
Organic food doesn't need to be bought from the supermarket and is much more widely available than imagined. "Vegetable box" schemes are popular ways of getting organic food whereby you buy a box of veg that is delivered once a week or so of whatever veg is in season. Organic food often has a price premium over non-organic, which is more reason to grow it yourself if you have the space. I don't see the point of struggling against the slugs and weather to get a crop of lettuce that I can't possibly eat quick enough at the time when they are almost giving them away in the shops. Instead you could try lollo rosso, rocket and especially those cut-and-come-again salads and tomatoes which are never as great as directly from plant to plate in a few minutes. Other ideal vegetables to grow are beans which are easy and don't travel well so the ones in the shops are never as good or as fresh as home grown. Broad beans are good as are French beans and very easy too. French beans don't need all the long canes that runner beans need, but wait until early May before sowing them outdoors. They can be started off earlier if you like in 3" pots in an unheated greenhouse. I also go for spinach because I like it in salad better than any other leaf (apart from watercress, but I don't have the appropriate flowing watercourse).
Why are ready-meals not so good?
What's the alternative? - This is for the unconverted, if you already cook from scratch (or thereabouts) you're already there.
Garden refuse that is too large for you to handle into the compost bin if you must, but it's better to make and use your own compost Other stuff you should be
recycling at the minimum:
Further steps:
For some reason I don't entirely understand, all of the above often goes instantly out of the window when business is concerned. Here's a few obvious ways that business can help VERY considerably:
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Climate Change: Global Warming | GW Antarctica | Misconceptions | Carbon sinks | Carbon cycle | Prevention | Carbon Offsetting | Tree Planting
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HD DVD + DVD Combo Disc - 2007 |
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Isn't that a bit militant? Well maybe it is Mr.
Airline-Industry-Dependent-Guy, but flying is the one
usually
unnecessary thing we do that can have the biggest immediate effect on
greenhouse gas emissions (CO2). Long-haul flights are the
worst as they have to carry extra fuel that in the early part of the
journey that is needed to carry the extra fuel that is needed in the later
parts of the journey - short-haul flights don't need to do that to
the same extent.
(Swallows diplomacy pill) You can probably reduce your
CO2 emissions by at least a third by getting a far more fuel
efficient vehicle. An MPV will do pretty much the same job as an SUV for
this saving in fuel and emissions while giving a similar internal space,
though maybe not being so good at mounting a machine-gun on the back and
taking part in a limited regional armed conflict or hauling a whole
winter's worth of lumber from the back-woods - hands up who needs to do
those things?
(Spits diplomacy pill out) No-one
really needs to drive around in something the size of a small school
bus, safety considerations are negated by the increased tendency of
SUVs to overturn in accidents as they're top-heavy. So help the
planet, the Poles and get a better car that can go round corners too
and is far more fun to drive. 
In
most homes, the single most energy-hungry appliance over the year is the
refrigerator. Buy the
most energy efficient model you can - it will be cheaper in the long
run. Less efficient models are usually less expensive to buy, though the initial cost price difference is getting slimmer compared to the most
effective machines. The extra running cost of electricity of cheaper
models easily wipes out the initial cost-saving.
One of the easiest ways of doing
this is to take showers and not baths, though it is possible to
use an awful lot of energy in the shower too. Power Showers are the
worst culprits, normal showers are fine for getting you clean. Also,
don't spend so long in the shower, in Antarctica a shower longer than 2
minutes is known as a "Hollywood Shower" - extravagant and
unnecessary (though in Antarctica it's usually due to a lack of
freshwater in liquid form).
We're all aware of energy
efficient light-bulbs - effectively short coiled fluorescent
tubes that use a fraction of the energy of an ordinary light bulb
and last far longer too. They've come down in price a lot in recent
years, and though they are still a premium-priced product compared
to old-fashioned energy-inefficient bulbs, they are considerably
cheaper over the life of the bulb - so why aren't you using more of
them, if you already know this?
In
the vast majority of the 1st world our tap water is more than clean
enough to drink, but somehow we started to fall for marketing messages
that tell us to go
out and buy drinking water in bottles instead of just getting it from
the tap.
Organic food is food that is grown without man-made
chemicals such as pesticides and fertilisers. It also means no human
waste, or sewage sludge, has been used on the fields and that no
ionizing radiation or food additives were used in their production.
Organic meat has been reared without the routine use of antibiotics and
without using growth hormones.
Our
busy lifestyles mean that we have been sold the idea that we have no
time to properly cook or prepare food anymore. We arrive home
late, exhausted and unable to do anything other than take a packet
of something exotic sounding from the refrigerator - barely able to press
the microwave start button before slumping semi-lifeless in front of
the idiot-lantern.
It's
becoming easier and easier to do this as recycling facilities become
more widespread reducing the need to throw things away to landfill.
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