Please notice that these pages have been rewritten. See the updated pages at chrisbeales.net/environment.     :o)

Intro  |  1.Climate Change  |  2.Do now (easy)  |  3.Get Informed  |  4.Personal Action  |  5.Ideas/Political  |  Carbon Off-setting  |  Home

3. Getting Informed (about what you need to do)

Hopefully you are here because you have been convinced that (1) human induced climate change is a problem and that you need to do something about it. (2) You are already looking at your life, and changing any energy-wasting habits that you have. This page aims to give you some information, resources and ideas about what you need to do next.

Get more informed

In the UK, we need to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions by at least 60% by 2050. I know that sounds scary but don't stick your head back into the sand! It is possible and we have time.

Your first thoughts might be: why does it have to be that much, and who came up with that figure? To answer those questions you need to look into the philosophy of contraction and convergence. Have a look at the following:

• A BBC News report on the concept of contraction and convergence.
• There is a briefing note on the Global Commons Institute website (http://www.gci.org.uk), which is where the concept originated.
• The concept has been taken up by the UK government. You can read this recent article from the Minister for the Environment: Benn sets out strengthened Climate Change Bill (October 2007). You might also want to look at Department of Trade and Industry report (2006) Energy - Its Impact On The Environment And Society.

Next, the shear magnitude of this reduction may sound impossible to you. It doesn't mean that you will only be able to eat once every three days! Please consider these three things:

1. This reduction is over the next forty years (as shown on the graph) so it is a gradual change...we don't have to do it all at once. Hopefully we will reach an initial target of 20% reduction by 2010 (this is compared to our emissions in 1990 - which were 2% of global emissions!). If we don't hit that target, we will have to pick up the pace.
2. We are going to have reduce our use of oil and gas, two key fossil fuels, anyway. Regardless of climate change concerns, we are approaching peak oil. At some point soon, oil production is going to start to fall because it is going to start running out. The remaining oil reserves are also going to be the tricky ones to extract (and the ones in the politically dangerous parts of the world). This means the price of oil will go through the roof.
3. You are probably right in thinking that it is impossible to reduce your energy use down to 40% by yourself. There will need to be big changes, in things outside of your personal control, to make that possible: things like changes in the way energy is supplied to your house. Check out the Ideas/Political page.

There are lots of ideas out there describing ways that you can save energy, and other ways that you can help to reduce the effects of climate change. I can certainly recommend looking at the Environment Agency's publication: 50 ways to save the planet. Ideas and links can also be found on the Personal Action page. Have a look around, chat to people and share ideas. And keep looking: there is a buzz about this and new ideas and new technologies are coming up all of the time.

• One word of caution though: be careful as you gather information. The environment is attracting all sorts of businesses, media and public discussion. Amongst all of the good ideas and innovations, you will probably find (or have someone try to sell you) some things are not necessarily helpful. For example: bio fuels are often not a good option (think about the amount of energy farmers use [e.g. pesticides and fertilisers] to grow the crops in the first place, also consider what land the crops are grown on [e.g. rainforest]); poorly placed local wind turbines may not pay for themselves, in terms of energy generated in their lifetime compared to energy required to manufacture.
• Think cradle-to-grave when you think about how much impact a thing makes. How much did it take to create? How much does it use during its life? And hope much is it going to take to decommission it?

Do your carbon footprint

It took me a while to get round to this but I do advise it. Going through the questions, asked in the carbon footprint calculators, will give you a lot of good ideas about what you can change. And if you are anything like me, the answers they come up with are quite shocking.

The following two examples are not perfect. I don't think they asked enough detailed questions about some aspects of my life, so I think some of generic responses will overestimate my emissions. However, there are other aspects where I know I am not good (like time spent in pubs and clubs), which are not taken into account. It probably balances out to some degree. Well, here you go: my footprint and the thing I need to work on...

• From the World Wide Fund for Nature I have a footprint of 2.22 planets. This calculator is quick to use. It takes into account how you shop but uses averages about how much you use to heat your home, etc.
• Alternatively, the DEFRA calculator says that I use 2.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. Notice the different units (I'll leave you to look into this if you are interested). This calculator takes longer to go through, and is more thorough about home consumption but not about shopping habits (note it is worth having your gas and electricity bills to hand).