watervole | Climate change - what can you do?

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Climate change - what can you do?

I just ran myself through a carbon footprint calculator (it's a pretty crude one, but it doesn't require you to look up many figures).

I then added in one fictitious flight to Australia. That one flight emitted as much CO2 as my gas central heating does in a year.

A fictitious flight to America creates as much CO2 as the average household produces through electricity in a year. (Can't compare with me there as I'm well below the national average on electricity usage)

It's a no-brainer. Fitting low-energy light bulbs is good, but to make a serious impact on your personal carbon footprint, you have to give up overseas flights. Take your holidays in your own country and boost the local economy as an added bonus.

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but to make a serious impact on your personal carbon footprint, you have to give up overseas flights

The last time I flew any where was to a christening in Dublin, the baby started school this year. I'm not boasting, giving up foreign holidays was more to do with my food allergies than my carbon footprint but it's nice to know it's done some good to the planet.

You still get a gold star!

Apparently, Brits spend more abroad than foreign visitors do in Britain. The air industry is a net drain on the UK economy even without subsidies.

The politically unmentionable list of top tricks to personally reduce climate impact:

Cease to exist
Have no children
Go local vegan-organic
Give up flying for yourself and all your consumables
Give up travelling except by human power

You're so right! Most environmental and government groups are guilty of underselling the problem. They all say things like 'reduce the number of flights you do, and buy renewable electricity'. They're scared that people will switch off totally if they explain what is actually needed. (I limited myself to two children though I would have liked another.)

Going vegan makes a big difference. I'll probably mention that one next week. I'm planning on one climate-related post each week. I figure that sticking to one issue on each post may make the point stick better.

And most renewables are NOT carbon neutral - that's a particularly dangerous fallacy.

I think you ought to have a 'save the planet' icon as your default. Got any good ideas for a design?

What about internal flights?

gloria1 and

cushy thought me very odd when I said I would prefer to go by train to Northumberland (rather than fly to Newcastle as they both did) only because of the addition it would make to my ecological footprint.

If Brits stopped holidaying abroad we could become a very insular society, which I wouldn't like. I think that's a bigger danger, to be honest.

Unlikely to do 1 in the near future, though one never knows.

Have done 2. Unlikely to change my mind.

Eat organic (but not vegan or even vegetarian). Not going to happen, sorry.

Pretty much aim to do 4, but sometimes you're faced with a choice of locally produced or organic, and that's always a difficult one. Usually tend to go for locally produced, but not sure if that's the right decision.

As for 5, would do that if I could get a job locally, I use the underground daily. I don't drive, have never learned and have no intention of doing so simply on grounds of safety for other road users. Poor hand-eye co-ordination, limited depth of vision and only a hazy idea of the difference between left and right all combine to make me lethal behind the wheel of a car - but note that despite all these it is in no way illegal for me to drive.

Do you think that's true even with the level of immigration we have?

Yes I do. I still believe in the old adage that travel broadens the mind.

I'd say you gained there. The calculator I'm looking at right now is pretty crude, but I put in one European flight (the only option for short-haul) and it produced more than three times as much CO2 as 1200 miles of rail travel. (I took the train to Concussion for similar reasons)

You get a gold star.

Are you aware of the impact of climate change on countries in Africa? Is broadening our minds worth pushing millions of the world's poorest people into drought? Is it worth millions more become permanent refugees as they get driven from their homes by rising sea levels?

I would have expected you of all people to be aware that climate change will have the greatest impact on the world's poorest people.

The rich may survive. The poor will die.

Locally produced saves food miles. In terms of carbon, that will almost certainly be better than organic.

Even if you choose not to go veggie, just halving the amount of meat you eat can make a surprising difference.

The answer to the problem of poor people in Africa is not to stop flying but to divert some of the world's over abundance or resources to those countries. This world produces enough food to feed its whole population many times over, but the distribution of that food is controlled by big business that has profit as its main driver. There is no profit in distributing food to poorer countries so for the most part it does not get done. Tackling that is how to stop people starving in Africa not reducing flying holidays abroad.

The world produces enough food now. One of the impacts of global warming will be to reduce the amount of food that can be grown.

Besides, people should be able to grow their own food, not depend on charity. They're entitled to dignity as well as survival.

It's not a competition, just an objective list of how to have the most significant impact. As it turns out, the optimum diet for health and the optimum diet for the global environment closely coincide - I'll try to find the reference, comprehensive Italian paper just published. Meat and other animal products just a few times per week.

There are wonderful mind-broadening tools called conversation, books, the TV and the Internet, etc. which judiciously used are effective and low in climate impact...

OK, so if you want politically unacceptable solutions:

Stop generating CO2 on all of those flights flying aid in to Africa and let them all die off - if you want to cut the planetary population then there's a big start. It also deals with the whole debt relief problem - if there's no population then there's need to pump money into a non-existant economy.

And before everyone gets on their moral high horses, no I don't believe that, I'm just extending the idea of the politically unthinkable actions post.

Think globally, act locally is a fine idea but it's just not going to work to any great extent in the west. Like it or not, western society is built upon trade and industry, and without these society collapses.

the optimum diet for health

I'd be interested to see that, including if you have details, who paid for the ressarch.

My own health is at its optimum not if I reduce meat intake, but if I reduce carbohydrate intake, specifically reducing carbs like sugar, flour, other wheat products and roots (potatoes being a partlicular culprit) but limiting also carrots, swedes and the like. I can have limited oats and rye, and limited pulses like peas and beans, but see below on soya.

I have to increase both cooked and especially raw green veg. until it looks like I'm eating forests of the stuff. To make this edible, I add olive oil based dressings.

I have to cut out soya and soya products completely just to keep my endocrine system on an even keel, and have had to do for a long time. (I read that soya is a bit iffy anyway - as I understand it, if you eat soya the human body excretes something very closely akin to the female hormone oestrogen which then goes into water and is difficult to remove.)

On this kind of diet, about half to two thirds of my calories come from fat, usually olive oil or butter, which gives most dieticians the heebies.

Now, when I looked into it ia bit further, it seems to me that this is fairly logical - it's propbably what my hunter-gatherer ancestors would have eaten - a heavily meat and fat-based diet supplemented by what could be found on the grasslands and eaten without any kind of additional preparation.

However, it's probably ecologically disastrous.

Also, I can't help thinking that actually travelling, by road and water, were a bit more mind-broadening than what we have today, which is effectively teleportating into a carefully-maintained bubble abroad, then teleporting back home again.

I'm not buying the mind-broadening qualities of eight hours in a metal tube watching last year's films.

I'm not buying the mind-broadening qualities of eight hours in a metal tube watching last year's films.

Yep. And I cannot buy the mind-broadening qualities of Disneyland or getting drunk on foreign beaches.

great - so what does that leave us with? Blackpool or Devon....

'Optimum for health' is statistical statement. There are always going to be bone fide medical reasons for some individuals to have different requirements. There is a fuzzy range of exercise and eating patterns which are indistinguishably good.

This was an Italian study, which doesn't appear to have been funded by their Vegetable Marketing Board. They found that the average Italian food and activity patterns were roughly twice as 'bad' (for resources, health and the environment) than a balanced omnivorous, intensively farmed diet. Moving toward local, organic and vegan produced progressive but decreasing improvements on average.

Hunter-gatherers would have had minimal dairy products (no tame mammals), eggs only during breeding season, and small quantities of meat (either a small animal, or a small portion of a large animal).

I will post the reference to the Italian study when I obtain it.

Flying short-haul is rarely much faster, so only makes sense because the fare structure is skewed away from ground-based transport. Therefore, it's an unnecessary luxury, even though a long-haul flight obviously emits much more climate change gas.

The impact of air travel is thought to be about 3 times higher than the raw tonnage of CO2 emitted,because of the net impact of the exhaust mix at altitude.

I admire your lack of imagination :-)

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Climate change - what can you do?

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Thinking statistically

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