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Climate Change
Kerravonsen recently stuck her head above the parapet and invited people to ask her questions about her faith.
It's always hard to talk about topics that polarise opinion and hard to talk about them when you can get strong negative reactions.
Yet some things are always present in our lives.
With Kerravonsen, it's religion, with me, it's climate change.
I often don't talk about it, because I can't always cope with the stress of dealing with people who refuse to accept that we're changing our planet. (sometimes, it can be equally stressful talking to people who accept it is happening, but don't want to change their lifestyle)
Yet, it's central to much of what I do.
I turn out lights by reflex. Yes, it saves money, but I do it primarily because wasting energy is a sin. (And I'm not using the word 'sin' casually)
I haven't travelled overseas in a decade and will probably never do so again - the CO2 emissions from air travel dwarf any saving you can make elsewhere in your life.
We live in an exceptionally well insulated house and don't heat above 18C (though it can get warmer than that from passive solar heating).
We grow quite a lot of our own veg.
I try not to buy food from overseas - if I do, I try and ensure it has not travelled by air (Riverford are very good in this regard - they never ship by air)
We're not perfect. It's actually quite hard to maintain a low carbon footprint in a country where few of us can afford to buy the land to produce our own food - unless you have that safety net to fall back on, then you have to have a paying job and that means a car and heating and lighting and all the rest of it. There are also some things that I'm not yet willing to do without, my computer for one.
Yet, if everyone did no more than I do, we could probably slash this country's carbon emissions.
It's a new year, why not see what you can trim from your carbon emissions?
It's always hard to talk about topics that polarise opinion and hard to talk about them when you can get strong negative reactions.
Yet some things are always present in our lives.
With Kerravonsen, it's religion, with me, it's climate change.
I often don't talk about it, because I can't always cope with the stress of dealing with people who refuse to accept that we're changing our planet. (sometimes, it can be equally stressful talking to people who accept it is happening, but don't want to change their lifestyle)
Yet, it's central to much of what I do.
I turn out lights by reflex. Yes, it saves money, but I do it primarily because wasting energy is a sin. (And I'm not using the word 'sin' casually)
I haven't travelled overseas in a decade and will probably never do so again - the CO2 emissions from air travel dwarf any saving you can make elsewhere in your life.
We live in an exceptionally well insulated house and don't heat above 18C (though it can get warmer than that from passive solar heating).
We grow quite a lot of our own veg.
I try not to buy food from overseas - if I do, I try and ensure it has not travelled by air (Riverford are very good in this regard - they never ship by air)
We're not perfect. It's actually quite hard to maintain a low carbon footprint in a country where few of us can afford to buy the land to produce our own food - unless you have that safety net to fall back on, then you have to have a paying job and that means a car and heating and lighting and all the rest of it. There are also some things that I'm not yet willing to do without, my computer for one.
Yet, if everyone did no more than I do, we could probably slash this country's carbon emissions.
It's a new year, why not see what you can trim from your carbon emissions?
no subject
On the fun side we've had several visits from the utilities checking for evidence of tampering with their meters. We expect more. The Gas side of have finally compensated by getting their 'tamper alert' to assume we're in an apartment rather than a semi. On the Electricity front they continue to have problems - we're under half of their 'low user' expectations.
Since we've kept this up since we moved here you'd think they'd accept it by now!
Otherwise, well there's tweaks we can do (though for some reason suggesting adding a second foot of insulation to the loft gets shot down)