watervole | New Year Resolutions

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climate change

New Year Resolutions

We are now at a stage where the effects of climate change are starting to be really noticeable. In the UK: we have regular summer droughts, winter storms and floods causing serious damage, plus excess heat in summer reduces people's ability to work (and increases the death rate, especially among the elderly).

The damage to our food supplies, our natural world, our health is massive and continues to increase. In short, things are bad, and are going to get worse - how much worse depends very much on what we do here and now.

Apart from voting for the political party most willing to tackle the issue of climate change, the only things we can do are to reduce our own carbon emissions.

Society as whole needs to halve it's carbon footprint by 2030...

We all need to look at what we can do personally. There are many things we can do, and hopefully, you'll try something for yourself as a New Year Resolution.

The plus side of doing this is that people we know are more likely to go green if we do. For instance, two people I know have installed heat pumps after seeing how well our system was working. (one of my friends regularly comments on how warm the house is, and how even the warmth is - because heat pumps deliver a lower temperature heat, you don't fry next to the radiator and freeze on the far side of the room - the warm air circulates more)

What can you do that makes a difference?

There is a real lack of awareness of what is helpful and what is not:

I was recently talking to an acquaintance in Swanage. We were drinking tea and she offered oat milk (which I accepted, as I use it at home). I asked, out of curiosity if she ever use soy milk.

Oh, no! She'd been on a cruise down the Amazon and seen all the deforestation caused by soy plantations.

I mentioned gently that most of the soy in the Amazon region is grown for cattle feed, and that eating beef is far, far more environmentally damaging.

Ah, she wasn't aware of that, and was far from certain that she actually believed it, and didn't really want to eat less meat anyway.

I decided not to mention that her cruise, and the flights to get there and back (and she goes on a cruise holiday every year - I could see the photos on her wall) were MASSIVELY damaging to the environment.

A cruise holiday is probably the single most damaging activity that anyone can do in their lives (unless they own a private jet...)

The next most damaging activity is flying - even short distance flights carry a surprisingly high cost, as take off and landing are particularly bad. I get that some people need to fly on occasion. I have two friends with elderly relatives overseas who genuinely need help from their children. Also, some people will need to travel for work on occasion. But when someone tells me they are going to the Canaries for Christmas, it's very hard to just politely say nothing.... (I do as rule, but it's still hard)

After travel, it's heat and meat. Reducing your meat consumption, especially beef and lamb, makes a surprisingly big reduction in CO2 emissions. Bonus points for vegetarians (though cheese should be eaten in moderation, as that can rack up quite a score over time - if you're cooking cheese, blend in nutritional yeast, which is delicious and very nutritious as well).

Heat - anything you can do to insulate the house better is good. Also, if your gas boiler is getting near the end of its life, check out current government grants for heat pumps. They're expensive to install, but grants help with that. Operating costs are similar to gas at present, but as renewables increase (resulting in cheaper electricity) they should become cheaper to run than gas. (They were cheaper before the Russian invasion of Ukraine pushed up all energy prices.)

An oddity - if you're in a position to rent out a room, then this reduces your personal carbon footprint, as the costs of heating are spread between more people. (It's not for everyone, and it's not the reason we chose to rent a room - that was the Ukrainian war - but we're opting to keep our lodger long term, as he's no trouble at all - we have some very interesting conversations now and then - and the income is handy.)

Enough of me waffling!

What are you doing in your own lives? (I know some of you are already doing masses)

What would you like to do, but are currently unable to do?

Do you have useful tips to share?

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I've been pleased to see increasing numbers of all-electric cars at my chorus rehearsals. We've had ours for about seven months now, plus the ground source heat pump. Less meat (no beef), but we haven't sworn off cow's milk cheese. And we try to recycle, reuse or freecycle what we can. Christmas presents this year were almost all in reusable wrapping—mostly bags.

I have been noticing, on my Instagram, a company that arranges holidays by train, which seems like a very good idea.

Sounds like you're doing really well. Ground source heatpump! Yay! (we considered one, but access to our back garden is via a very narrow path, and there's also a mature tree which takes up a lot of the space. So we went for the less-efficient air source.

I'm still guilty of cow's milk cheese, but I have managed to cut my portion size in half, and to mix in every increasing amounts of yummy nutritional yeast into cheese sauce and the like.

It's amazing what you can get from Freecycle/second hand. I think the only new Christmas presents, in our entire family, were a couple of Totoro t-shirts. My daughter-in-law managed to get all of Oswin's gifts second hand (some serious internet research involved, I gather. I think she does a lot on the Facebook marketplace)

Rail holidays sound like a really good idea.

The best low carbon source of meat is wild venison (it has to be shot for pest control, as they prevent tree regrowth. No natural predators now, so their numbers are too great)

Ah - I'm glad to hear that about the venison. Our butcher (who does all local, all free-range) offers venison in season, and I rather like it, but my husband is dubious. I shall tell him it is indeed low carbon!

Enjoy your guilt-free venison!
rabbit used to be the same, and overgraze badly, but they've been so badly hit by disease in recent years that the numbers need to recover, whereas deer are now basically a pest species...

I'm talking to my 3 young friends down at the Red Barn. Early 20's. I'm insisting on sorting the trash into recyclables, trash and compost. The outrage I expressed when a tenant left and poured unused cat food into the garbage clearly had an impact, the girls are still mentioning it. They are also seeing the effect of putting manure back onto the fields. They have been taught rotational grazing, including why there is environmental benefit to doing so. I just had a discussion about using the feed sacks that were going into the garbage can as trash sacks instead of lining the trash can with yet another plastic bag. She had never thought of it. I make it absolutely clear that I personally go through the garbage can and sort every item into recycling and garbage - and that they should learn to sort it themselves as I don't care for that job much.
As a family we have used a clothes dryer very, very seldom. I don't have one at the Ranch so I think the total loads dried in a clothes dryer is about 2 or 3 in the last four years.
I have mostly stopped picking Donald up at the train station in Santa Rosa. It adds almost 3 hours to his travel time ((to do a 50 minute trip)), but he now (usually) takes public transit all the way. This decreases the time we have together.

I'm with you all the way on sorting trash. Wasted food/anything drives me crazy.

We used to recycle bags as bin liners! (ran out of bags, eventually)

We gave away our tumble dryer in the end. I find the main way of reducing laundry is simple to only wash stuff when it is actually dirty/smelly, and I suspect you probably do the same.

Restoring land is so important. You are a guardian.

Kudos for reducing the car usage. I fully understand the time penalty - time together is always precious.

I try and car share when I can't get there by public transport (obviously not possible for a station run) Tonight, it's morris practice, so I will drive to my son's house, and then travel the rest of the journey in his car.

Individual choices, made as ethically as I can (the climate crisis is also a social inequality crisis), including careful consideration of maintaining versus replacing, and encouraging others to think about their choices, think about why things are happening etc.. Also involved with some activist and social justice groups & community initiatives (mainly in support capacity as my abilities to take part in direct action or deed are more than somewhat limited...).

Agree totally. It impacts far more on the poor than on the rich.

Thinking about whether to repair or replace can be very important (our kitchen units are nearly 40 years old and looking a bit tired around the edges, but they still do the job, so they get to stay).

MY nine year old granddaughter successfully repaired the fraying sleeve on her school cardigan. We were both very happy with the result.

I'm impressed by the repair groups that are setting up in some places now - not least because they seem to provide a much needed social group for older men.

Well done Oswin!

Thanks for that - all really helpful. I'm already mostly vegetarian, and have cut down cow milk consumption phenomenally since November. Flying is no longer an option for me, and Martin hasn't flown for 5 years. He's also now largely working at home, which reduces his footprint more. We will need to change our heating system in the next few years and are looking into heat pumps. And our next car will be electric. But yes, lots of good practical things to think about in your post. Thanks!

I notice Pensnest (above) has got a ground source heat pump. They cost more to install and are only practical if you have a lawn to put the underground part under, but they are more cost effective in the long term. My sister is planning on getting a ground source one as well.

Ours had to be air source, but we're still very happy with it. Depending on how you circulate the air (underfloor heating/radiatiors/ducting and air vents) you may have the option of running a heat pump backwards in the summer to cool the air.

If you're looking into it now, then that's the ideal way to do it. You'll know exactly which option you want when the time comes. I know one friend who went for an emergency boiler replacement (when it broke down) and then was annoyed when she discovered she could have got a heat pump installed just as quickly.

My son had a boiler failure, but he opted to live off portable radiators (there were several in the family that he could borrow) until he could get a heat pump installed.

That brings back memories! Back in the gas boiler days, I had to use a portable heater in the office to keep warm enough in winter. I'm sitting in the office today, and have just realised that we have never used a portable heater since the heat pump was installed! (Which made it very easy to give them to Henry!)

Working from home makes a real difference - especially when you are both at home, as there's no increase in the daytime heating cost to offset some of the gains from travelling less.

As regards the ground source heat pump, ours is actually not a grid layout under the lawn, but four deep (100m +) drilled holes to do the job of collecting the heat. It was very expensive, but we managed to get it done just in time to have the government subsidy, approx 50% but repaid quarterly over seven years. We also needed to get cavities filled and have a bit of outside insulation on a solid brick wall.

It is very good. Our regular usage is well below the requirements, ie it is supposed to be able to maintain the house at 21C in down to -4C weather: we set the temperature at about 17.5 unless we have guests. And we often get an efficiency of 8, instead of 4. Admittedly I am still convinced that it is all done by Magic, but my husband (the physicist) understands how it works, so fair enough.

Neighbours who have a very large but brand new and well insulated building have an air source heat pump and no complaints.

Couldn't get a drilling rig into our back garden, but a great way of doing it.

I have a reminder set on my computer to make sure we remember to collect the government subsidy - it's sneaky and designed to drop you out unless you confirm you still live in the house at regular intervals.

Magic. It's just a fridge running backwards. (but then fridges work by magic...)

A fridge (as I understand it) works by putting out more heat at the back than it removes from its interior, thus conforming to the laws of thermodynamics -- likewise I would assume that the more air-conditioners you install in a given city, the higher the ambient street temperature becomes :-(

I have never really got my head around how air source heat pumps work (and even ground source ones differ fundamentally from geothermal technology), as it seems more akin to the way that an injector somehow uses steam *from* the boiler to accelerate water to a pressure *higher* than that of the boiler in order to squirt it in...!

You get hot air in your home, the soil/soil water in your garden gets colder. (or the air outside gets colder)

Lots of air gets a little bit colder, my house gets warmer.

Fridges are hotter round the back - one way to help your fridge work better in the summer is to remove the dust from the heat exchanger and also to ensure the air can circulate freely round it. There's a reason we keep our old free standing fridge rather than having a new one sealed up inside a kitchen unit...

It still feels like black magic that you can take heat -- however diffuse -- from an area that is already colder than the interior of your house (e.g. the air outside) and use that to increase the existing heat differential still further, transferring energy against the heat gradient! (As Flanders and Swann memorably put it: Heat won't pass from a cooler to a hotter/You can try it if you like but you far better notter :-D)

I did so love Flanders and Swann! The very first record I ever owned was one of theirs.

The first record I ever bought from new was "Iolanthe" (and, I'm afraid, also one of the last I actually bought -- pretty much all the others have been picked up second-hand, inherited (including the "Drop of a Hat" LPs) or else, of late, simply rescued from being thrown away :O)

I've a soft spot for Iolanthe as well. My parents took me to see it on stage, and I never forgot. (I think it might have even been D'Oyly Carte)

Apart from voting for the political party most willing to tackle the issue of climate change, the only things we can do are to reduce our own carbon emissions.
I don't really trust politicians to do much at all. And although individual action is important, it's a bit like racism - unless there are structural and systemic changes nothing major will change. You and I will never go on a cruise, but that will not stop the industry from carrying on. I remember coming across a statistic that 70% of all pollution is caused by the 100 largest companies.

We can't all be Greta Thunberg, but we can help amplify (and fund) the voices of those fighting back on everyone's behalf. This is the major civil rights issue of our time and - like with voting rights - it's an uphill struggle. I don't know what the solution is, but I think it's also linked very explicitly to our current society. Until society as a whole changes its priorities, we can't save the world, I don't think.

/this is very negative, sorry.

I have very little faith in politicians either. And I agree with much of what you're saying.

However, I do think social pressure/expectations makes some headway. Some ports have made the decision to ban cruise ships. Though that is partly becuase of the air pollution they cause. Even billionaires like to be popular - and that may mean some will start to change their behaviour (though not all).

My main charity is Client Earth. They take legal action against large polluters, etc. It's the best fight back I can manage.

If you want a really simple, low cost action, then change your bank. Unless you already have. Nationwide is probably the best in the UK. They're a building society, so never invest in fossil fuels. Co-op bank probably come second, but all the really big UK banks have massive fossil fuel investments.

I have to have hope. I have to believe that Oswin (my granddaughter) has a future.

And the good news is that renewable energy is really gaining traction now. It's cheaper than fossil fuels, so even the greedy want it.

Yeah, switching banks is top of my list, alas it's not been possible due to... factors. But here's to 2024!

I've been very interested in this over the last five years or so. We've been talking about installing a heat pump for a couple of years - I'm glad to hear that yours is good. Every summer when the temperatures become unbearable we talk about it again, and maybe this year, now we've heard from people that they are a good option, we will do it.

We've also been trying to install solar panels, except that every company we ask says that our roof is too oddly shaped and not facing the right way for it to be worth it.

A couple of years ago we went as plastic-free as possible (not only to try to avoid putting more plastic into the world's waste stream, but also trying to avoid the petrochemical use of having it made.

I don't have a large garden, but what I do I am trying to rewild - packing as many species in as possible, in order to make the soil richer to capture more carbon. Also growing our own fruit and salad vegetables.

I bought an electric bike and have been using that to go into town and buy our groceries, rather than using the car. That's good exercise for me as well as taking a car off the road for the majority of the week.

DH works at home, so that's cut out the commuting he used to do. And we haven't had a foreign holiday in years!

And then I've been a vegetarian since I left home at 18 (I just dislike the taste of meat), but now - thanks to the wonders of newly acquired dairy intolerance - I am vegan too.

Obviously I know that I personally can't make a lot of difference on my own. But if everyone stopped buying plastics, and meat and petrol cars I think businesses would notice and things would change. They're already out there greenwashing things and chasing the eco-dollar, so it shows they've noticed.

And of course voting for governments who will actually do big things for the environment is vital too. I take that part for granted because I've always voted for that.

We do what we can do. We can't do what we can't.

Our gas boiler was installed in 2021 so we are locked into that for its lifetime. So there are things we can't change.

We are building an extension which will sort out some of the current access and energy efficiency issues, and give us a downstairs bathroom and a properly ventilated space for air drying clothes. We are also getting the kitchen refitted with new appliances and considering energy efficiency all round. Looking at new fridge, air pump tumble drier, electric hob and do we really need an oven? All being well after that we will probably put in solar panels as our next big house project. Heat pumps will have to wait until the boiler reaches end of life.

Our current second-hand hybrid car does about 4,000 miles a year. When it reaches end of life we may replace it with an electric vehicle or do without altogether, too early to say.

Agree with you about flying.

Well, I do not make any new year resolutions. Also, after seeing what horrors the wars in Ukraine and in Gaza bring, what destruction of the nature, sources, environment...I became sceptical as for my effort to contribute by living "more green"when II see burning fuel, poisoneus fumes, destroyed land and water sources... and one of these not far from our borders! I believe my life has never threatened the environment. What I take from the nature, I try to return back. I do normal things together with other people here who recycle and do right things to keep our environment healthy. I can´t do more...I live in a small village far from bigger towns and I do have to use my car because we don´t have anything here but one small pub. Buses don´t go on weekends at all and during the working days very scarcely - just to get children to and from school. So no, no heroic activity but modest and nature-friendly life...

I just declined the generous offer of a (mostly) free foreign holiday which would have involved a free flight... but that wasn't really a great sacrifice on my part, since I don't have a valid passport and couldn't have left the country anyway!

I spent most of Christmas eating wild game/roadkill (rabbit, pheasant and partridges arriving freshly dead and having to be skinned/plucked and eviscerated before cooking), which was a rather higher proportion of meat than I can usually afford, and I am currently sitting with my Christmas-present woollen scarf around my neck because the temperature in here is about 54F thanks to severe chill outside (my hands are cold; the rest of me is wearing thermal underwear and multiple jumpers and is fine)... but none of that is a fresh resolution. It's simply old habit.

I did something similar-ish. I refused to enter a competition (which I might have had an actual chance of winning) as the prize was a flight to Australia.

You can buy roadkill?

I usually wear thermals in the winter and two jumpers on top of a long-sleeved t-shirt, but I can no longer cope with low temperatures. I've had too many health issues that were made a lot worse by cold.

No, you pick up roadkill for free :)

I guess I don't travel a lot - or can't face eating badger...
What kinds of roadkill have you found over time?

I believe badger doesn't taste good -- most carnivores traditionally don't.

I don't own a car and don't normally travel on the sort of remote roads that generate roadkill, but I have over the years been served deer, hare, rabbit and pheasant (I think the partridges were shot). Pheasants are particularly suicidal, with a habit of sitting by the side of the road, and then panicking at the last moment in the wrong direction... possibly because their take-off skills are poor and they prefer to fly low over a level surface?

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