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How can ordinary people contribute to overcoming climate change effectively?
In you daily life there's kind of the obvious things like flipping off the light switch.
Recycle.
Take public transport.
Avoid plastic bags at the supermarket.
Eat less meat.
Use LED lighting in your home.
Eat no meat if you're feeling really virtuous.
Actually, it's not quite that simple. Basically, if you decide to go on a plant-based diet for a year, you can save about 0.8 of a tonne of CO2. If you decide to avoid a transatlantic flight, you're still around 2 tonnes. The big, big difference that you can make, avoiding 58 tonnes of CO2, is a decision not to have another child. And that's quite a frightening concept.
But I think our personal carbon footprints aren't the whole picture.
Actually, the really big emitters of emissions right now are big industries like the energy sector, like the industrial sector, like shipping, transport, aviation, all of those sectors that frankly an individual cannot make much impact on just by small, individual, personal moves.
The fact is that last year the world emitted about 38bn tonnes of CO2, mostly from burning fossil fuels for energy. So, although individual action is important, it has an effect, it's never going to be able to achieve enough on its own, unless governments step in.
There's the Green New Deal in the US, and there's also a Green New Deal being discussed in Europe. It's kind of harking back to this wartime economy, all hands on deck, big investments are needed type of framework for decarbonising the economy. In the US, the Green New Deal has been a big talking point for all of the Democratic presidential candidates. So if climate change is an issue that you care about, getting engaged in the policy discussion is also part of the answer.
You can also, as an individual, use your voice in elections. You can vote for candidates that actually support some kind of measures to combat climate change. But above all else, you can start trying to take account of what's actually happening. You can try and do an audit.
People are increasingly thinking about the money and how they invest it, and trying to avoid things like the subprime mortgage crisis. Thinking about what's happening in our climate, if you like, is just part of being a responsible citizen, and it's becoming more important every day.
