Sunday 4 February 2007

This Is Your Low Carbon Action Plan

FIRST THINGS FIRST:
· Stop flying – flying is now an unsustainable activity;
· Change to a Green Electricity supplier = Green Energy / Good Energy /
Ecotricity;
· Fully insulate your home and loft including cavity wall insulation;
· Turn your heating down to 18ºC and only heat occupied rooms;
· Reduce energy consumption, switch off electrical appliances on standby;
· Fit energy saving lightbulbs in the home, lobby your workplace;
· Cut down all unnecessary car trips – walk, cycle, use public transport
more: 25% of all car journeys are less than 2 miles; 58% are less than 5 miles.

NEXT STEPS:
· Compost your food waste;
· If your boiler is over 10 years old it could be 25% less efficient than a condensing boiler –
replace it with a condensing boiler or Micro-combined heat & power unit;
· When replacing electrical goods buy only the most energy efficient rated ones;
· Recycle everything you possibly can and buy recycled goods in return;
· Save water – take showers not baths / put a brick in your toilet cistern / use a water butt
in the garden to collect rainwater for watering the garden.

TAKE A DEEP BREATH AND:
· Stop using supermarkets – get your food from local sources e.g. farmers markets /
vegebox schemes / local fruit & veg markets / local butchers;
· Stop shopping for new products in general – buy second-hand instead or recycled;
· Consider doing without a car and car share or join a car club. Consider buying the smallest
fuel efficient diesel or hybrid;
· Travel less. Explore the beautiful Cotswolds;
· Grow your own vegetables in your garden or get an allotment;
· Change to an ethical bank and ethical investments
· If you are rich enough consider investing in Microgeneration.

WANT TO DO MORE…?
· Become a Climate Change Campaigner and tell everyone you know about how to live a low
carbon lifestyle;
· Write to the Government and your Local Authority so that they know how much you care
about the Climate and our future on the planet;
· Write letters to newspapers – local and national – join local groups – join local protests –

make as much noise as you can …

TOGETHER WE CAN BE VERY POWERFUL – JOIN THE CLIMATE MOVEMENT!
To find out what you can do see the web-site links on the top right-hand side of this blog = Campaign against Climate Change web-site / Oxford Students Union Climate Justice web-site / Prophets of Hope & many more...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

this is tottally ridiculous demanding these drastic changes. Absolutley ludicrous

cathyclimatechange said...

It is interesting that you use the word 'demands' because they aren't. I would agree with you that they are drastic changes and they are drastic because of what anthroprogenic emissions have done to the climate. Everyone has a stark simple choice - we either accept this and change accordingly or we don't and accept the consequences - unfortunately it won't be consequences for just us but for millions and millions of other people throughout the world who have much less power to emit carbon than we have and therefore what we do is now effecting them - needlessly emitting more carbon is now the ultimate selfish act.

Cathy Green

Anonymous said...

Not to forget go vegan, animal agriculture is responsible for up to 68% of harmful emissions...

On another note the changes were hardly drastic! What is drastic is having to sandbag up your front door in the centre of Cheltenham!