Climate Change

Climate change has been in the news a lot this week, as it always should be. David Attenborough presented a documentary called Climate Change: The Facts and protesters under the banner of ‘Extinction Rebellion’ have been holding up traffic & generally causing a nuisance in London. 

*Finally* an excuse to use Snoopy's brother Spike as an image!

I regularly consider whether I am personally doing enough to combat climate change. The biggest thing that contributes to my personal carbon footprint is my car. I do less than 250 miles a week which is not an enormous amount but still has an impact. I do what I can to keep the amount low- my car has fairly low emissions, I never sit with the engine running and I tend to walk short journeys. In an ideal world I’d travel by public transport but I don’t live in a city, there’s no rail line running through the town and buses are limited & don’t start or stop anywhere near where I need them to. 

Food is probably the next biggest contribution to a personal carbon footprint. I think I do OK here. I don’t eat very much red meat at all and it’s animals like cows which release huge amounts of greenhouse gases globally. I almost always chose foods which are produced as locally as possible- virtually all the meat I eat comes from the UK & all the fruit & veg other than bananas comes from Europe. The transportation of food across the world is another major contributor to the release of greenhouse gases.

The area I probably don’t do so well at is my electricity use. I watch TV or use a computer a fair bit and I am regularly charging gadgets of one kind or another. At least I always turn things off when I’m not using them which is good practice.

On the whole, I think I do OK. But you do wonder if it makes any difference. Whilst I have a limited carbon footprint there’s people travelling around in huge cars with high emissions, jetting off around the world constantly & not even considering other things that contribute to their carbon footprint. Surely my own efforts are so inconsequential?

The thing is, people aren’t going to change if it means sacrifice. They want big cars, lots of holidays & to be able to buy whatever they want in the shops. It’s human nature. Whilst lots of people doing small things can build up, the problem is so large that it would require a huge majority to actually make a major difference.

I think the answer lies in science and technology. We need to produce electricity more cleanly as a planet, to travel in vehicles which don’t release emissions & eat things which don’t release emissions. All of these things are being worked on and so as consumers we need to pressure companies to fund research into them & chose the cleaner options where we can. People don’t feel like they are losing out of they are using better technology and that’s the way to improve things.

This is also why I think the Extinction Rebellion protests are a waste of time. For one thing, the carbon footprint it’s created of all the protesters and police officers getting there must be huge. It also seems odd they are doing this at a time most politicians are not in the city. But for me the biggest problem is that they are blocking roads & making people’s lives harder & doing that is never going to help you gain support. We need to get everyone on board with this & that won’t happen if the cause becomes a symbol for inconvenience & unhappiness.

For me, protesting has about the same impact as moaning about things on the internet. It achieves nothing but annoy people you want to have on your side. Don't moan about a TV show, just don't watch it. Don't moan about politicians, vote against them. Don't protest about climate change, do your part in living as carbon free as you can and force companies to be more environmentally friendly through your purchases.