Climate change - what can we do?

Dales Cannon

lightbrain about 4pm
Staff member
This is meant to run in parallel to "Plastic bags, climate change, renewable energy" and is to offer suggestions on what anyone can do to help the situation. It is not a pissing contest and posts of this type and any whining or finger pointing will be deleted. And yes there has been plenty of discussion to say we are screwed and individual efforts will be meaningless. This is for anyone who wants to have a go and stand up for what they believe and how to reduce their carbon footprint.

So post up ideas and how to do your bit. In no particular order a few to kick things off:

Air travel - particularly international travel. How to minimise your travel to only essential (whatever that means for you) trips.
General travel.
New purchases - Keep things ticking along and repair rather than replace.
General recycling.
Diet.
Home grown foods.

And so on.

Let's see what can be suggested. Obviously if you are in an inner city unit running a couple of sheep and a cow and some chickens is likely a bit tricky but let's see what ideas are out there.
 

Haakon

Keeps on digging
Geez mods, that was funny... Clearly not a fan of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy...

But seriously, personal lifestyle changes are great and all - but if you want to make a serious contribution than you have to get involved in politics to some extent. I reckon joining your local arm of the LNP and fostering change from within would be a useful action. You might not be too popular though...

Next best is consider what you do for a living. Are you a field that promotes or involves high energy use? Changing one households emissions is trumped by changing your businesses emissions.

Or maybe change careers for something that works on solutions. That old saying about if you’re not part of the solution etc...
 

Oddjob

Merry fucking Xmas to you assholes
Geez mods, that was funny... Clearly not a fan of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy...

But seriously, personal lifestyle changes are great and all - but if you want to make a serious contribution than you have to get involved in politics to some extent. I reckon joining your local arm of the LNP and fostering change from within would be a useful action. You might not be too popular though...

Next best is consider what you do for a living. Are you a field that promotes or involves high energy use? Changing one households emissions is trumped by changing your businesses emissions.

Or maybe change careers for something that works on solutions. That old saying about if you’re not part of the solution etc...
Totally this.

Sent from my SM-G900I using Tapatalk
 

silentbutdeadly

has some good things to say
In terms of reducing your carbon footprint...avoid doing as many of the things you can avoid doing without doing your head in. At least, moderate your consumption of 'stuff'.

But don't lose sight of the fact that the most important thing you can do is prepare yourself and your family as best you can for the changes already built-in. Improve your adaptive capacity and your resilience in the face of change. If doing so means increasing your carbon footprint in the short term...then so be it.

And improved adaptive capacity is not represented by a bigger air conditioner!
 

hifiandmtb

Sphincter beanie
Don't know. That's the problem!

Personally, any lifestyle changes I make for CC are for moral reasons. I'm too insignificant otherwise.

Once I work out what I can do that will make a difference, I'll let you know.

In the meantime, I'll just educate myself & listen to the science.
 

wavike

Likes Dirt
Any changes will impact your conscience, nothing else. 1/25,000,00 of 1.3%. Collectively we could impact Australia, very little chance of impacting Us/China/India. My area has a population of 550,000. 10% of them seem to commute 70klm to City, Wife and I travel 9klm, by bike when I can. Daughter goes to Uni 4klm away.
Australia has one of the highest per capita emissions of carbon dioxide in the world, with 0.3% of the world's population it produces 1.3% of the world's greenhouse gases.
 

The Reverend

Likes Bikes and Dirt
As @Haakon said, go vegan. I recall a report in the Economist stating that the single biggest thing to help climate change is for people to eat less meat.

It does pose the question of where protein sources will come from and in many places around the world it's insects, rather than meat which provides this.

Just avoid soy / tofu.
 

Haakon

Keeps on digging
Any changes will impact your conscience, nothing else. 1/25,000,00 of 1.3%. Collectively we could impact Australia, very little chance of impacting Us/China/India. My area has a population of 550,000. 10% of them seem to commute 70klm to City, Wife and I travel 9klm, by bike when I can. Daughter goes to Uni 4klm away.
Australia has one of the highest per capita emissions of carbon dioxide in the world, with 0.3% of the world's population it produces 1.3% of the world's greenhouse gases.
If I see that “we only produce 1.3%” thing again I’m going to scream... Drives me nuts.

Mind you, with our continued abdication of any moral authority on the international stage, it’s starting to mean more... Like the US, we were very effective at driving large emissions reductions in other parts of the world through assorted international fora and generally being good global citizens.

This was when we were putting our money where our mouth is and nowadays we are more known for being the only country to ever repeal a working climate policy. It dents out cred a bit and has “encouraged” other countries to delay or can their own mitigation efforts.
 
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