Can You Decarbonize Yourself -1 Thing At A Time?
Close of 2024
#Systems Change #Climate
Close of 2024
It’s the end of another year, and we are almost halfway through perhaps the most important decade of this civilization as extreme climate events increase all over the world.
Despite experiencing another “warmest year ever”, powerful hurricanes, longer droughts, once-in-a-century floods, and countless and persistent scientific warnings about warming climate it appears little has significantly changed.
Another series of COPs, as well as global plastic treaty discussions, and clamors for lowering gas emissions and curtailing the use of harmful fossil fuels, have come and gone.
Awareness has grown of the need to plant trees, for example, to provide shade, prevent new dust bowls, save topsoil, and regulate water supplies. Renewable energy use has increased — but so has energy consumption as millions of air conditioners are now turned on for longer and longer periods around the globe.
Regenerative agriculture which seeks to regenerate soils, and produce pesticide-free food, is gaining momentum but still constitutes a tiny fraction of total outputs (less than 8% in the USA).
As political leaders continue to distract themselves and their populations with domestic disputes, political corruption scandals, and power struggles it appears that they continue to fight tiny fires whilst the planet burns and it is easy to despair.
INDIVIDUAL ACTIONS
Big societal changes are necessary to live in a way that is in harmony with our environment and one that does not destroy the planet’s health any further.
However, millions are dissatisfied with their leaders’ lack of action on climate change. Millions more feel trapped under polluted skies as they live in homes next to oil refineries, or industrial agricultural farms. Many feel they have no way of escaping overcrowded, drought-stressed cities or polluted urban areas.
However, if we want to breathe safely outdoors, and enjoy the full diversity of beautiful creatures and plants that inhabit this planet with us, if we want to eat a diverse range of healthy food and have sufficient access to drinking water, it is impossible to sit idle.
So, what can an individual do beyond participation in tree planting?
Or creating conservation areas with pollinator and wildlife habitats?
And re-using plastic shopping bags?
Responsible individuals are already stepping up — by refusing to continue using petrol cars, using public transport, flying much less, and making wiser, more informed consumer choices.
But really, we need to decarbonize EVERYTHING IN OUR DAILY LIVES
This is not easy (see my earlier article)
However, the great advances through history have never been easy — in the UK the National Health Service was only created AFTER World War I. Women won the vote only AFTER many starved themselves and were tortured by state services. Slavery only ended AFTER ….. Vietnam only stopped AFTER …. you get my point.
So this may be a good time in the year to decide what you can do better next year — what are your top five goals for saving the planet?
(I will look at some of the easier ones first.)
1. Stop Using Plastic Bottles
Just say no — and discover how challenging this is! Soft drinks are easy — they often come in cans which can be recycled or even glass.
More challenging are things like:
· Laundry detergent
· Cleaning fluids
· Hygiene products like shampoo and body lotions
· Cooking sauces
However, given the stalled nature of the current plastics treaty (where there was heavy lobbying by, you guessed it —the fossil-fuel industry), why not deploy your power through your purse. You can vote with your wallet and support those attempting to provide viable non-plastic alternatives.
For example, shampoo bars becoming more widely available as are laundry “sheets” which are packaged in cardboard boxes.
2. AVOID SYNTHETIC MATERIALS
Synthetics are made from petrol derivatives and have been found to disrupt human hormone systems — can you survive in clothes from natural fibers?
Can you furnish your home and your office/work space with natural materials?
Again, this is challenging — but we won’t succeed ever unless we start somewhere. Where could you start to make this change in 2025?
3. DECARBONIZE YOUR FOOD SUPPLIES
Now, this may appear to be impossible unless you’re living on a small holding and growing almost all of your food.
Given that most of us still reside in cities or towns, how can you do this?
Most of our food is coated in a pesticide, a preservative, or wrapped in plastic and sold to us after the end of a long journey which has usually robbed it of over 90% of its nutritive value.
So, if you do find a way to access fresher food — directly from local growers, or through collective purchases through your workplace or school, you will be healthier, and save the planet. Farmers growing regeneratively or organically need your support.
Purchasing organic food and cooking everything from scratch is resource intensive — more expensive to buy and time intensive to prepare compared to processed food. Is this something you could commit to in 2025?
It’s almost impossible to be 100% food self-sufficient without substantial capital investment. However, could you be eating at least half of your food from local producers, by the end of 2025?
4. CUT FOSSIL FUEL POWERED TRAVEL DOWN
Travel accounts for over 30% of global carbon emissions globally. However, not everyone can afford an electric car — or even knows how to drive. For larger countries with no rail networks, there is no infrastructure for alternative travel arrangements or even electric car charging stations.
However, if you do know how to drive and cannot afford an electric vehicle or electric bicycle how else can you cut your gas emissions and pollutant production?
Sharing car rides? Driving less often? Driving a smaller car? Buying a bike or electric bike? Using public transport?
Given some countries don’t have an adequate public transport system — or even one at all (yes, Canada does not have a public railway system!!) is it time to join a campaign for your town, city, or country to provide one?
We are going to stop using fossil fuels this century if not this decade —so why continue to poison everyone, the environment, and add to global warming when we could stop sooner?
Meanwhile — how can you lower the carbon and pollutant emissions from your journeys in 2025?
5. CUT DOWN YOUR USE OF ENERGY
Whether your electricity supplier is producing electricity from a renewable source or not — the planet cannot support a growing population with increasing energy needs.
This may necessitate all future housing to be designed to decrease the need for heating and cooling — such as passive house design.
It could necessitate whole populations living underground — because really who wants to be above ground when it is over 50 degrees Celsius for more than 3 months of the year (as it will be in the Middle East by 2050.)
Unless you have smart meters installed in your house that tell you at the push of the button how much energy you are using, and its cost, like many of us in the UK have been “encouraged” to install in the last few years, it may surprise you which devices are hungry for energy.
It can be educational to discover how much energy households use, and surprising how much households can save — just through greater awareness.
Make it a goal to only purchase energy-efficient white goods, and generate as much of your own power as possible.
This may or may not mean grinding your homegrown corn for cooking oil with a bicycle — but could mean you install smaller solar and wind systems to power outdoor lights, for example.
6. SAVING THE MOST ESSENTIAL RESOURCE
You may feel that this is air — or Oxygen as we cannot live without it — but other than ensuring you are not actively polluting your environment through burning fossil fuels, it is difficult to know how you could safeguard your Oxygen requirement.
However, a mature tree can generate enough oxygen to keep a few adults alive in total over a year — so if you haven’t got that message yet already PLANT MORE TREES.
So, I am going to ask you about your water use.
Even if you’ve had flooding this year.
How we manage water, throughout a landscape, in coastal regions, and in our everyday lives is going to become increasingly important.
Most cities are not at the same stage as Bogota, Columbia at the moment where water is turned off 24 hours a week right now. But many will soon be if we don’t learn how to manage our water supplies better and install systems to manage grey water more efficiently.
These are just some of my thoughts at the end of this very long and challenging year. This year I experienced firsthand:
— how hard it is to breathe when surrounded by forest fires, (and oh how beautiful and vast those forests of Northern America are!)
— experienced the heat underneath a “heat dome”
— watched rainwater wash away topsoil,
— seen the piles of plastic bottles each person consumes being carried to recycling depots in Canada,
— seen the grasshopper plagues in the US,
— and experienced the spiralling costs of food in Europe and North America.
It is clear that the challenges are many and the mitigation and adaptation actions appear too small.
Many of the most advantageous changes in societies throughout history have come from below. So, we all need
BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE.
PS. On a more positive note it is difficult not to mention some of the great new products and services increasingly available such as:
New food as medicine health programs in the US for Diabetics announced, farms for schools programs active in over 40 states in the US, Food plastic made from potato peels, toilet paper made from leaves, herbal plant medicines recognized, plant sanctuaries being established to save the 40% of plants at risk of extinction, electric school buses, electric bike buggies for the school run, greater subsidies for electric farm machinery and so much more. It’s not hard to find good projects — just worrying that we don’t seem to have enough take up on them.
Disclaimer: All views are my own, and I may well update and edit this article before the end of the year!
