How to reduce carbon emissions

First act on four principles:-

• Conserve energy
• Use benign energy where possible
• Don’t use energy unnecessarily
• Pay for cleaning up the pollution you create

Apply these principles to your everyday life. It can be very hard to reduce the size of the carbon footprints that you leave on the planet every day of your life. It can be even harder where some of the carbon you create is “unnecessary” because it is created as a by product of giving you pleasure.

You can do many things. Here we suggest some of the things that can be done, whether you are an individual, or a company or a local authority or a government. It is impossible for everyone to do everything on the list, everyone can do some of the things on the list and in doing so will make our planet a safer, better place.

We set out some detailed suggestions of our own. If you can add to the list please email us with your suggestions at reducecarbon@genersys.com and if we agree we will add your suggestion to our list

Further reading:

The Energy Age, by Robert Kyriakides.

The Stern Review, from our news section.

Individuals

• Use low energy light bulbs
• Turn off the lights when you don’t need them
• Drive less
• Drive cars with smaller engines
• Keep your car for as long as possible
• Use biofuel if you can
• Recycle more
• Keep car tyres pressures at the right level
• Have your boiler regularly serviced
• Refuse to buy over packaged goods
• Turn down your heating in winter
• Turn off appliances when not in use
• Travel less
• Live closer to where you work and where your children go to school
• Work closer to where you live
• Join a car sharing pool
• Reuse your carrier bags
• Don’t buy goods made with fossil fuel energy or heavily polluting energy
• Plant trees
• Fly less
• Eat food produced locally in season
• Live in environmentally friendly buildings
• Install renewable energy systems, especially solar thermal systems
• Don’t vote for politicians who make excuses and don’t get things done to reduce emissions

Companies

• Introduce an economy class only policy for flying
• Only buy goods which are produced with as little emissions as possible
• No company cars
• Avoid over packaged goods
• Turn down your heating in winter
• Turn off appliances when not in use
• Work in environmentally friendly buildings
• Install renewable energy systems, especially solar thermal systems
• Use trains instead of planes
• Make sure the leaders lead by example

Cities and Counties

• Provide free public transport out of taxation
• Outlaw over packaged goods
• Make sure that the recycling you make your citizens undertake does not end up in a landfill site in China
• Install renewable energy systems, especially solar thermal systems
• Lead by example

Countries & Governments

• Avoid war
• Consider economic growth as a vice as well as a virtue
• Act now by legislation mandating renewables
• Take control of your energy policy
• Do not subsidise fossil fuel in any way and remove all existing subsidies
• Give your energy minister cabinet rank
• Appoint an environment minister of cabinet rank
• Make the polluter pay taxes commensurate with the cost of cleaning up pollution
• Only allow civil servants and politicians to fly economy class at state expense or insist that they take the train where possible
• Sort out carbon producing anomalies in our infrastructure such as those which make it cheaper to fly from London to Edinburgh than take a train
• Install renewable energy systems, especially solar thermal systems
• Recognise that there is no panacea for climate change just a lot of hard work and some behavioural change
• Lead by example