Posts tagged “CO2”

Buy local to reduce emissions

Posted on August 30, 2020

Remember those old movies where rich families would have exotic fruits from half way around the world that had to be transported on those old ships? In some parts of the world, exotic fruits could be just bananas and oranges. It seemed so decadent for these rich families to have such things. Well, today, we all have exactly these things available in our local supermarket, and we think nothing of it. It’s our right. But the ubiquitous availability of such things is one of the important reasons why our atmosphere is getting so polluted. It’s worth looking to buy local and to eliminate as many things as possible that are shipped great distances. I’ve been worrying more and more about the energy used to…

Tagged: air travel, CO2, packaging, planes

Plastic, pollution and the coronavirus

Posted on March 27, 2020

These are difficult days for humanity with most of us now housebound to stem the spread of the coronavirus. Quite rightly, this life-and-death issue has to take priority until the threat passes. However, unusual times like these have created an link between pollution and the coronavirus that offers us the opportunity to view things in a different way and make some interesting observations. Using less and treading lightly on the world For quite a while now, we’ve known that the world is struggling under the weight of human consumption and human pollution. There have been great amounts of progress towards minimising unnecessary consumption and pollution, especially plastic pollution, even though much, much more needs to be done. However, with the coronavirus threat, many people…

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Categories: Less Pollution

Tagged: air travel, CO2, coronavirus, planes, plastic

Concerns about HS2

Posted on March 4, 2020

The new high-speed rail link in England, HS2, has recently been given the go ahead by politicians. For some reason I feel deep concerns about HS2, and I thought I’d better investigate it properly. Even though trains are a less polluting way to travel than cars or airplanes, the new rail line will cut a new swathe through the English countryside and contribute even to more to the continuing destruction of natural environments that we can’t afford. When I have concerns about HS2, I keep hearing Satish Kumar’s call to “tread lightly” on the Earth and I believe this is a goal we must pursue with conviction. In the spirit of “Use 10 Percent Less”, you could say that building new train links would…

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Categories: Less Pollution

Tagged: CO2, environment, forests, planes, sustainability, trains, trees

Our choices can release CO2 – choose wisely

Posted on October 30, 2019

Did you know that the apparently simple choices that we make every day can be leading to increased CO2 emissions? In simple terms, our choices can release CO2. It’s not all about the “big bad fossil fuel companies” as really the whole system relies on our choices, and it’s easy to see this is true. A new smartphone When we desire that new smartphone, especially when our current phone is still working, we’re actually releasing CO2. It takes a lot of energy (not to mention raw, natural ingredients) to create a smartphone and over half of the world’s energy is currently coming from oil and gas. So we release CO2 when we get that new smartphone. And don’t forget that using a mobile requires…

Tagged: air travel, CO2, consumerism

We are just greedy and wasteful

Posted on August 28, 2019

Forget the argument about whether climate change is being caused by humans or not, it’s perfectly clear that we humans are very greedy and wasteful. This is what has to stop. Let’s acknowledge how greedy and wasteful we are, and then let’s start trying to address it. We don’t need any other reason than the fact that greed leading to lots of waste can’t be good for anything. Some time ago I was researching about the amount of energy we use. It’s no surprise that the world is using exponentially more energy as time passes. The counter argument goes that there are more and more people on the planet too, so maybe the extra energy usage is just natural. However, I wasn’t expecting to…

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Categories: Less Fossil Fuels, Less Pollution

Tagged: air travel, CO2, sustainability

Plane Pollution – a huge problem

Posted on May 28, 2019

I was doing some gardening early on Monday. It was a beautiful morning and when I looked up, I was startled to see so many plane trails in the sky. In fact, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and everything I could see was caused by plane pollution. It was really surprising, and got me thinking about what a problem plane pollution is and why we generally just ignore it. This prompted me to investigate a number of articles on the internet (you can see links to all these articles below along with the most interesting quotes from each). It’s clear that plane pollution is one of the major problems we’re facing as humankind, and we need to do something radical and quickly.

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Categories: Less Fossil Fuels, Less Pollution

Tagged: air travel, CO2, planes