Global Warming - Are You and I doing enough?

Years ago a friend of mine, unable to sleep on a hot and sticky night,  at 2am wrote a letter to editor of the local paper. Her letter, which she proudly showed us published in the paper the next day, said 'Have you noticed it's been very hot lately? Do you think it's global warming?'

Personally I've long bought into the idea that global warming is an issue and we need to do something about it, however Jeffery Sachs' lecture on sustainable growth was a wakeup call about how urgent the problem is.  To see an economist, whose breed I'm used to hear talking about markets, exchange rates and availability of capital, stand up and say if we don't do something soon about climate change our  planet and the whole economic system is screwed, was striking. To hear that if in fact we just burn all our currently tapped oil supplies we will cause temperature increases that could be catastrophic for the planet was also a surprise.

I'd previously felt it was enough to support political parties or campaigns with green friendly policies, however politics is a difficult game, and it takes someone bold to tell all those making their millions producing/consuming fossil fuels that they have to find another way. Even Obama, supposedly working on the side that wants to do something about climate change, produced an 'All of the above' energy bill.  Meaning he promotes all forms of energy!

Sachs proposed that we have 3 possible saviours to this crisis:

1. Technology - Advances in technology making green energy more cost efficient and hence accessible
2. Scarcity - As the price of fossil fuels goes up people will seek alternative solutions
3. Human Decency

And it got me thinking, what have I done to help reduce my carbon footprint?  Putting aside my pescatarism, which is motivated by the treatment of the animals rather than the fact meat takes more energy to produce than vegetables, well nothing. 

The problem is for most of the general public, myself included, it's not something we consciously factor in when making every day decisions, such as to take the car or the train.  Even my parents when considering other energy options, as power prices are rising in NZ, disregarded solar panels as by the time they would recoup the purchasing cost they would need replacing.  From an economic point of view both options are equal, from an environmental point of view solar power is far better.  I don't think my parents are bad people, I just think the issue hasn't been hammered home as much as it could. Of course if/when technology causes the short term economics to fall on the side of solar power they would probably change their mind, but do we have enough time to wait for that to happen?

I'm not sure what the answer is, but in the meantime I plan to apply a little bit more consciousness and human decency into my decisions.

What if we burned all the fossil fuels we have? infographic by OpenCanada.