My Climate Challenge

We welcome the Climate Challenge website and campaign from Defra (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs). In the Get Involved section, you can comment or add your own Bright Ideas.

You are also welcome to comment and add your own Climate Challenge ideas here. Look for Comments at the bottom of this post, then click on this link and a new screen will open. Read any comments already there and add your own in the box (moderated).

Here are some of my Climate Challenge ideas:

First, some challenges for individuals:

One Warm Room - heating a whole house or building is a luxury we can't afford. Instead of central heating, when it's cold try heating one central room in your home.

Do It In Daylight - our modern 24 hour lifestyles are unsustainable, especially during the winter months with their longer hours of darkness. Rethink and reorganise your time. If you can't (eg. because of outside constraints such as night working etc), think about how you would manage if 24 hour resources were not available to you.

Stickers For Stick-In-The-Muds - attach stickers to (or place information leaflets near) items which still use excessive and unsustainable resources (high food miles, unnecessary plastic packaging etc).

Put That Light Out! If you live near an office or public building which leaves lights and computers on all night, call and leave messages, or give out leaflets outside the building, asking them to switch off and save energy.

Lower Income, Lower Emissions - the richer you are, the more emissions you create and the more resources you use up - check your local authority's ecological footprint* against the highest and lowest in the country (Highest = St Albans, Kensington & Chelsea, Guildford, Epsom & Ewell at 6.5+ global hectares perperson; Lowest = Merthyr Tydfil, Blaenau Gwent* at less than 5 gha per person). A good reason to be proud if you're not among the country's 'top' people. Whatever your rating, lobby your council to reduce its footprint even more.
*source: Stockholm Environment Institute York, REAP website (free but requires registration)

Don't Borrow Tomorrow's Resources for Today - reduce your debt, don't borrow for today's pleasures from the resources your children will need tomorrow.

And an important challenge for the Government:

Economic Growth Is For Dummies - we urgently need to rethink how we judge economic success: to be sustainable and to combat climate change we need to measure success and progress on sustainability, stability and social cohesion instead of on financial growth alone.