ACTIONS THAT WILL MITIGATE CLIMATE CHANGE
Get done with the LED light bulbs, cloth bags and recycling bins, it's time for some straight talk on which actions really make a difference when it comes to mitigating climate change because according to Canadian Researchers who have compiled a list of the most commonly suggested 'green' behaviour changed, as found in high school science textbooks and government documents after delving into this question; worried about the planet?
The researchers made an interesting discovery after measuring the CO2-equivalent emission reductions that each of these changes would bring. 'That the most effective actions are not the ones being promoted publicly'. They are hardly mentioned at all due to its controversial nature.
According to the Canadian study just published in Environmental News Letters: If you want to reduce your carbon footprint, there are four high-impact key actions to take:
1. Do not have an additional child. (58.6 tonnes CO2-equivalent emission reductions per year)
2. Live car-free (2.4 tonnes CO2)
3. Avoid one round-trip transatlantic flight (1.6 tonnes)
4. Eat a plant-based diet. (0.8 tonnes)
This is actually different from the popular advice of living a green lifestyle which falls into the low-impact category:
1. Replace typical car with hybrid (0.52 tonnes)
2. Wash clothes in cold water (0.25 tonnes)
3. Recycle (0.21 tonnes)
4. Upgrade light bulbs (0.10 tonnes)
The researchers discovered that public discourse on reducing carbon footprint overwhelmingly emphasizes on low-impact behaviors. The mention of the high-impact behaviors is obviously non-existent. From the study:
"No textbook suggested having fewer children as a way to reduce emissions, and only two out of ten mentioned avoiding air travel. Eating a plant-based diet was presented in the form of moderate-impact actions such as eating less meat, even though a completely plant-based diet can be 2 to 4.7 times more effective at reducing greenhouse gas emissions than decreased meat intake.
"Similarly, methods for reducing one's impact while driving were mentioned almost 30 times, with only six mentions of a car-free lifestyle. instead, the recommendation category mentioned in the most textbooks was recycling (7 of ten textbooks) and the recommendation category with the most individual actions mentioned was energy conservation (32 mentions)"
Obviously, the high-impact actions touch on very sensitive topics and that is the reason people may not be talking about them. Also, it may be a suppressed discussion because these actions also tend to generate the most money for industry. There is hope that these high-impact actions will appear less extreme as the years go by with younger generations already showing enthusiasm for curbing emissions.
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