10:10 climate change campaign

[GeraldineMumsnet]

We thought you might like a sneak preview of a climate change campaign that's launching on 1 Sept (and that MNHQ is backing, hence us banging on about it here).

It's called 10:10 and will ask individuals and organisations to cut their carbon emissions by 10% by 2010.

It's the brainchild of Franny Armstrong, who made the McLibel documentary and the climate change docudrama The Age of Stupid, and is backed by various organisations, companies and veeps.

Sorry, but there aren't any more details yet - ie what sort of changes we can make to cut our carbon emissions - but once there are we'll flag these up.

At HQ we're definitely not experts on how to reduce carbon emissions, but some of you almost certainly are and we'd like to pick your brains about the changes (big or small) individuals and organisations can make to reduce their carbon footprint.

The campaign's website is www.1010uk.org (but there's nothing much there until next Tuesday).

There's a big launch do at Tate Modern in London also on Tues between 4pm and 7pm, which should be a good, family-friendly event.

Hope to see you there
Thanks
MNHQ

Just had a look at the site and I'm already doing most of the stuff it suggests.

I'm not sure about composting - I already put virtually all compostable waste in my green bin. Is it more environmentally friendly to compost it at home, and why?

Well collecting your green waste will have some carbon miles associated with it melpomene, I guess, which is obviously not the case if you do it yourself.

bump

LED light bulbs for your home. Led lighting saves electricity.

The lighting efficiency of the new high power led light bulbs is more than eight times that of incandescent lights, and twice as high as compact fluorescent lights.

www.besthomeledlighting.com

Electric cars!

Spain has announced that they intend to put 1 million electric cars on their roads by 2014. This will be part of the Zapatero government?s plan to reduce their use of energy and increase the countries overall energy efficiency.

Spain?s minister of industry, business and tourism Miguel Sebastian said Tuesday that the plan should gain approval from Spain?s Council of Ministers on Friday, and should then be carried out this year and on through to 2011.

In order to achieve this goal they are giving grants to people to buy eletric cars.

Whilst I kinda agree with you Tatt, I think there are lots of people who are just cynical about the campaign and therefore think they can ignore it and do nothing. We have signed up and aim to achieve the goal of 10% in 2010. I am currently monitoring our petrol consumption and gas and electricity. We are using the car a lot less, shopping locally for just about everything (and it's not costing me any more if not less 'cos I'm making lists and getting strictly what I need 'cos I have to carry it home ;-), I've become virtually vegitarian and the family as a whole is eating way less meat since I'm not cooking it for them, we buy locally produced veg, we are working hard on our allotment to make it more productive next year, we walk/cycle to school every day (about a mile each way) come rain or shine (that's a 4 mile push on his nee naw for my 2 yr old, which I'm pretty impressed with), we are buying most of our clothes from the charity shops and recycling as much as we can through our local charity shops and freecycle, our microwave broke down and we're not replacing it (I can't wait for the same to happen to the tele), and we are generally thinking about what we can do next to change our lifestyle in the right direction.

We are lucky to live in a transition town so there are lots of like minded people and great initiatives like a community orchard, ethical fashion shows and a co operative shop owned by the village. Check out our local transition town website. I've also started blogging our efforts here.

I hope lots of people will join in with 10:10 and all of them will do their very best to reduce their consumption, hopefully by more than 10%. To safeguard the future for our kids we need people to take direct action now, whether it is instigated by a campaign or by the realisation that the world is going to be a pretty dire place for our kids if we continue along our current road any longer.

It sounds like you're doing fantastic things, nlpmum. Good on you!
I haven't signed up because I don't think realistically we can cut by 10% next year, and I don't want to sign as a token gesture.
We did look at signing up for our business but we don't use any of the things that they are counting for the 10% reduction, so again it didn't make sense. We are trying to figure out if theres anywhere else we can improve things for work though

I've just looked at the list of ways of cutting and reckon that 99.9% of families can probably cut at least 5% with small amount of effort - it's the measuring of it which will be the effort and tbh, I'm more concerned with us as a family changing our attitudes than that we spend time counting every emission (and I'm not at all sure how we'd do that anyway). I know of only one family which I think is already doing everything they can (they run no car, haven't flown for years, the hubby is vegan and the rest of the family very veg (i.e. little dairy), they are looking into making their house a passive house and anyway, don't use any more electricity than they have to, they do watch tele, and that is prob the only cut they could make at the moment), but, lets face it, most of us aren't like that, so there's plenty we can do.

I guess the problem for us is we've been doing a lot of this stuff for a while, and past a certain point it does get hard to cut any further. We're kind of down to the minimum on electricity (lived off grid for years), have woodburner for cooking & heating, don't fly etc. It sounds awful but we have kind of relaxed some stuff a bit just because we don't want to be too weird IYKWIM as a family - I don't want dd to be the only child who can never go to any activities because I won't drive, for example, or never to have any new clothes or stuff especially as she gets a bit older & these things are more important.

Composting is good 'cos it means fewer bin lorries, less landfill digging, jcb's driving around spreading and covering the waste and less methane gas which is created in landfill sites because of the way they are constructed (methane is much worse than CO2 for global warming)
Best stuff we do is eat more local food, shop less at the supermarkets (less packaging and goods flown around the place) and at least one completely veggi meal a week. We've also joined our local Transition Town.

My family and I were recycling/reusing/reducing years ago, long before the "global warming" agenda ever hit town. I've always been into husbanding our resources more wisely. (A couple of my jumpers are so old, I only now wear them in the house!)

However, I firmly believe that the current faff about "global warming" will die out in the next few years, it's currently a grand excuse for a tax regime. My CO2 emissions are going down, but only because I am interested in finding ways of saving money in this credit crunch era.

Climate change is happening (and has always happened it is not a new thing), but in which direction is still open to doubt. A thousand years ago Britain was far warmer than today, but they weren't industrialized. There must be other factors involved that are not being considered.

The computer models used to predict temperature DID NOT predict the fact that temperatures have flattened out and are not rising. The Russians have the same data and their predictions are for a big global COOLING with a serious chill factor.

In fact, calculations from various research units cannot agree on what the mean temperature of the planet should actually be, and several calculations show a mean temperature ABOVE that which we currently experience, ie we are below the temp we should be at.

My point is, the evidence would not be enough to convict in a court of law, it is not beyond reasonable doubt, and the recent release of information from the university shows some disturbing questions need to be answered about possible manipulation of data.

And by the way, did you know that the biggest "greenhouse gas" is actually water vapour? 95% of it in fact. CO2 accounts for such a tiny amount.