Somebody asked me this the other day when referring to driving. They were talking about cars and the price of them. Being an intelligent friend who I greatly respect, I was taken aback when they asked this. Of course, they meant don’t let stuff like that inform your car choice. They had weighed up the environment as a factor and decided that access to petrol pumps and affordability were much more important when choosing a new car.
Have you heard such comments?
It worries me that people know very well about the problems linked to the environment yet still consider them only minor considerations when they make life choices. Not just when selecting consumables, but when making actual decisions about the way they go about their lives.
What am I trying to say?
First of all I am not laying the blame on anyone at all. I am purely saying that now we are over all the uncertainty – climate change is undeniable – let’s get on with dealing with it. There will be teething problems with new initiatives such as the rollout of electric cars. We will have to sometimes spend a bit more on everyday things until changes become embedded. It will take a little effort. But we need to act now! (By the way I am not trying to be Greta Thunberg, she is doing a great job though and is well worth listening to).
Changes we might see and have to deal with:
– New houses need an extra power supply to be used in conjunction with a charger for an electric car.
– Homes need to be altered to environmentally sound heating using heat pumps, solar panels or simply good old electric heaters.
– Emphasis will be on locally grown foods. This may be more expensive but it has a much smaller carbon footprint as it hasn’t flown around the globe.
– Travel to work needs to be more considered. Work from home is now a real alternative to commuting long distances daily. Work meetings can be carried out on zoom, rather than involving lots of attendees flying hundreds of miles and staying in hotels.
– Fashion needs to be led by the consumers. This is something I fear we may not see happening organically but fast fashion needs to end. Fast fashion involves so much energy usage and often depends on industries in third world countries which are dependent on dirty fossil fuels. The carbon footprint in transporting clothes around is also enormous. Fingers crossed people will start to wear out and even repair their clothing instead of changing their wardrobes every few months.
Of course, I could go on for pages but I just wanted to freshen people’s minds. In a few weeks the UN Climate Summit will begin in Glasgow and it’s the perfect opportunity for politicians to make progress in pushing the issues linked to global warming. I recently wrote another article about being eco-friendly which you can read here.
With any luck you read to the end of this post and agreed with me that we need to make the environment our number one consideration from now on. Let me know what you think below and perhaps consider following my blog for similar content.
