Image by Leonski via Flickrby Richard Conlin, on Yes! magazine: http://www.yesmagazine.org/Seattle hopes to become the world's first climate-neutral city. It's no small task: The City must account for, and reduce, the carbon footprint of everything from transportation to trash for hundreds of thousands of people. City Council President and YES! Magazine board member Richard Conlin is blogging about the city's efforts.
Much of the work on climate change has focused on making major policy or systems level changes that will have dramatic impacts on carbon emissions. Critical as it is to change emissions systems, create new technologies, develop energy efficient buildings, or provide better travel options and renewable energy systems, most such big ideas require pose major barriers to implementation.
As the saying might go, ‘you can lead a community to a low carbon future, but you can’t make them stop emitting carbon.'
But there are lots of actions that people can take that do not require systems change, and may form the best foundation for making systems change happen. In 2009, a group of scientists developed a model for specific actions that people can take without major new technological or policy inventions.
They published an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences entitled ‘Household actions can provide a behavioral wedge to rapidly reduce U.S. carbon emissions’.
The article suggests that a set of behavioral changes that could be taken right now would reduce US carbon emissions by some 7.4 percent - an amount, they note, “slightly larger than the total national emissions of France." These savings can be realized at a very low cost using current technology and without significant changes in lifestyle.
To read further, go to: http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/richard-conlin/household-actions-make-a-difference?utm_source=wkly20111007&utm_medium=yesemail&utm_campaign=mrConlin
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