Are you prepared to change your lifestyle to try and prevent global warming?

Question

I apologise - my wording was wrong. I shouldn't have said 'prevent' - I should have said 'slow down'.

Answer 1

I already have. These are the ways I am providing myself with a healthy planet in which to retire when I am 70 years old, given the fact that if we don't blow ourselves up soon, we are going to find the way to stave off old age and we'll wallow in our own environmental muck. Never mind our children, we must be selfish and think about ourselves too!

Remember that for every electrical gadget in the house, there is a power station venting some kind of garbage into the environment so we need to look at everything that needs plugging in.

My main avenue of change have been the low energy bulbs. I have learned that although they all mention the same Wattage; 8 Watts, 11 Watts, you need to check out the intensity with which they light. The higher the number of "Lumens" quoted on the box, the more light you get for your 8 or 11 Watts. And I'm not even using expensive bulbs. I've paid 4,95 € for each 11W bulb (yes, 10 of those little suckers have put me back 55 € today, but that's two whole months of light bill saved in bulbs alone.

In fact, what I have spent on this and that to seal the house and reduce the energy bill has put me back a couple of weekends-worth in the pub, but the other 50 weeks this year are covered, and these bulbs are rated to last ten times longer than conventional bulbs (had two fail out of 20 and they were the really cheapo ones and the shop swapped them (and I know I dropped one in its box,)) so I won't have to replace them as often.

In my previous apartment I changed all the bulbs I could to energy saving bulbs. My light bill was really, really low. I moved to a new apartment and left those bulbs installed for the next tennant.

In my new apartment I replaced all the bulbs too. One lamp has 5 arms. They had a 60 Watt bulb each. Now they have 11Watts each. I could have put in 8 Watt bulbs but already for the energy of less than one bulb I am lighting with a brighter white than with the conventional bulbs. I also only turn on the lights I need.

I don't use air conditioning (south of Spain; it is appreciated, but everyone sets it at 18º when it is 40º outside.) The electric fan I bought is not particularly powerful on purpose. Eventually energy saving models will appear too.

I have also plugged all the TV equipment into a strip plug with a switch. Its all off untill I actually watch something. The DVD usually remembers the time and I no longer have a VCR so I don't have to re-program that. Same applies to the computer equipment. Strip with a switch. Stops those annoying telltale LEDs glowing menacingly in the dark.

The Freezer is set to a warmer setting than "Deepest Siberian Cold". Stuff still stays frozen but over the whole year I use less electricity. Same goes for the fridge part.

I have put the rubber sealing strips around door and window frames and strips along the bottom of all doors, particularly external doors.

Come winter I will hang heavier curtains, with padding if possible, to stop heat eking out through the glass. I can't put in double glazing but I would if I could.

I live alone and spend a lot of the day outside, so it is pointless heating the whole house up. I keep on the jumper that I would normally take off to turn the heating on for. My feather duvet keeps me nice and toasty at night so I don't particularly need a heater then. Sharing the bed would be nice, but there is no Ms. on the horizon...

Carpeting and things on the walls to help retain heat due to the fact that the building was not built with heat seepage in mind.

My water heater is not electric, but butane gas heated. Thus I am not using electricity constantly to keep it just at the right temperature. I only use the gas when required, lighting the pilot light as necessary. In my old apartment they installed a new gas heater whose pilot light was lit by a spark generated by an everyday battery. The gas bottle lasts months now, not weeks.

I drive the car only when really necessary. I haven't yet switched to the greener more efficient fuels because frankly, the price is still too high. The government should reduce the tax on the greener fuels to equate them to the dirtier fuels and wean us off them, forcing the gasoline manufacturers to only sell the better ones at the same price.

I try to keep the use of gadgets low. We have more and more things that need juice when what we need are less.

My only doubt regarding these new bulbs: what is the ecological pricetag of producing these bulbs and what do they do to the environment when they are disposed of?

I haven't gone pedantically as far as to judge where I spend my free time by an ecologically friendy manner, but we should. Not going to a coffee shop that has 8000 halogen bulbs lit needlessly and choosing a nice eco-friendly place instead and telling both shops why, to encourage them. Places that let the air conditioning leak out onto the street, places that overheat. Even large speakers blaring away fall out of line...

Public street lighting is another place to consume less. Are the bulbs in your street's lamps the best that can be chosen? Is there a more efficient bulb out there? Your tax pounds saved on lighting could be spent on bettering other things.

Think. Enjoy that feeling of a job well done when you have done even only a few things of the ones mentioned above.

Answer 2

I have changed my life style over the last 10 years when I first got interested in the effect of Climate Change and it has taken a long time to filter through and start to be taken seriously.
We cannot prevent global warming as we are now well into it, the ice cap is melting which could cool the Gulf stream so we could find our weather in the UK going to extremes ie., very hot or flooding, very cold, drought.
I still run my car as the transport is not very regular where I live and the last bus goes at 6.00.pm so until the public transport improves a lot of people have to drive. We should also cut down on flying as air travel is the worst.
There is still a lot that can be done and those who have answered that they are not prepared to change should apologise to their children as they are ruining their world.

Answer 3

they don't ignore global warming, they ignore that the human-caused carbon-dioxide (CO2), must be the inspiration of all evil for this reason. The earth has continuously been warming up, and cooling down over and once better, in jurassic time-era fx, it develop right into a lot hotter than that's as we talk. Even contained in the medieval cases we had a era looong era of hotter climate. contained in the 70's each and every man or woman feared global cooling, and the danger of a sparkling ice-age, because the graph on global temperature were going drastically downwards after a era the position the temperature were increasing. besides to the temperature has because the three hundred and sixty 5 days 2000 been going downwards back. I basically imagine we ought to settle for that those climate transformations have continuously been occurring, and could shop occurring and on and on always. people deny that CO2 is the brilliant sinner of all time, because it basically is hostile to the human good judgment, once you've a number of understanding. maximum people basically trust what they listen, even as that's someone of extreme authority declaring it, because they do no longer have any historic past understanding in any respect, except "that's a greenhouse gas". That stated, i'm chuffed to work out have this fuzz over us, so as that the scientist and engineers receives on with the shape contained in the sphere of different skill. because nomatter the global warming, we are operating out of oil and choal, which there is a large number of undesirable issues to assert about except the CO2 produced even as burning it.

Answer 4

I changed my behavior a long time ago. Recyling is a bigggee in my life. Another one is: pull out all plugs from wall...even if the power is not on...it will still use some electricity if you do not unplug each plug.
Think about paper diapers...they take almost a generation to dissolve into the soil!!!!! Just think what you can do to help. We are dying in our laziness. But, I must admit, I do not worry, because I know Jesus as my saviour and I know HE will be coming back very sooooon. Yeah!

Answer 5

I would like to and recently i've been trying to figure out how i can do this more. I've started to turn things off and not put them on stand by. Recycle my paper and card by actually using my blue bin. But it stops there because i'm skint. I buy economy toilet paper, because you pay three times as much for recycled. Same with light bulbs. I have a small house and no space to have several bins to seperate rubbish further. So i can't see myself buying solar panels just yet. I think its a terrible shame, and the government should make these products cheaper, but i can't see that happen. Any tips which will help me change but are cost and space effective are welcome.

Answer 6

No!The reason being:The problem is waste production,not just waste disposal.Companies over-packaging their products,governments not forcing hauliers to use rail & sea to transport their goods,instead of using roads.In Ireland,shoppers are charged for plastic bags which has dramatically cut the number used.Industry is allowed to cause as much pollution as it wants,yet the ordinary citizen is being hammered with bin charges.All the self-sacrificing by individuals is like a p*ss in the ocean,it makes no differance.

Answer 7

Yes, and already have and its not that big a deal.

It is immoral to waste natural resources even if global warming is not significantly influences by our consumption of resources.

Everybody can do little things to help conserve energy and its not that big a deal. Turn off lights, drive less or combine trips, keep car tuned up, recycle.

Want to know the most cost effective program? Daylight savings time-- the amount of electricity and fuel saved by the program is enormous. Little things done by alot of people add up.

Answer 8

We should all be prepared, and we shoul not be seeing it as a change of life, but we must all remember that global warming will be detrimental to us all and do what ever it takes to slow it down

Answer 9

When the US are prepared to sign up to Kyoto, China agrees to halt its fossil fuel powered plant building projects (I think I heard they're building 300+ new ones), and all western governements are prepared to seriously legislate against airtravel (and any other engine based transport come to think of it) then i'll stop leaving my TV on while I nip out to buy a pint of milk.

Until these things happen, everything else is a wiz in the ocean.

(and not being picky, but we can't Prevent global warming, it's already with us.. all we can do now is to try and slow it down)

Answer 10

If I believed that human activity significantly contributed to global warming, AND if I believed that it was bad, I would certainly change my lifestyle simply in self-defense. But I don't, so I don't! With the 3rd world countries polluting the bejessuz out of the atmosphere, nothing I could change would make a difference anyway. Anyone who believes otherwise has been brain-washed by Mr. A. Gore - you know, the guy who invented the internet!