Everybody in their daily life produces carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Driving your car, taking public transport such as trains, taxi's and airplanes, all produce carbon emissions. The domestic energy consumed in your home, such as the gas and electric used to heat and power your house, produce carbon emissions. All this adds up and impacts on climate change. This is what's known as your 'carbon footprint'.
The effect carbon emissions (along with methane and nitrous oxide) are having on the climate are causing more extreme changes in the weather, such as
- Longer, hotter summers and dry periods
- Flooding and rising sea levels due to melting ice caps
- Colder winters.
On a whole the earth is increasingly getting warmer due to the fact heat is being prevented from being released into space by the build up of gasses in the atmosphere, the main one being carbon dioxide. This is known as global warming, or the greenhouse effect.
We as individuals can help to reduce the carbon emissions we produce by making changes in our daily lives, such as,
- Simply turning household lights off when not in the room
- Switching appliances off instead of leaving them on standby
- Walking short journeys instead of taking the car (driving your car emits twice its weight in carbon dioxide each year)
- Dry your clothes on a washing line on a sunny day
- Use energy saving light bulbs around your home.
Further from reducing carbon emissions is offsetting them. Planting trees/reforestation removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Trees take in, or absorb, carbon dioxide and release oxygen back into the air through photosynthesis, for us to breathe. The more trees we plant, the greater the carbon offset will be. Through this we can all tackle global warming and protect the earth.
For the past, the present and the future. |
