Just about everything we do, including breathing, has a greenhouse gas consequence, and I think that this fact can paralyse people with hopelessness while providing others with an excuse to avoid meaningful action (”I use a cloth shopping bag so my driving and sun holidays are OK”).  

For these reasons I think that it’s useful to concentrate on a limited number of  behaviours that do the most damage.  I’ve identified these by looking at the sources of global greenhouse gas emissions (1) and then ‘translating’ these sources into the everyday behaviours that make up our lives.  The result are what I call the ‘Big Six’ behaviours, i.e.  Car Use, Flying, Electricity Use, Heating (and Cooling), Food, and Material Consumption.  Yes, cutting your lawn, taking a bus, cooking with gas, drinking imported coffee and a million other little choices all contribute to climate change.  However dealing with the Big Six not only directly results in the bulk of emission-savings, but also has a knock-on effect on the smaller issues.  And, by simplifying things change becomes more manageable - especially as each of the Big Six can be tackled one at a time.

Having said that, here’s a brief note about my personal experiences with each:

1. Car use.  I’ve never owned a car and, while there have certainly been drawbacks to this, overall I think my life is much more positive as a result.  Since the lack of a car has constrained my employment opportunities I’ve had to work locally and now work from home.  I don’t commute, I’m grounded in my local community and my work blends with my living.  I don’t have the expense of maintaining a car, I don’t have to go through the bureaucracy of taxing and registering it, and I can drink what I want when I want!  I’ve met some of the most interesting people I know while on buses and trains and I enjoy a coffee, muffin and a newspaper on the train when I do go to the city (Dublin).  Walking and cycling keep me healthy and keep the weight down and I’ve almost never experienced the stress of rush hour and gridlock.  While I may schedule fewer appointments, I go to them at a slower and more relaxed pace. Over the years my life has evolved and been organised without a car so my friends, family, work and leisure activities are all relatively close to hand and, indeed, are intertwined.  My life is largely whole, and not fragmented.

2. Flying.  I used to fly quite a bit until I became aware of the environmental consequences, and now I haven’t flown in 5 years.  I still travel, but by boat and train and bus, and the journey is an important part of the experience.  I sail fairly often around the Irish coast and to Wales and Southern England and again, each trip is an adventure.  I have travelled widely in the past (I’ve lived in Canada, China and Sierra Leone and spent time in dozens of other countries) and I would like to travel widely in the future.  But it will be real travel, over a period of months at least.  The idea of jetting into a place for two weeks as a disconnected tourist is repulsive and pointless to me now.  Travel and the experience of other peoples and other cultures is too important to me to squeeze into a week or two.

Most people find the idea of giving up car use and flying as the most difficult to get their heads around largely because of practical matters of work and the location of family and friends.  But it is a chicken and egg situation.  If you make your transportation choices first, then your life and your work will develop around them and your life will be better.  But if you put your life and work choices ahead of your transportation choices then you will find you have no transportation choices and instead will be chained to the car and dependent on jets and oil to see your far-flung family and friends.  Dependency on cars and jets makes life more scattered and disconnected.  Avoidance of cars and jets makes life more whole and connected.

3. Electricity Use.  The ideal here is to use only electricity generated from renewable sources, although unfortunately I don’t have that option.  But I use low-energy light bulbs and appliances, turn off lights and appliances that I’m not using, boil only the water I need for tea, etc.  I use a shower, not a bath and I never heat water I don’t need. And I limit the appliances I use.  These are the easiest things to do - they’re just habits, and the advantage is mainly a much lower electricity bill.

4. Heating (and Cooling).  I don’t have central heating, although I luckily live in an old house that holds the heat (actually, its not luck, its a choice).  I have an open fire and during cold snaps I will largely retreat into one room.  I wear sweaters in the winter and often use a hot water bottle.  Temperature is a relative thing and I am often uncomfortable in other people’s overheated houses.  I’m used to a cooler temperature and so I tolerate the cold better when I’m out. I’m also healthier and rarely have colds, etc., and I think that this is partly due to having less extremes of heat.  Maintaining an open fire every day can be a nuisance, but it is well, well worth it.  I love the life and comfort and atmosphere of an open fire - after all, you never see anybody staring into a radiator!  Incidentally, I’ve also lived in the tropics (without an air conditioner) and also adapted to that.

5. Food.  I’m a vegetarian.  Leaving aside the ethical issues of factory and industrial ‘farming’, my choice of diet is cheaper, more nutritious and much better for my health that a meat-heavy diet.  I buy locally and in season where I can (sometimes from an organic box system from a farm 7 miles away, sometimes from a baker a few hundred yards away, eggs come from a farm 6 miles away) and this gives me fresher, better quality and MUCH better tasting food as a result.   When I can’t locally I sometimes buy in bulk (and thus save a huge amount of money along with the packaging).  I rarely use supermarkets.  I sometimes make bread and jam and chutneys and really enjoy the process of doing so (its really grounding and you just can’t beat the taste of something you’ve made yourself).  I’d love to grow some of my own food some day, but right now I don’t have the time.  Not all my eating choices are ethical or sustainable, but many of them are.

6. Material Consumption.  This is a bit of a ‘catch-all’ but, to me, it basically boils down to valuing ‘inner wealth’ above ‘outer wealth’.  I love reading, art, music, good conversation, new pastimes, being involved in my community and all the other things that make for a rich inner and social life.  Expressing oneself through a new suite of furniture or a new car or some piece of junk that is used a few times and then joins the clutter seems stupid to me.  In fact, the more ’stuff’ I can get rid of, the better.  I save money as a result, but the real reward is the ability to appreciate a work of literature or to know edible mushrooms from inedible, or to look at the night sky and know exactly what I’m looking at, or to write emails like this one.  There is no ‘thing’ that is as meaningful or that can give you those kind of feelings.  In fact, my ideal is to live in a Japanese-type minimalist way.  Things clutter your mind as well as your space and are often expensive waste problems purchased only to provide a fleeting feeling.  Learning a new skill or developing the ability to appreciate or understand something new is infinitely more rewarding and freeing.  Practically I don’t have a television and so am spared a lot of persuasive advertising and am fortunate enough to be largely immune to status anxiety (at least the material kind), so that helps me avoid excessive materialism.

Well, they’re my ‘Big Six’.  They’re not definitive and I’m open to discussion, but it works for me.  I estimate (from Internet sites) that I still cause about one and a half times the per-capita global sustainable greenhouse emissions, so its a work in progress.  Getting renewable electricity and a wood-burning stove would do it, without me having to change much.  I should also mention that it would be equally possible to come up with a few ‘Big Ones’ that actually soak up carbon, starting with tree planting.  However I haven’t quite got there yet.