Moving to a clean sustainable future, will take hard work - but the simplest way to get started is to start acting and being sustainable on a personal level. Coupled with this, you should have a vision on how a green clean future will look within your household, community or country. It sounds silly, but if everyone shares the same vision of the future, it will help in creating it now. Four components of visioning and implementing a green future Zero-carbon Energy Lifestyle Reward Sustainable Behaviour Education and Training about Sustainability, Equity and the Green Economy Green Growth There are many other components that you can add yourself, Governments could even come up with a document several volumes long! What we have here though, are some of the simple steps needed to start thinking and living a more sustainable lifestyle.
A ZERO-CARBON ENERGY LIFESTYLE Do the math: how much energy do you actually use in a day, a week, a month, a year? How you are going to generate that energy without fossil fuel? Personal: think bicycles, walking, using public transport and think about what you eat, reducing meat intake etc. Household: as above, but also think about recycling, reducing waste, a eco-friendly family car, retrofitting the house with more insulation, solar water heating, ground source heat pumps, solar PV, wind turbines and all the other energy saving and renewable energy sources that your parents can buy Community: Think community procurement - could your neighbourhood own its own wind turbine? National: This is a huge deal: Sweden, Iceland and one or two other places are thinking about zero carbon national energy infrastructures - driven by bio-fuels, wave and wind energy, ground source heat pumps etc. Again - start with the math... REWARD SUSTAINABLE BEHAVIOUR Personal: Set disciplines for yourself - related to your spending. Keep up the sustainable lifestyle and reward yourself with something that’s not costly and is low-carbon. Household: Again, discipline: if you want a foreign holiday, sell the car. Want to have a more powerful car, become a vegetarian. Budget and use the Carbon footprint calculator. Community: If you use renewable bags, your neighbour is more likely to copy you, and their other neighbour is likely to copy them etc.. National: Taxes and subsidies can reward sustainable living, but also be a geek and check out the Danish Green Growth Plan or the Germany's Green Growth Plans to get an idea of what can be done on the larger scale.
EDUCATION AND TEAMWORK Personal: Create a reading list for yourself - and task yourself to read about the issues at least one hour a week. Household: Take the time to get your family on board: pull up some videos on Youtube: http://youtu.be/-xiX5c_er5o Talk about the challenges and soloutions, lead by example. Community: Councils can do much to inform their citizens on sustainability, or by supporting the setting up of a Transition Network in the local area - via distributing leaflets, holding Town Hall meetings, public education programmes etc. National: Education plans can ensure every child, from the day they start primary school to their college graduation, has education about sustainable living at the heart of their schooling. Australia has done it. GREEN GROWTH One of the themes of the Rio+20 summit is ‘green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication’ So how can we go about introducing a green economy? Personal: figure out how you can grow your income without increasing your carbon footprint. Maybe through working from home or being based near to your workplace Household: Think about enhancing your creature comforts in eco-friendly ways: a bicycle holiday, or investing in solar, or growing your own vegetables etc. Community: A green economy lends itself to communities creating their own energy or creating jobs which are all about creating a sustainable green world. National: In turn, communities being more sustainable will not only benefit the nation as a whole, but the whole world.
What else can you add to your vision on how a green clean future looks like - on a personal, household, community and national level?