How big is yours?

Well @ryan is going to be seriously disappointed by the misleading title.

Today the penny dropped, like an apple upon the head of Newton. I was reading posts on Twitter earlier on when Climate Change was trending (it's not hot anymore, Strictly IT2 is now far more important) and the reckoning is that climate change is down to the perpetual need for growth, in both industry and business. The need to linearly increase profit annually has driven this situation. This powerful desire to fuel growth is the root of the issue.
HOWEVER!
The UK has it sussed. We're going to be saviours of the planet and pioneers of the process. It's all clear now. By triggering Brexit all growth will cease and industry across the UK will grind to an unprecedented low. We won't be able to afford our luxurious holidays abroad, so the amount of plans flying in/out will drop. Our imports will drop due to rising costs, clearing the Channel. Fuel will exponentially rise in cost, again, so people will use less. It's genius. Why didn't we all realise this was the incredibly intelligent, fore-thinking plan of Cameron and co.

Anyway, more seriously.
I'm increasingly conscious every day of the implications of my activities on my carbon footprint. I now walk to work instead of driving (partly down to moving 45 miles closer to work) and Tram it to regular hospital visits I require instead of driving now. But I live alone, so I'm less economic with some resources than say a couple or a family. I'm constantly conscious of not leaving lights on and being economic with electronics - trying to get more people in work to turn their computers off overnights etc. I watch less tele and don't use a microwave which means again lower electricity requirement. Over the last year I've phased out all meats (fish I'm finding harder to do) and replaced Dairy milk/cream with soya/oat substitutes (which generally taste nicer - Alpro Soya Cream for Scrambled egg!)
The big area that lets me down is the amount of reliance I have upon hospital treatment and the amount of waste that goes into/comes out of that. Huge amounts of plastic wrapping/single-use needles/blister packs etc going into incinerators or landfill.

Urm. My Earth overshoot day is 7th March... That's a bit horrifying.

Climate change is a myth...










Only joking. We’re all going to die.

The first thing that site does is ask for my email address. Nope.

I work from home so I don't make any commuting contributions. I've recently had my central heating replaced with a new and modern system so that's about as efficient as it can be. I wouldn't be averse to driving an electric car, except that they're expensive, the second-hand market is nonexistent, and most importantly I'd have to run an extension lead down the street and over the road because hardly anyone round here has parking on their own property.

I don't think the bigger changes will happen with any government. People want the government to spend money on them. They aren't going to support a government that spends money now to help the future. I've often thought that if we discovered that a large asteroid was due to crash into the earth in 200 years nobody would do anything about it: it would be expensive, there are more urgent problems that need dealing with right away, four more years before we do something won't make that much of a difference, and if we do it now people will complain that their money is being spent for someone else's benefit. So it gets kicked along for the next government to sort out. And by the time the urgency is too great to ignore it's too late.

I was talking more globally in terms of resistance to renewables... China and the US being the biggest offenders. Any change the UK implements is negligible against the output of those two.
That said, 40-70% of our energy alone still comes from the 33 combined gas turbines and steam power stations around the UK, which are serial offenders in terms of co2 generated.