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CLIMATE SOLUTIONS: WORKING PAPER 1
8 STEPS YOU CAN TAKE TO CUT YOUR HOUSEHOLD’S CARBON FOOTPRINT 50%
SUMMARY
TIM MAGEE
How You as an Individual Can Create a Personalized Climate Footprint Plan to Cut Your Carbon Footprint by 50%
The average US citizen generates 16.4 tons of CO2 emissions per year. By 2050 we need to reduce that to zero. Here are practical, achievable ideas on how you can get started doing just that: NOW!
What is the problem?
Although I work with community members developing Climate Action Plans for their community as a whole, individuals approach me and say with a sense of powerlessness “but what can I do as a single individual to prevent climate change?” These human beings are feeling that as just one individual out of 8 billion on the planet, how much impact can they really have?
How do we solve it?
Well, here are 15 positive actions to prevent climate change that have a real impact on moving to zero and that you can do now. Without doing anything too drastic, you can reduce your carbon footprint by 50% taking these 15 actions in two phases.
Phase One: 13 simple, low-cost/no-cost actions that you can take right away that have substantial impact.
Phase Two: Two additional bigger decisions that you can make that will require planning and investment on your part.
Background: The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has declared that we need to be at net zero carbon emissions by 2050 to keep global warming below 1.5°C 1. CO2 emissions are measured in tons of CO2. The average US citizen generates 16.4 tons of CO2 emissions per year. Therefore, the IPCC says that over the next 25 years we each need to reduce that to zero. Here are some practical, achievable ideas on how to get started doing just that.
THE 8 STEPS
Step One. Write a Climate Footprint Plan to reduce your carbon footprint by 50%. This is very important to do if you want success. The first thing to do in developing your Climate Action Plan is to perform a carbon footprint estimate on your household. I used this great carbon footprint calculator that I found. The link is in the resource list at the end of this document.
In 15 minutes you can complete the Carbon Footprint Calculator with information that you probably have at your fingertips. This calculator prepares a report for you that explains a lot in an easy-to-understand manner. It allows you to see where you are contributing to CO2 emissions and what practical steps you can take to reduce them.
To give you a working climate footprint plan template, I will use a real example—our own household’s Climate Footprint Plan for you to use as a springboard:
Template: Magee Family Climate Footprint Plan: Reduce our household’s annual CO2 emissions by 12 tons—or 50% in 12 months.
We found really good information in the footprint calculator. First, our four biggest contributors to emissions are ground transportation, household electricity, food choices, and air travel. We learned that our two-person household generates 24 tons of carbon emissions per year, or 12 tons each.
The report gave us a list of actions that we could take to reduce our current footprint. Two other great resource for fine tuning which actions to choose are Mike Berners-Lee’s The Carbon Footprint of Everything 9 and Project Drawdown 10.
From these three resources we selected 15 actions that will let us reduce our household’s 24 tons per year by 12 tons (or by 50%). So this became our Climate Footprint Plan’s goal for carbon emissions.
13 of these are low-cost/no-cost actions that will reduce our carbon footprint by 9.7 tons a year. That is 81% of our 12 ton goal.
Two others will require some planning and financial investment. We chose to install photovoltaic panels on our roof and trading in our current car for an electric car for a 4.9 ton reduction. This could be an additional 41% of our 12 ton goal. Cumulatively, these 15 combined actions exceed our 12 ton goal, so we have some flexibility.
I highly recommend the Carbon Footprint Calculator. I learned where we are generating carbon emissions, what inexpensive actions we can take to reduce our carbon footprint now, and what more expensive actions could be phased in. In one or two years we can indeed reduce…. Download PDF to read the next 2 pages.
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In this video, Tim gives a two minute summary on what this guide will do for you and how it works. Following his simple steps, you will develop a climate action plan in a few hours.
Tim Magee is an internationally recognized climate scientist, researcher, and trainer who has over 20 years of experience in designing climate action plans. Mr. Magee is CSDi’s Executive Director, and the author of A Field Guide to Community Based Adaptation, Routledge, Oxford, England. He has a background in renewable energy and wrote a pioneering book on passive solar energy for heating homes.
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