The book Stormy Weather tells the story of climate change, and describes 101 Solutions in detail. Here is an example of what it covers.

TEN SOLUTIONS FOR INDIVIDUALS

1. Grasp the Big Picture

2. Travel More Sustainably

3. If You Must Use a Car, Switch to the Most Fuel Efficient Model

4 . Choose Energy Efficient Appliances

5. Make Your Home More Efficient

6. Use the Sun’s Energy

7. Buy Green Power

8. Switch to a More Organic, Vegetarian Diet

9. Invest in Solar Funds

10. Live More Sustainably

TEN SOLUTIONS FOR CITIZENS ORGANIZATIONS

11. Set up a Local Group

12. Set up a Regional Group

13. Organize a Schools Initiative

14. Organize a Church Initiative

15. Organize a College Initiative

16. Organize a Car-Free Sunday

17. Start a Car-Share Organization

18. Create a Commotion

19. Educate Your Politicians

20. Link up with Other Groups

America’s most abundant source of energy is electricity from dirty coal. Halting further investment in 19th century technology is priority #1.

2. Smart Transportation

With auto efficiency regulations accelerating, the focus of action is shifting to two other pillars of smart transportation policies: transit-oriented development and low-carbon fuels. The time has come to leave highway sprawl behind.

3. Building Codes

Buildings consume half of America’s energy output. There’s a simple fix that will make the building sector carbon neutral within 25 years.

4. Cap on Emissions

A steadily descending cap on emissions tied to firm deadlines will put a price on carbon. It’s the currency of tomorrow’s opportunity.

5. Clean Energy

We need a national clean energy target to aim for, and an all-out program to support the reach. It’s the next lunar landing.

6. Green Job Corps

America needs skilled labor to work the efficiency retrofits and hook up the clean tech. Job train the disadvantaged and get a double benefit.

7. Sign a Global Treaty

Time to transform America’s international posture — from obstructionist to global leader. Lead by example — China, India & the rest will follow.

via Top 7 Solutions | SolveClimate.com.

Sarah: Some people say we just don’t have the money to deal with climate change because we have already spent so much on the financial bailout.

Van Jones (founder Green for All): The smartest things we can do in the short term pay for themselves. If we were to weatherize and retrofit millions of buildings in the United States, the energy cost savings would let you pay for that work in two to four years. So we literally are wasting money, time, and our planet when there are cost-effective, revenue-positive answers here that would put people to work.

The government needs to create a revolving loan fund so cities, hospitals, and universities can put people to work retrofitting buildings so they leak less energy. Slap some solar panels up there while you’re at it, and then use the cost savings to repay the government so the government can loan that money out again. Now that would be a smart strategy. Or the government could offer federal loan guarantees to get private capital moving in this direction.

That’s a way to put people to work.

via YES! magazine: Van Jones: Beyond the Politics of Confrontation.

“The inactions of others can make us underestimate the threats to our own safety,” Camillia Cavendish – London Times

Cavendish cites studies that suggest we humans have a kind of herd mentality. If climate change is a problem, then people would be doing something about it we think. Since they’re not, then there is no problem.

Another way of looking at this:

Imagine you are waiting in line at a busy hospital emergency waiting room — its tense, crowded and hot. You start to smell smoke. You look around and everyone else seems to be preoccupied with their own problems. You start to notice the air is getting a little smoky. No one else seems to notice it, you ask the person beside you who is nursing a sprained wrist; he pretends not to hear you and looks the other way.

Your eyes are watering now, others are wiping their eyes too but no one moves or says anything. They are all focused on the nursing triage station hoping they’re next in line.

Finally the smoke is too thick to ignore but people remain in line mumbling: “if it was a real fire, the alarms would be ringing”.

Eventually someone leaves the line up – charts a different course. But is it now too late to escape? And what about the rest, will they stubbornly remain in line?

Cavendish writes that once people are aware of this dangerous tendency to follow the herd over the cliff we can break away and forge our own more sensible path.

So let’s say you’re aware that Climate Change might pose a major risk to your future and especially for your children. However since not much is being done nor is anyone really talking about it, you might be tempted to take false comfort in the possibility that maybe you’ve got it wrong. In fact the safest and most sensible response is see this collective inaction as sign that we may be in serious danger.

In other words when the herd is oblivious to approaching danger, alarm bells ought to be ringing in your head.

Alarm bells are ringing in a few people and they’re yelling “hey climate change is taking us over the cliff!”

At the moment those voices are largely being ignored in the herd’s blind assurance that we know where we are going.

Alarm bells are ringing but are you listening?

Ecologists Paul and Anne Ehrlich of Stanford University have sent a letter to President-elect Obama outlining their 7 Necessary Steps needed to avoid destroying our civilization. Here’s the first three:

1) Put births on a par with deaths. …As been done in many family planning programs, the happy family should be promoted as one that limits its numbers. But the change should be in the motivation. Traditionally the small family was supposed to supply a higher standard of living — including more stuff for each individual. The new approach could be to promote it as a multi-generational unit that in each generation limits its size in order to maximize the chances of each following generations’ retaining a happy, sustainable life style.

To move in that direction, humanity must rapidly expand programs to educate and give job opportunities to women, make effective contraception universally available, and develop public support of population policies.

2) Put conserving on a par with consuming. At any given level of technology, there is a trade-off between how many people can be born into a society and the level of per capita physical affluence that can be sustainably supported. The more people there are, the smaller each one’s share of the pie. One way of dealing with this trade-off would be a cultural shift away from creating ever more gadgets to creating more appreciation and better stewardship for Earth’s aesthetic assets.

3) Transform the consumption of education. Education is what economists call a “non-rival good” — something that can be consumed without reducing the amount available to others — and as such it is an ideal consumption good for a sustainable society. More quality education could help us solve the human predicament — the combined crises of overpopulation, wasteful consumption, deteriorating life-support systems, declining resources, multiplying weapons of mass destruction, and widening inequity within and between nations.

via Ehrlich’s 7 Steps

1. If I switch the light on and off every time I enter and leave a room, does this use more energy than leaving it on all evening?

Switching the light on and off does saves energy, but there is a catch. Every time you flip the switch, the bulb takes a jolt of electricity, which shortens its life.

Studies by the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, California, found that turning low-energy compact fluorescent bulbs on and off at frequent intervals can shorten their lifespan by as much as 75 per cent.

21GREENTIP: Leave energy-saving bulbs ON but only if you will be out of the room for less than 15 minutes.

2. How clean does the pizza box have to be for it to be recyclable?
Likewise cans and bottles?

According to the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), based in Banbury, UK, pizza boxes are often not recyclable. That’s because grease from the toppings contaminates the cardboard, making it useless to paper mills – though it can still be composted.

Such impregnation is not a problem when it comes to cans and bottles. Nevertheless, they should be rinsed to remove food remnants so as not to attract vermin.

Plastic should also be clean, and lids removed from bottles so they can be squashed flat. WRAP recommends rinsing waste items in old washing-up water to save energy.

3. Are laminated juice cartons recyclable?

Yes – but only if you separate them out. Placing cartons lined with polyethylene or aluminum foil into your ordinary paper recycling devalues the load and, depending on the mill it reaches, may mean it ends up in landfill.

4. What’s the most fuel-efficient way to drive?

Smoothly. Avoid dramatic braking and acceleration and use cruise control if you’ve got it. Move through the gears as quickly as possible, changing up before you hit 2500 revs per minute (2000 rpm for a diesel).

Where possible, drive at a steady 55 miles per hour (90 kilometres per hour). It is up to 20 per cent more fuel-efficient than driving at 75 mph. Check your tyre pressure once a month because underinflated tyres can raise fuel consumption by 6 per cent.

Don’t carry excess baggage. Each extra 25 kilograms decreases fuel efficiency by 1 per cent.
And avoid short trips – a cold engine uses twice as much fuel as a warm one.

5. How environmentally damaging is barbecuing?

Tristram West from Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee has calculated that on 4 July – when over half of all American households fire up their barbies – the grills release 225,000 tonnes of CO2.

The emissions from these estimated 60 million barbecues would still be less than 1.5 per cent of the nation’s daily output.

That is equivalent to burning 2300 acres of forest. He says that if you do choose to barbecue, the most eco-friendly method is to use charcoal as opposed to the propane burners favoured by most Americans. Food grilled over charcoal made from locally grown coppiced wood may actually have a smaller carbon footprint than if it were cooked conventionally, since sustainably grown wood is carbon neutral and transport is minimised.

More at Dumb Ecoquestions you were afraid to ask

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Selected from Wire & Twine:

1. TURN OFF COMPUTERS AT NIGHT

By turning off your computer instead of leaving it in sleep mode, you can save 40 watt-hours per day. That adds up to 4 cents a day, or $14 per year. If you don’t want to wait for your computer to start up, set it to turn on automatically a few minutes before you get to work, or boot up while you’re pouring your morning cup ‘o joe.

2. SECOND-HAND DOESN’T MEAN SECOND-BEST
Consider buying items from a second-hand store. Toys, bicycles, roller blades, and other age and size-specific items are quickly outgrown. Second hand stores often sell these items in excellent condition since they are used for such a short period of time, and will generally buy them back when you no longer need them.

3. RECYCLE OLD CELL PHONES
The average cell phone lasts around 18 months, which means 130 million phones will be retired each year. If they go into landfills, the phones and their batteries introduce toxic substances into our environment. There are plenty of reputable programs where you can recycle your phone, many which benefit noble causes.

4. STOP YOUR ANSWERING MACHINE
Answering machines use energy 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And when they break, they’re just one more thing that goes into the landfill. If all answering machines in U.S. homes were eventually replaced by voice mail services, the annual energy savings would total nearly two billion kilowatt-hours.

5. DON’T RINSE
Skip rinsing dishes before using your dishwasher and save up to 20 gallons of water each load. Plus, you’re saving time and the energy used to heat the additional water.

6. HANG DRY
Get a clothesline or rack to dry your clothes by the air. Your wardrobe will maintain color and fit, and you’ll save money.

Your favorite t-shirt will last longer too.

7. GO VEGETARIAN ONCE A WEEK
One less meat-based meal a week helps the planet and your diet. For example: It requires 2,500 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef. You will also also save some trees. For each hamburger that originated from animals raised on rainforest land, approximately 55 square feet of forest have been destroyed.

via 50 Ways to Help the Planet

1. Bright Ideas from LiveScience

If you’re going to do just one thing for the planet, make it the switch to compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs). Although they cost several times more upfront than regular incandescent light bulbs, they also last about 10 times longer, which means that for every CFL you screw in, you’ll be saving eight incandescent light bulbs from landfill purgatory. Plus, you’ll save some serious cash in the long run. Because CFLs use 75 percent less energy, swapping one incandescent bulb for a CFL reduces carbon dioxide by 500 pounds a year; replacing 17 has the equivalent effect of taking one car off the road for a year. Just remember to recycle spent bulbs responsibly – CFLs contain trace amounts of mercury, which although isn’t enough to be hazardous to you, could pose a problem in landfills when mercury from multiple bulbs leaches into the ground.

2. Seeing Stars

The average home can pump out twice as much greenhouse-gas emissions as the average car. Purchasing energy-saving Energy Star-rated appliances, electronics, and lighting can help mitigate that, while slashing a third of your electric bill. (A power guzzler is nobody’s friend.)

3. Get Better Food Mileage

Who knew cauliflower were such globe-trotters? Or that jet-setting tomatoes racked up frequent-flier miles? But it’s true: North American produce typically travels a minimum of 1,500 miles. Grapes can clock 2,143 miles cruising from vineyards in Napa Valley to supermarket aisles in Chicago, gobbling up barrels of crude oil and spewing pollutants and greenhouse-gas emissions in their wake. By buying your produce locally, whether it’s through the farmers’ market or a community-assisted agriculture program, you can reduce the distance your food has to travel to get from the farm to your plate.

4. Slay Energy Vampires

Households across the globe are infested with vampires. Energy vampires, that is. Cleverly disguised as innocuous household appliances (psst, your television is one of them), their nasty pointed teeth plunge deep into your wall socket, draining power all hours of the day and night, even after you’ve switched them off. (Americans pay $1 billion a year to power our televisions and VCRs while they’re turned off.) Other sleeper agents of the electric undead that consume 1,000 kilowatt hours a year per household, while in standby mode: your toaster, coffeemaker, hair dryer, PC, printer, cable box, and cell phone charger.

Solution: Just plug adjacent equipment into power strips with surge protectors and simply flip the switch when you go to sleep or head out of the house.

For more see 10 Ways to Green Your Home | LiveScience and Three Simple Rules

1. Replace a regular incandescent light bulb with a compact fluorescent light bulb (cfl)
   CFLs use 60% less energy than a regular bulb. This simple switch will save about 300 pounds of carbon dioxide a year
2. Install a programmable thermostat
   Programmable thermostats will automatically lower the heat or air conditioning at night and raise them again in the morning. They can save you $100 a year on your energy bill.
3. Move your thermostat down 2° in winter and up 2° in summer
   Almost half of the energy we use in our homes goes to heating and cooling. You could save about 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year with this simple adjustment.
4. Clean or replace filters on your furnace and air conditioner
   Cleaning a dirty air filter can save 350 pounds of carbon dioxide a year.
5. Choose energy efficient appliances when making new purchases
   Look for the Energy Star label on new appliances to choose the most energy efficient products available.
6. Do not leave appliances on standby
   Use the “on/off” function on the machine itself. A TV set that’s switched on for 3 hours a day (the average time Europeans spend watching TV) and in standby mode during the remaining 21 hours uses about 40% of its energy in standby mode.
7. Wrap your water heater in an insulation blanket
   You’ll save 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year with this simple action. You can save another 550 pounds per year by setting the thermostat no higher than 50°C.
8. Replace your old single-glazed windows with double-glazing
   This requires a bit of upfront investment, but will halve the energy lost through windows and pay off in the long term. If you go for the best the market has to offer (wooden-framed double-glazed units with low-emission glass and filled with argon gas), you can even save more than 70% of the energy lost.
9. Get a home energy audit
   Many utilities offer free home energy audits to find where your home is poorly insulated or energy inefficient. You can save up to 30% off your energy bill and 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year. Energy Star can help you find an energy specialist.
10. Cover your pots while cooking
    Doing so can save a lot of the energy needed for preparing the dish. Even better are pressure cookers and steamers: they can save around 70%!
11. Use the washing machine or dishwasher only when they are full
    If you need to use it when it is half full, then use the half-load or economy setting. There is also no need to set the temperatures high. Nowadays detergents are so efficient that they get your clothes and dishes clean at low temperatures.
12. Take a shower instead of a bath
    A shower takes up to four times less energy than a bath. To maximize the energy saving, avoid power showers and use low-flow showerheads, which are cheap and provide the same comfort.
13. Use less hot water
    It takes a lot of energy to heat water. You can use less hot water by installing a low flow showerhead (350 pounds of carbon dioxide saved per year) and washing your clothes in cold or warm water (500 pounds saved per year) instead of hot.
14. Use a clothesline instead of a dryer whenever possible
    You can save 700 pounds of carbon dioxide when you air dry your clothes for 6 months out of the year.
15. Insulate and weatherize your home
    Properly insulating your walls and ceilings can save 25% of your home heating bill and 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year. Caulking and weather-stripping can save another 1,700 pounds per year. Energy Efficient has more information on how to better insulate your home.

Source:  http://globalwarming-facts.info/50-tips.html

See also: Three Simple Rules