Global warming
- The continuing emissions of greenhouse gases, chiefly carbon dioxide (CO2) severely increases the earth's atmospheric and surface temperatures, with disastrous environmental consequences.
Direct consequences:
- Heat waves and periods of unusually warm weather
- Ocean warming, sea-level rise and coastal flooding
- Glaciers melting
- Arctic and Antarctic warming
May also cause:
- Spreading disease
- Earlier spring arrival
- Plant and animal range shifts and population changes
- Coral reef bleaching
- Downpours, heavy snowfalls, and flooding
- Droughts and fires
Real life example
- Visit the Wajir and Turkana district in Kenya to view the drought's impact on pastoralist and agricultural livelihoods. (The East Africa Drought)
- In Wajir District, there are evidences of an almost complete collapse of the pastoralist livelihood.
- Cattle and camels are dying
- People are weak and malnourished due severe water and food shortages.
What you can do
- Consider less flying
- If you must fly, then offset carbon emissions of flying through paying a small sum for each flight to carbon offset organizations (see http://www.responsibletravel.com/ or http://www.carbonfootprint.com)/ or asking your travel agent to do this
- Use of video or teleconferencing may help reduce need for flights in some cases
- Use hotels that are more environmentally friendly – see responsible travel or Tourism Concern website
- Look into whether there are environmentally friendly strip lights
- Buy more glasses, so people don't have to use plastic cups for water
- Buy printers that can print double-sided, and so we can reuse paper that has already been used on one side
- Make your photocopies double sided
- Recycle photocopier/printer cartridges
- Print less
- Buy recycled loo roll, photocopy and headed paper in bulk
- Buy environmentally friendly soap, washing up liquid, loo cleaner etc in bulk
- Have bags for recycling of plastic and glass
- Turn down/off the heating
- Only use air conditioning when essential, and turn it off after half an hour
- Fix the shower so cycling is more attractive (employers)
- Use recycled and unbleached paper
- Turn all computers, lights, photocopiers off at night or when not in use
- When making tea, be sociable and boil the kettle once and make tea for others on your floor
- If you're able to, use your legs not the lift
- Install dual-flush loo
- No parking lot, so that staff are not encouraged to drive (employers)
- Have a shower for cyclists/walkers (employers)
- Encourage nursing mothers to use traditional cloth nappies instead of pampers
- Use 100% degradable material
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