1.
Get active:
Talk with your friends, your teachers and your  parents.
You can all make
 your
voices heard on oneclimate.net.
What's oneclimate.net? It's your
space...
like MySpace, but this special space is for setting up networks
of like-minded people to help fix climate change.
On oneclimate, you can ask
questions or write about things you're doing
to combat global warming. You can post videos and pictures
too. You can even form your own group and make
contact with others like yourself. Get your parents and
teachers involved! Why not get your school to join
as a group? Take
a look at oneclimate.net! It's completely FREE.
You
can also write
to your country's
politicians telling
them that you're worried about climate change and why. If enough
people make a fuss, they have to do something. |
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2.
Know what damage
you're doing and get to be an expert!
It's not much
use trying to change something if you're part of the problem or
you don't understand what it's all about!
Why not start by finding out what your
Carbon Footprint is. (My friend Jasmine wrote to
suggest this!) What's
a Carbon Footprint? You can easily work out what your carbon
footprint is with Carbon
Control's Carbonator.
If
you feel you need to find out more about global warming,
try some of my links.
And watch
out: Don't believe all you read or see. Not everybody tells the
truth! |
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| 3.
Why
drive when you can walk?! If
your family has a car, get them to use it less. Walk to the shops.
Walking, running, skipping are all much more fun than sitting in a
boring un-cool car. If you need to travel further than you can walk,
use a bus, metro or train if you can. |
|
4.
Make
your own climate!
- Turn
the heating down in winter. If you're cold, wear more clothes!
- Turn
the air conditioning down in summer or use a fan.
 Hot
tip from a cool penguin
When it's hot, dress cool;
When it's cool, dress hot!
|
|
| 5.
Shop
locally: If you can, buy your food from local farm
shops and try and avoid imported goods. Or get your family to join
a veg
box scheme. Trucks and planes bringing in food and stuff from
other countries, or from distant parts of your own country, use huge
amounts of fuel. |
 |
| 6.
Travelling
light: Don't travel long distances unless you really
have to. Particularly try and avoid using aeroplanes
and big, gas-guzzling
cars like SUVs.
See if your friends and parents could holiday locally |
|
| 7.
Get
your parents to change their driving habits... and their car. Cars
guzzle fuel, but they use much less if people drive them gently
and keep below speed limits. Big SUVs
make about six times their own weight in CO2
each year. A small efficient diesel
car covering the same distance not only uses much less fuel; it makes
two thirds less CO2. |
|
8.
Solar
energy is free: see if you can get your parents and
friends interested in free
solar  energy
-- that's energy from the sun and wind. You can get much of your hot
water and heating from the sun and even generate electricity. And
it's exciting building all these things. If you live in a windy place,
a wind
turbine - also called 'windmill'- really is a serious option.
More and more people are installing them and more and more companies
are producing well-designed, sturdy machines. Generating
your own power is a great way to reduce your carbon footprint. |
|
| 9.
Eating:
Learn to cook! Home cooking is not only fun, it means
you don't have to drive to a takeaway or fast food restaurant. Result?
Less pollution. If you make a garden,
you can grow much of your own food. Did you know that if you eat fewer
meat and dairy products, you can reduce greenhouse gas output? (Here's
why.) And composting
your waste food means it doesn't have to be trucked away to a landfill
waste dump where it will cause more pollution
including methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. Some
Cool
Kids - aged between 11 and 14 in San Diego, California, USA -
are fighting against global warming in a really smart way. They've
made a website which explains why eating much
less meat is so important. It's a great site so please take
a look. You can join them and commit to eating less meat! |
|
10.
Reduce,
reuse, recycle: Remember your three Rs!
- Reduce:
the most important. If you don't buy so much stuff in the
first place, then you don't need to reuse or recycle it.
- Reuse
whatever you can (like plastic
supermarket bags). If you can't reuse something,
- Recycle
it!
|
|
11.
Turn
off and shut it!
- Turning
things off may seem a boring turn-off hee
hee!.
But leaving lights, heating, air conditioning, computers, TVs
and stuff on when you don't need them wastes a lot of energy.
Turning them off saves money too!
- "Put
t' wood in t' 'ole" if it's warm in one room and cold
in another. The door helps keep
the heat in.
- Leaving
things on standby (like TVs, computers and stuff) also uses a
surprising amount of energy.
|
|
12.
Psst!
Don't keep this a secret: the future could be Tradable Energy Quotas
(TEQs)
Eh?!?
What?!? This is one cool secret which
no one seems to know about so you really must tell everyone! Don't
be put off if you don't know what TEQs (also called DTQs) are; I
didn't either. But they look like the best way to stop global warming
and energy shortages. So get your head round TEQs
and then be sure to tell everyone! Way to go...
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|
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