One of the greatest problems of tackling climate change is that the individuals feel powerless because the task seems so great. Many simply carry on as they are because they do not know what to do, but as extreme weather gets worse, people get more anxious about the need to do something.
A group of Cambridge academics from the department of engineering has launched six short films that simplify the problem by explaining that if every person in Britain reduced their carbon footprint by 6% a year the country would reach its 2050 target of net zero.
So if each of us cuts 6% of the average of 10 hours flying a year, or the 660 litres of fuel we put in our cars, and the 19kg of beef and lamb most of us consume, the 2023 target would be in sight and we could feel comfortable that we were doing our bit.
The “tickzero” website deals in big numbers too, estimating that 1 billion people in the tropics could soon starve or migrate if we do not halt climate change. It says we can stop this threat with existing technologies and scorns some of the government’s unproven “fantasy solutions”, which it describes as unnecessary and a diversion. A useful guide.
