Being a green, trying to save the planet from the threats it faces, can be daunting. The Earth is immense, and there’s only one of you and me. What can we do? More than we realise, probably – and if we join forces with people who think the same way, then we’ll achieve still more.
A simple piece of advice is this: think globally, act locally. In other words, remember everyone’s needs, while not neglecting East Sussex. One example is the Lewes Pound, the local currency widely accepted – in Lewes. Its website explains: “Most money spent locally stays local. Most money spent in chain stores leaves the town, leaving the local community poorer.”
The Pound was dreamed up by Transition Town Lewes (TTL), which brings people together to pool their skills in preparing for the different life ahead as the climate crisis changes the world (electric cars, anyone? Awn economy which doesn’t burn fossil fuels, the coal, oil and gas that are relentlessly raising the planetary temperature?)
Look at the TTL website to find reasons for going green and ways to do it. Or search out some other Lewes groups, like the Railway Land Wildlife Trust, and the cross-county Sussex Wildlife Trust.
For many of us, there are some stand-out areas for action. Mine are energy, transport and food: yours may be entirely different, but probably not very because these three headings cover a large part of most local lives.
We all use energy pretty well all the time we’re awake, even if all we’re doing is heating or cooling our houses (beware those who say we’ll be able to cope with higher temperatures by using air conditioning, because that generally means burning more fossil fuels to generate the electricity to produce the cooling . . . And we’re back to square one again, heating the planet to keep ourselves cool). So we need ways to produce energy without producing waste heat that drives the mercury temperature upwards.
The good news is that we can – by using renewables. And Sussex is well-placed to produce renewable energy – especially near the coast, exactly where we are. The cheapest options are solar and onshore wind energy, costing less than either fossil fuels or nuclear power.
There used to be several serious drawbacks. For instance, the wind doesn’t blow non-stop; the Sun doesn’t shine at night. So, people thought, we needed back-up from fossil fuel and nuclear energy as well to avoid a cold, dark future. Not now: there’s an answer, called a battery. Large batteries can save the energy from wind turbines and solar farms, and we now have advanced technology which can save the output from solar panels on your roof with much smaller batteries. Renewable home heating systems are steadily becoming much more cheaper.
Perhaps you’re not going to buy your own system? You’ll still be buying your energy from somewhere. So one crucial step is to buy it from a renewable energy wholesaler.
If you’re careful about where your energy comes from, in fact, you’ll have gone a long way to living a greener life. But obviously you need to remember travel – using public transport where you can (and it’s a lot easier in East Sussex than in many places, though not as straightforward or as affordable as it ought to be), not driving where you can reasonably walk or cycle, avoiding flying where possible, because that uses a rapidly-growing amount of fossil fuel.
Food? A lot of greenhouse gases emerge from the animals we rear for our food. Growing and transporting their food adds to the total. Eating more vegetables and less meat would be better for the planet, for animal welfare, and our health.
Energy, transport and food: all three areas need us to make radical changes. But those changes need not mean miserable or diminished lives. Change can be liberating. Changes like these, if we handle them wisely, will usually mean saving money, saving our health – and giving the next generation more hope of a better life.
Once, at a conference, a speaker produced a useful definition: “The environment? It’s what we do to where we live.” There are many other choices we’ll need to make which will affect our environment in the Ouse Valley.
Building on the floodplain near the Ouse will leave less space for water to drain away naturally, making floods more likely. Uphill, away from the river, replacing bare soil with hard concrete will force the Ouse to cope with more wastewater than it can handle.
Living to reduce our impact on the planet is often not difficult. But it does need us to get into the habit of thinking of what that impact is: do we need to order goods online? Will we lose if we catch a bus instead of driving to do the shopping?
At the UN’s Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 the first President Bush, at that time the leader of the US, told delegates: “The American way of life is not up for negotiation.” It was a short-sighted declaration. He would have made as much sense to say that the US atmosphere wasn’t up for negotiation. The Earth’s atmosphere, our ways of life – these days, we share them all. In this globalised world, what we choose for ourselves affects everyone, worldwide and in Sussex.
Going Green makes sense
Protecting the planet starts in Sussex. It’ll make us and our children wealthier and healthier