Being Green!

Hey

A few days ago was Earth Day where loads of people across the world pledged to become more environmentally friendly as well as putting pressure on big businesses to cut their global emissions. I feel really strongly about environmental issues, especially climate change, because I feel like there are so many easy little things we can all do that together could make a huge difference. 

I'm trying really hard to make a positive impact on the environment. Here's a list of some of the things I'm doing/have done:

• Reusing the same water bottle for school each day
• Recycling as much as I can
• Having showers rather than baths - this saves about 50 litres of water each time
• Eating at least two vegetarian meals a week
• Using energy saving light bulbs in my house
• Turning my phone off at night and not leaving it charging overnight

I watched this video the other day where they talked about shocks and slides. Shocks are events that make people act quickly e.g. the Haiti earthquake, where as slides are changes that occur over a long period of time and as such people are less likely to take notice of them. Climate change is a slide. At what point will be realise that we are slowly ruining our earth and act to save it? We all know we're ruining it but pollution and emissions are still rising globally. Will it be when sea levels rise so much that Venice is no longer inhabitable or will it be sooner when one of the most famous yet endangered species such as the tiger, goes extinct? In the last century, we have lost 97% of the world's tigers - this is insane, we need to change!

As one of my subjects at school, I study geography. We do quite a lot about climate change and pollution. One of our case studies is China and how since becoming the manufacturing capital of the world, its air pollution has rocketed. In some cities the smog caused by pollution is so bad that it's unsafe for people to leave their homes - they even have an app that tells them the current air quality and if its safe!

It scares me greatly that there are already thousands of people on earth who are falling ill and sometimes sadly dying due to pollution - it's completely preventable if we start to use green alternatives to fossil fuels like solar power and wind energy.

What are you guys doing to be environmentally friendly? I read this statistic the other day that if everyone in the UK and USA was more energy efficient, it would save as much energy as Russia and India produce together!

Lizzie