What I do for the environment

So I talk the talk about the climate crisis. And about the ecological breakdown.

Lets not beat about the bush. We are in a really bad place right now and it is going to get worse. Even if we stopped burning fossil fuels and emitting methane through animal burps and rice growing emissions right now we would see global warming continue for another 40 or 50 more years. Scary stuff!!

Do I walk the walk? People ask me this a lot. Well OK every now and then. I've set out here what I do. I am extremely fortunate. After a couple of decent careers money is less of an obstacle for me than for many.

We are aiming to install a ground source heat pump at our house in calendar 2019 to eliminate our personal fossil fuel burning. Currently we have a gas boiler.

We already have two EVs. Mine I allow my employees to use in an effort to reduce car numbers on the road. One car reduction so far due to this. Small but every little helps.

The whole family has eaten a plant-based diet for years but shortly after my daughter went vegan I followed course.

We grow our own food to some limited extent.

We have solar PV and solar thermal.

Our house has been pulled apart, insulated and put back together.

I run my own business focused on insulating blocks of flats. And I try to use my contacts and financial knowledge to complement technical experts by promoting common sense based huge and smaller low carbon projects such as using the River Thames as a source for water source heating for London. A ￡30 billion project for example that can be replicated in many many other towns and cities saving hundreds of millions of tonnes of CO2 each and every year.

We hardly ever fly.

I try really hard not to buy new stuff.

Talking about the dangerous climate change we are seeing is the #1 thing to do according to the Ted Talk here: https://www.ted.com/…/katharine_hayhoe_the_most_important_t…

by Katharine Hayhoe. I do lots of that on various social media platforms. Set a group up myself Climate Crisis Solutions.

I read widely meaning I understand that if we are to reach our obligations under the Paris Climate Agreement we need to stop burning fossil fuels by 2030. Yet we have 26 million gas boilers in situ. Heat pumps are the obvious replacement. But even if everyone could afford one the whole industry would struggle to fit more than 30,000 of them per year. Meanwhile around 1.7m new gas boilers are sold each year still. Which is nuts.

I speak openly about mental health issues. Many in our society suffer with such problems including me. Mine have been "mild to moderate". Climate crisis anxiety is increasingly common however and is not typically even a mental health issue in my opinion. To be deeply anxious about the state of things is quite normal and understandable. Talking can help here too however.

The most important thing I do is to recognise that for most the above is completely out of reach. But that even if a million people could do the same I do not believe it would not be enough to really safeguard our children's futures.

So I joined Extinction Rebellion. Because only this sort of civil disobedience or non-violent direct action can really deliver what we need in my opinion. Change starting right at the top.