A few weeks ago I received a little book from the Irish government entitled "Preparing for Major Emergencies, an Introduction". It describes the basic actions you should take on the event of an emergency. Which includes flooding, chemical spills, accidents at sea, explosions and suspicious packages, nuclear incidents, influenza, animal diseases and fire. I was positively impressed by this, it's a great idea by itself. And even more when there's a large number of foreigners in your country.
Most impressively is that, on one of the introductory pages, the gov't mentions climate changes and global warming. I had never seen/heard of a gov't actually preparing its citizens (and residing foreigners) for that. Looks like global warming is finally leaving the closet and our governments are openly talking about it - and with actions to go along with the talk.
I decided to check on my carbon count over at change.ie and was pleasantly surprised with a comprehensive website about climate changes. Highly recommended.
I went through the carbon calculator, which seemed very thorough, and got the following count:
Seems fair enough. I hope the calculator took in consideration the fact that there hasn't been the need for heating in Dublin since late March. Over 90% of my count was attributed to heating.
It didn't ask about what plants you might have in your place as well, and it didn't have a test for consumable goods - which IMO is where the regular Joe can have the most impact on. For instance, does the brand of milk/juice that you buy come in plastic bottles or in a carton box?
As always, the small things do make a difference.
