enacclimatechangethings

[enacclimatechangethings]

Yannick 18/03

How to become an eco-citizen?

The main intent of this purpose is focused on not creating harm to environment, and to prevent as much harm from occurring to the environment through your interactions with it. More than an idea, it extends to actual practices that influence how communities, businesses and individuals conduct themselves. Being an eco-citizen goes a little beyond just turning off lights when you leave the room or separating your garbage for recycling it is about changing the purpose of how you live.

The first thing to do is to understand how your choices affect the environment. Some of the key points consists in learning how to consume items that cause minimal environmental harm (by changing some of your habits about driving, how you dispose of waste, how you use natural resources,…) and acting to lessen your footprint on the environment.

Here are some steps to become an eco-citizen:

Conserve water and electricity. Indeed, it takes energy to produce water and electricity. Some simple acts like turning off the lights when not in use, proper insulation, using daylight as much as possible, purchasing some efficient product to reduce your daily energy consumption are a good beginning.

You can plant more trees. We know that we need more trees on this planet. They give us oxygen, fruits, control floods, in other words it helps to make the planet clean. All the deforestations that occurred in the last decades have reduced forest area by significant percentage.

Drive less. A simple and more effective way to act for the planet is to either take public transportation for your daily commuting or try carpooling with your colleagues (not with the current situation … but otherwise it’s a good idea.). For longer distances using carpooling platforms like Blabla Car is also efficient. It saves fuel, money, traffic and reduce your carbon footprint. But do it right.

The Right Way

The Wrong Way

Click on this link to see the other benefits of carpooling.

https://www.uottawa.ca/parking/carpooling/benefits-of-carpooling

Buy Energy Efficient Products: Energy efficient products with 5 start energy rating consume less energy. For instance, CFL bulbs consume 40% less energy and last 10 times longer than traditional bulbs. 

https://inhabitat.com/15-green-household-products-that-can-save-you-money-and-cut-down-your-energy-bill/

Buy Recycled Products: Always look out for recycling symbol when you visit grocery shop to buy items for your home. That will make you environmentally responsible. Buying Recycled Products Keeps Our Landfills from Overflowing. It even helps to save water.  It is said that to produce a dollar’s worth of paper, from raw lumber, takes more than 6 gallons of water, but when you buy a pound of recycled paper, you’ve helped to save approximately 3 gallons of water.

See  here: https://www.consolidatedresources.com/blog/buying-recycled-products/

Make compost: Most people assume that if they don’t compost their food waste themselves, it will degrade in a landfill without causing much harm to the environment. Here is an article which explains very well why it’s false : https://gardencollage.com/change/sustainability/composting-good-for-your-garden-bad-for-our-landfills/

If you begin to do all these things, you’re already on the good way to help the planet.

Here is a link with some other ideas to be more ecological like why you should go on holiday closer to home or reduce your consumption of meat: 

https://youmatter.world/en/5-ways-to-be-green-daily/

[enacclimatechangethings]

Judith 18/03

PROS AND CONS OF RECYCLING:

A habit I have is to recycle at home. But it is difficult to do when no one in your family does. 

Recycling is nice in order to cut less trees to generate paper, decrease waste products, reduce global warming, etc. It preserves the environment. 

All this things mentioned is what people use to think. But it is interesting to see the other side of recycling, it also has a negative part. It isn’t profitable because the processes to get the new products cost a lot of energy and money.  For example, to recycle cardboard are necessary several industrial processes that include, collection, transport, fork cranes, presses and heavy machinery. Cardboard is not used immediately, it has to return to a cellulose-like state. It must be ground, soaked with plenty of water, filtered, etc. It’s a process that requires a lot of energy and resources to obtain the final product.

Supposedly, cardboard recycling decreases tree felling, but actually it is the other way around. When cardboard is recycled, it must be mixed with virgin cellulose to reach the final product, and the percentage of virgin cellulose is several times higher than that of the non-recycled cardboard.

So do we have to recycle cardboard or not?

EMAILS:

I’m used to deleting emails quite often. As I wasn’t sure if it helps to consume less energy I did some research on it. 

I’ve read that sometimes we don’t delete emails, we just move them to the trash folder. So after reading this I’ve delete more than 800 emails in just one click by emptying the trash. It is incredible how many emails are received daily. This 800 emails where only the ones of the last 30 days. After 30 days in the trash emails are automatically deleted. 

Emails are stored in data centers distributed around the countries and obviously this data centers consume a lot of energy. Here I have a nice diagram of what happens when we send an email:

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Lucas L. 18/03

What I do for climate change:

- Hygiene

So now I only wash with Marseille soaps (solid) to completely eliminate the packaging. For the hair, I mix water and baking soda and voila!

In terms of toothpaste and deodorant, I participated in the DIY workshops of the ENAC Solidarity Office which taught me how to make these everyday products myself and in an eco-responsible manner.

I also tried to do my own laundry and my own washing up liquid but hey I blew everything in my kitchen and blew my eardrums so I'm going to calm down a bit on DIY but if people know how do without risk of dying I am a taker!

So now I try to limit my plastic products: hello to reusable bamboo toothbrushes and cotton swab, goodbye straws and plastic bags!

- IT pollution

Do you also have thousands of emails on your mailboxes and thousands of photos or documents on your drives? I literally spent dozens of hours deleting my emails and rearranging my drives. Softwares can also help you (Cleanfox etc ..). Result I only have 50 emails in total on my mailbox and almost nothing in my drives. It’s a plus for the planet and a plus for you!

- Try to change mentalities

So this is perhaps the hardest but probably the most useful! You all have friends who leave the light on at home when they leave their home or even when daylight is enough, friends who do not recycle, etc. Harass them, make them change their minds! It is important!

 My personal goals

So here I have a big problem is my consumption of meat and my non-consumption of fruits and vegetables. I will try to work on it. My first goal would be to eat meat only at 1 meal out of 2. I hope I can find the motivation. You know, it is really easy to just eat what you want, but sometimes you really need to toughen up. I will try to do that.

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Worm composting

Hi.. firstly I think you are all amazing to have taken time to add to this. I will take time to read all your posts and reply/ comment. The new tendency is that now nothing has to be done immediately :-). Fanny.. did you make your own worm composter? I would love to create/invest in one on my terrace.. Any advice on the subject?

[enacclimatechangethings]

Léo 18/03

Well a lot of interesting things have been posted this morning : eating less meat and dairy products, choosing carpooling or train instead of plane, recycling, reducing the definition of online videos, buying less, ... Everything has been said, so I’ll be a little bit out of the box.

I don’t really agree with Marc when he says that growth cannot be stopped and that technology is our savior. I completely agree with his idea “be logical”. But how could we keep living the way we do with limited energetical resources on Earth ?

I have 2 things in mind to justify the idea that we have to decrease (this is maybe impossible, but necessary) :

First, today an average French person emits each year 12 tons eqCO2 to live. Now as Gwendal explained, “to be in phase with the Paris agreement, each individual would need to emit no more than 2 tons of CO2 per year (with 8 billion inhabitants)”. This means that we have to reduce drastically our consumptions and to live simpler, or “decreasing” ! I don’t know if our lives would be better, but the way we live today cannot be forever for sure : we have to decrease, and the ideas everybody highlighted (eating less meat, travelling less, etc) are a part of this.

Secondly, about technology, an interesting effect known as “effet rebond” in French, shows that in the past, whatever the innovation industry made to reduce energy consumption, the global consumption increased. Let’s take an example that will speak to each one of us, ENAC students : we always hear that the plane industry managed to build much more performant aircrafts than at the beginning of aviation, consuming less and less fuel. Cool ! But it made the trips by plane much more affordable, so people travel more, and more planes fly ! That’s why global pollution increases, while at the beginning the idea was to consume less. And whatever the field is, history shows that effect working... Technology also creates new needs for people : to stay about the aviation example, people are now able to travel very far, what they couldn’t do 80 years ago. So technology increases our abilities in life today, but threatens without doubt the ones of future generations.

That’s all, here are the ideas I got when I read the posts of this morning. I haven’t the solution to tackle climate change, nobody has, but some orders of magnitude and effects are interesting to keep in mind. 

And I think it’s too simple to rely on technology to solve the problem of climate change. We mostly have to change our habits.

[enacclimatechangethings]

Arnaud 18/03

To be honest, I am not the most eco-friendly in the world, but I try to change my usual habits.

In the first place, I change my eating habits. I try to eat less meat to reduce my carbon footprint. According to Dr VIGO, “Meat production is the elephant in the room when it comes to addressing the major threats to environmental sustainability”. I take care about this and now I eat meat once per week.

Furthermore, I try to reduce polluting transport. Every day, I take the bus and not the car to go to school. With 13,41 gigatonnes of CO2 emmited in 2016 worldwide, transport is the second contributor to greenhouse gases. So, when it is possible, I try to take the train or public transport and not the plane or the car.

 Finally, I try to keep my clothes ad long as possible. Textile industry is the most polluting industry in the world.

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Théo and Maëlan 18/03

The context of Coronavirus could be used to study the impact of everyday life on Climate Change. Indeed, since Italy has been deeply touched by this illness, populations are confined at home. They can’t use their cars everyday to go to work. You could say that cars are just a little part of pollution, but, in few weeks, changes are already visible.

Thus, if everyone in the world accepted to change their habits in order to stop taking their car every time they need to go somewhere, gas emissions should be extremely reduced.

Furthermore, there is a myriad of ways to act against climate change on our daily scale. One of the biggest enemy of ecology is the consumption of meat. Indeed, in order to raise animals, you need ton of water and cereals and you need even more water to grow cereals. For example, if you ate 150g of beef once a week, you would be responsible for the production of 604 kg of greenhouse gas every year, which is equal to the heating of a house for 95 days. (Source : bbc.com) Moreover, it is the same for dairy products. In France, almost everyone knows the “Les produits laitiers sont nos amis pour la vie”, but, in addition to be a poison for adults, production of milk require the same needs than meat.

Last but not least, data centers, are a monstrosity in term of climate change. Technological progresses bring more and more incredible applications du to powerful components, but there is a cost. These data centers have a huge energy consumption, and people have a part of responsibility on this consumption, one minute of a 1080p Youtube video is equivalent to 5 AA bateries.  But, there are solutions, for example, you can reduce the quality of videos on youtube or use alternative navigators like Ecosia (which plants trees with benefits).

Therefore, even if energy consumption and gas emissions are deeply integrated in our daily life, there are solutions to reduce it, and there is still hope.

Sources :

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/coronavirus-pollution.html?searchResultPosition=1

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46459714

https://www.whistleout.com/CellPhones/Guides/How-Much-Data-Does-YouTube-Use

https://youtu.be/EQzyo3q-C2Y

[enacclimatechangethings]

Alex François 18/03

What I actually do on my daily scale:

Composting.

-How? By sorting food each time I cook. I put fruit and vegetables remains, eggshells, fish, grains into a separate bin that I’ll bring later to the composting area at the ENAC.

-Why? To avoid creating food waste. I hate wasting any kind of food, so I’ll do anything to save those I can’t eat and let them be useful. Therefore I also help the ENAC BDS to have a better compost.

-What if we do it perfectly? We could save money if the compost is used for personnal planting, no need to buy chemical fertilizers, and as it does help to retain soil moisture, we have to water less. Not to mention the improvement of the soil, that receinves multiple nutrients. Also resources are saved, more than 40% of residential waste is compostable materials. We thus create cycles to plant durably. Finally, the impact of CO2 emissions is reduced by doing so : less vehicules are required to transport waste and organics do not produce any C02 emission by being composted.

-What if we don’t? Ironically, not composting actually isn’t neutral for the environment, but rather bad. Indeed, organics in landfills break down without oxygen to produce methane gas, which is 20 times more harmful than CO2. Buried organics can also react with metals in the landfill to produce toxic leachate, a potential source of groundwater pollution. "Why should I compost?", Justin Quigley

Every day, 1.3 billion tonnes of food is wasted globally each year (1/3 for human consumption) according to the FAO. Among them, food that could have been eaten even if expired, others that could have been composted.

If you’ve been conviced and want to try composting, here are some advices to begin: Composting - Guide.

Not eating meat.

-How? By neither consumming nor buying any king of meat, and a very few fishes. Being cautious when buying on the supermarket or eating at the canteen not to take those.

-Why? The main reasons that prompted this decision were the ethical point of view. I knew that one day I would stop eating meat. But besides the ethical, healthy and cheap sides of being vegetarian, not eating meat has numerous environnemental benefits, which are nowadays beyond question.

-What if we do it perfectly? Being vegetarian (or vegan) will ward off disease, keep your weight down, build stronger bones, reduce your risk of food-borne illnesses, and let you live longer for instance! For an environmental point of view, you’ll avoid toxic chemicals. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, nearly 95% of the pesticide residue in the typical American diet comes from meat, fish and dairy products! That would also greatly help reduce pollution:  chemical and animal waste runoff from factory farms are responsible for more than 173 000 miles of pulluted rivers and streams. Without getting into all the details: the United Nations said in a report that only livestock generate more greenhouse gases than all the cars and trucks in the world combined! Not to mention all the water and the lands needed to farm them!

-What if we don’t? You’re now aware. Consuming meat has a lot of environmental impacts: deforestation, huge greenhouse gases emissions, gigantic use of water, use of chemical products. If you tell yourself that the greenhouse gas effects of eating 1 burger amounts to drive an average European car for 320km (and 3000L of water), maybe you’ll reconsider buying a brand new electrical car to go to the restaurant. Emissions of eating one burger

 I’d have much more to say about the actions I daily do for the environmental issues. Here are briefly other things I’ve also decided to do:

-Waste sorting. I sort papers, metal and glass from plastic for example.

-Carpooling/public transportation/bike. If possible, I always use my bike to move from place to place (which is also convenient). Otherwise, I use the public transports or the carpooling if I need to go on another city in France, not too far away.

-Buying carefully packaging. As far as possible, I try not to buy plastic packaging food/tools. Sometimes that is more expensive or hard to find, but when I’m looking at all the waste I can do at the months passed, that gives me courage to search.

-Saving water. I try to save water during the showers (turn off the water when useless) and when I do the dishes, by improving my skills.

-Reducing energy consumption. I turn off the lights and the heating when not needed. I think that kind of actions could make a difference. However I somethimes consumes lots of energy by using my computer through video games or cooking in the oven...

Nevertheless, all these actions are little things compared to the exponential growth of life comfort we are facing! There are so many things we should do either to compensate other’s actions, or to compensate ours that we do not necessarily perceive!

Buying an apartment/house, a new phone/computer, solar panels, clothes, food, books; as many things that pollute, are (non-renewable) energy-consuming, or that consume non-recyclable materials! Just look at how many plastic tools/equipment there are around you. We’ve reached a point where the energy and rare materials aren’t just used to improve our lives. But to maintain it the way it is.

Everything we own has been – to some extent - produced with nuclear or fossil fuel. Everywhere you want to go, you have to take airplanes, cars, buses or trains. Every time you practice an activity, you may use items that created pollution. As the computer I’m using right now to write those sentances.

That is difficult and expensive to put into practice – a clean zero pollution lifestyle – which wouldn’t pollute nor cost our planet sacrifices. If we all want to keep on this planet though, as well as our next generations, we should surely tackle this problem together seriously… Together, we can make a difference.

[enacclimatechangethings]

Rémi Blanc 18/03

My impact on climate change

My positive impact

Car polling  and common transport:

I often use common transport to move around ENAC and inside Toulouse. I think it’s a good alternative rather than cars to move by reducing our fuel consumption, CO2 and greenhouse gases emision. For example, I always use subway to go to Toulouse center. This is a trip of 6km. Subway average emision of CO2 by km and by person is 3.8g according to RATP website. Thus, my emision to go to the center of Toulouse is 3.8*6 then 22.8g of CO2. A little car consums around 90g of CO2 by km then 540g for 6km.

Imagine that 100 ENAC students go in Toulouse each week for 1 year (52 weeks). If they all take car (without car pooling) they will consum 100*90*6*2(to go back)*52(weeks) then around 5.6 tons of CO2 by year. Whereas if they take subway they will consum 100*3.8*6*2*52 then around 237 kg of CO2 by year. They will aproximately reduce their emision by 24. To conclude, I think it’s a good action to take subway in order to reduce our personale missions and I am glad to do that.

Moreover, to go back to home I often practise car polling because this is very easy to use and it’s a green solution to reduce our impact on climate change.

Nutrition :

When I am at home I always eat food from my garden (fruits and vegetables) and also from my parents livestock : chicken, sheep,… I am very lucky to have this kind of food because it’s in the one hand healthier than industrial food and it’s better for environment. Indeed, by eating food from local production I am not contributing to industrial company growth. Generally, these companies policies are more economy oriented than environment oriented. They often try to produce more and more to earn money and they don’t care about their emissions and climate change impact. Theses emissions bring about temperatures rising and all its consequences (ice melting, species disappearance, flooding,…).

The article https://academic.oup.com/af/article/9/1/69/5173494 is about the industrial livestock impact on climate change. To sum up, industrial livestock is responsible for huge quantity of methane and nitrous oxide emissions and to avoid an environmental crisis we have to change our habits and find others ways of production.

My negative impact

Smartphone and laptop :

I often use my phone and my laptop computer to work, search information or for entertainment. I think this is a bad habit I have because for each click, a lot of servers operate to give my a website page or to stock data about myself. However, these servers operate thanks to energy. And they are very polluting. Indeed, the main part of energy is producing by nuclear by there aren’t still a sustainable solution to discard nuclear waste. All of that contribute to climate change.  

The article https://www.computerworld.com/article/3431148/why-data-centres-are-the-new-frontier-in-the-fight-against-climate-change.html show us how data centers are environmentaly unfriendly (energy consumption, waste heat, …). We also have to find solution to reduce our impact : we can act at our scale by reducing our time in front of sreen but there are also others solutions in development such as stock data on satellite by using solar panels.  

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Ugo Bravi 18/03

Everyone knows that if we all change even a little our habits, there will be a very positive aspect on the environment. To turn off the water when it is not useful, to recycle our rubbish, those are among lots of solutions then I have chosen to speak of 2 subjects: common transports and fisheries.

Today analysts have a proof of the impact of human moves on pollution with the case of China whose pollution has spectacularly decreased since the containment. As we can observe on the photo, the emissions of CO2 have disappeared. So, I think, our government should imagine to only allow common transports in cities in order to make an act for the environment.

Fisheries is a very important source of food for the global population but the climate change is somewhat reducing the production of this activity, as the following article is explaining it: https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/global-climate-goals-save-fisheries-1.3909494. In this article, the columnist starts off by explaining that the rise of temperature of the sea is highly impacting the diversity of fish species in the oceans. Indeed, about 3 million of fish per year are killed due to the higher temperature of waters.

I have chosen this subject because as a former islander – I am from Tahiti – I know that simple and daily moves can be made in the way we fish. Actually, the main move can be made on the consumption of fuel for the boat engines. Every fisherman know that those engines are not needed in lagoons or rivers because it is easily possible to move with only muscle power. This act can even be associated with anything in our daily life: every time one does something that is increasing the global warming, this one should wonder “can I do this thing with more friendly-environment moves?”.

The waste and the reducing biodiversity are also bad aspects of fishing that can be improved as we can control ourselves in front of some species or when the fishing effort has already been great.

[enacclimatechangethings]

Alexis 18/03

My Green Routine

(water savings)

 One of the green habits I got for around one year and a half now is trying my best to use less water in my daily life. Currently, I have three main ways of pursuing this goal.

The first one is shower less often. Nobody is smelly enough that they will bother people if after a usual job day where they sat in front of a computer for 8 hours they do not shower. A shower represents in average 65.1 liters 1! And global average shower number per week is just below 7 with countries like Brasil taking almost 12 showers a week 2! Let’s imagine everyone in the world goes down 2 showers a week, bringing the average to 5 (I’m currently at 4 and there is no problem…). This would represent more than 750,000,000,000 liters of water useable for other purposes. And yes this is hard to visualize such a huge number so I have some comparison for you : this much water is enough to serve rice once a day to 12 million people or to serve potatoes 3 times a day for 31 million people !

 The second one is stop or reduce beef consumption. It is true that the taste of a freshly grilled beef rib is an amazing thing but you will find a lot of recipes that do not require beef (or even no meat at all) and are as delicious. Cattle breeding is the first cause of deforestation in Amazonia and producing beef requires 5.7 times more water than producing chicken and 176 times more water than producing potatoes. In 2016, 59 billion kg of beef have been consumed in the world 3. If all this had been replaced by chicken, it would have represented 335,000 billion liters of water that would have been saved! This figure is tremendous and it shows that even replacing half the beef we eat by chicken would still lead to enormous water savings.

 The third and final action I pursue in my everyday life is always use the smaller button to flush your toilet. We often time think that the bigger button is needed after we did a poo but this is rarely the case. I’ve been experimenting the “small button only” for more than 6 months and only 2 times did I have to wait and use it once more to get everything flushed. This behavior is risk free since 2 smaller button pushes use as much water as one bigger button push. Considering that each person poops in average once a day 4, using exclusively the smaller button could lead to save more than a 1,000 liters of water per person and per year amounting for example to 66 billion liters of water saved in one year for a country like France or the UK. This action seems to be the least meaningful of the three but it also is the easiest one to make a habit of doing.

  1 : https://www.home-water-works.org/indoor-use/showers

2 : https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/02/how-often-people-in-various-countries-shower/385470/

3 : https://beef2live.com/story-world-beef-consumption-per-capita-ranking-countries-0-111634

4 : https://www.umass.edu/mycenter/documents/bb/poop.pdf

[enacclimatechangethings]

Nathan LEBERT 18/03

Personally, in order to curb climate change, I always try to do my best. However, I know that I often forget some basic things that could have major consequences in a few years.

I first try to reduce my carbon footprint by thinking about the best transport mode I could use. As I don’t have yet my driving license, I never have this idea of driving a car to go to the supermarket for example. I might thus use public transportation for that reason or to hang out. But, I must admit that if a friend tells me that he can bring me by car somewhere, I would accept to go with him and I won’t try to convince him that we could do the same in another way. That said, I think that what could be the most interesting to reduce our carbon emissions might be traveling by train instead of planes. Indeed, for a travel from Toulouse to Paris, a plane will emit 20 times more CO2 than a train (which is here fully electric) and it is not always true that for regional travels trains are slower than planes (going to the airport, registration, etc. are sometimes very long).

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49349566

The second thing I try to think about is reducing how much meat I consume. I had always been eating meat two times a day while being a kid. Arriving at the ENAC, I started to realize that I could not continue to do so. If I still eat meat almost daily, I try to think about vegetarian alternatives for some products. But I must admit that I am not doing enough now regarding how much time I have to buy food and cook. As said in the next article, eating less meat will drastically reduce the amount of farmland used for it especially in regions such as Amazonia where deforestation is still going on. It would also improve my personal health, reduce the risks of diseases.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding-meat-and-dairy-is-single-biggest-way-to-reduce-your-impact-on-earth

In my opinion, those two things are the ones I really need to work on. But I could also mention food and water waste as well as polluting packages.

[enacclimatechangethings]

Ideas

Hi everyone - please feel free to post things here whenever you like -  videos (of yourselves presenting ideas or external links), articles, reports, etc.

Also, please take the time to read each other’s posts... and comment where you can - comment/questions, etc.

And keep safe - I will look forward to seeing you all as soon as possible !

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Loïs Ponce 18/03

what I do on my daily scale to be an eco-citizen, to respect the environnement and reduce my ecological footprint :

I became nearly vegetarian two years ago, I only eat meat or fish for big event like christmas, for ecological concerns.

Indeed, people are aware that food represents a significant part of our ecological footprint. Our consumption of meat and dairy products is responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions of human origin (I4CE, 2019), 36% of French water consumption (WWF, 2012), in addition a third of water pollution by pesticides, nitrogen and phosphorus (FAO, 2009), the use of 80% of agricultural land in France and 70% of the world's agricultural land, 91% of deforestation in the Amazon (FAO, 2006; Solagro, 2016) and the main cause of biodiversity loss on earth.

That is why to become vegetarian seems to me a very good way to be an eco-citizen.

Nevertheless, to really reduce our ecological footprint by becoming vegetarian, we have to choose the right products with production methods that respect the planet.

Indeed a problem with vegetarian diet is that often people replace meat with soy, soy is consumed as an alternative to meat. And following strong demand, the main producers have abandoned natural soybeans for planting genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Today 70% of the world's soybean production is genetically modified. Producers also use toxic pesticides, mainly glyphosate. These new crops considerably deplete soils. This pesticide used to kill weeds growing around soybeans pollutes rivers. They threaten terrestrial and marine biodiversity creating an imbalance in the ecosystem. In addition Soybean exports are expensive to the planet because the commercial transport of soybeans across the different continents is responsible for significant CO2 emissions. Moreover, Soybean cultivation is mostly linked to massive deforestation. In Brazil, it causes the destruction of the Amazon forest.

Moreover, livestock can help the agriculture because livestock produce a huge amount of organic matter, and this organic matter can be used as natural fertilizer for lands and by this way we can avoid chimical fertilizer

To conclude, if people become vegetarians for environmental reasons, they must pay attention to the way they consume and the products they buy to replace the meat. For example it is useless to be vegetarian if you eat only fruits and vegetables exported and not in season. I think that for the environment it it’s better to eat some meat but buy from small producers and local and seasonal products rather than no meat but lot of exported products. So this is what I’m trying to do know.

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Marc 18/03/2020

the things we do on our daily scale

Today’s reflection is about the action that we take, on our daily routine, “our ecological routine “, that we take to help against climate change.

 I guess that’s funny. It’s funny for I’m not, and I don’t revendicate to be, an ecologist. To be precise, I’m against ecology on its simplest form. It’s much more a kind of joke from my point of vu. To me, the simple idea of being against evolution and the raise of the technology is a nonsense that cannot help us save our world in the current crisis. While many in this group seems to be purely for ecology in their convictions, I think that I’m more on the “sustainable side” of the problematic. I believe that we can’t stop our growth and I’m OK with the idea that we will have to pass by some uncomfortable situations before we manage a better way to live on that earth.

 However, even if I don’t considerate myself as an ecologist, I cannot help myself from doing simple gestures every day in favour of the earth… So why is that? Why does I bother doing such things if it’s not by ecological conviction?  To be perfectly honest, I think that it’s mainly the idea that those simple moves, like carpooling, waste sorting, saving water and many others could help us. Not to change the world, we won’t change it by such a simple gesture, but at least to prevent the situation to go worse again. I believe that it is our duty, as earth’s inhabitant, to prevent her from turning into a gigantic wasted rock that won’t bear life again. We owe her that. So partly due to my education and partly due to my personal conviction, I keep doing those little moves, every day, again and again …

 Finally, you will eventually note that I have manage to write a whole load of word without even evoking the heart of today goal: “What am I doing in my everyday life to help against climate change?”. To answer that, I won’t be particularly original for I think that I mainly do the “standard gesture to save the world from turning into a ball of fire so hot that the little penguin won’t survive it”. It includes all the gesture that are so easy to complete that we have no excuses not to perform them. The main one is certainly using optimal transport. This mean that you will take 2 minutes before going somewhere to think about the way you will go there. Of course, always using a car is generally prohibited but it doesn’t mean that you’ll spend your life entirely on foot or on a bicycle. It only means that you must take the optimal transport. Guess what? All the transport could be use, you only have to do a ratio between efficiency and “ecological footprint”. Taking a bus is usually the best option to go downtown but it won’t be efficient enough to cross France, on your way to go home avoiding a virus… In that case, the train is a way better option. It also means that you have to take a little moment to ask yourself if all your travels are necessary. Those who yells for an ecological awakening of society but who take the plane to cross half of the world twice a year, only to visit America or Asia on the 2 weeks of their vacation… Those peoples are, to my mind, a mix between hypocrisy and stupidity and it’s not with their daily compost or their idea of taking a shower only twice a week that will compensate for those travels … Beside being logical on your way of transport, I can’t give better advices but to try to be logical on your daily life. Does it cost you anything to sort your wastes? Do you really need to take a shower longer than 5 minutes? Do you need to have 27 jeans, 95 T-shirts, 8 jackets, 15 pair of boots, ect …?  Can’t you eat seasonal food that come from a local producer?

So this is my final answer to nowadays problematic: be logical on your daily life and, above all, don’t fall into the common hypocrisy of “I’ve planted 3 onions in my garden and I do compost so I have my ecological good deed and I can waste it going in USA to buy a pair of boot that have been made by some Asian poor country …”. BE LOGICAL !

[enacclimatechangethings]