There’s an interesting post on Climate Denial, a blog that I quite enjoy for its occasional but erudite posts. George Marshall notes in his post ‘death of a thousand tips‘, that we may have over-emphasized the easy things we can do about climate change, at the expense of bigger challenges. Nobody wants to promote the difficult things, so millions of pounds are spent promoting life changes that are actually fairly insignificant. Plastic bags, for example, are generally agreed to be a bad thing, and regularly feature in ‘top ten’ lists. In the grand scheme of things they only account for 1/5000th of our footprint.
Recent MORI research, ‘Tipping point or turning point’, shows that 40% of people in the UK believe that recycling is the most useful thing they can do to make a difference. Only 10% chose cutting back on flying, or using public transport, both of which would have a much greater effect.
Why mention these things? Because the same report found that 78% of people are prepared to change their behaviour. Let’s make sure that’s the most useful behaviour change it can be, and not letting ourselves off the hook to easily!
The Earthbound Report 
Yes – and when the gulf between the scale of the problem and the recommendations for life-style change are all too obvious, reporting of the full projected implications of climate change are derided as ‘climate porn’.