The natural greenhouse effect keeps the planet warm enough for life. We need it.
But the enhanced greenhouse effect, caused by man, can be slowed down and perhaps prevented by the following five steps:
- Find other ways of generating electricity instead of burning coal, oil, natural gas and other fossil fuels. Stop any waste of electricity in your home and work. Turn off TVs and computers when they are not in use. Turn them off at the wall. Stand-by energy, also knows as vampire energy sucks away ten percent of your power bill by leaving equipment on stand-by.
- Monitor your heating and cooling systems. Reduce the time they are on. Adjust the temperatures to make savings. Wear warmer clothes inside in winter, and remove clothes in summer.
- Reduce your use of fossil fuel in transport by walking, car pooling, bicycling, taking public transport, buses and trains. Avoid flying.
- Stop deforestation and plant billions of trees, which take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and store it away for hundreds of years. Fifty percent of a tree's weight is carbon.
- Recycle all paper, glass, steel and aluminum cans and plastic bottles. Making all these things afresh uses far more energy and resources than if we recycled them. Find out how many millions of tons of these things are thrown away as trash in your country.
