Green Lives Other areas

Getting to grips with domestic energy consumption and low carbon transport is relatively simple compared to the rest but anyone who is seriously concerned about climate change should at least be thinking about the other areas of life where our actions have an impact.

Food
This is an ethical minefield with complex inter-related issues around food miles, seasonal foods, production methods, ethical shopping, sustainability, local sourcing, and fairtrade. We are still wrestling with all this but take a look at some of these if you are interested:

'How Bad are Bananas: The carbon footprint of everything' by Mike Berners-Lee
Food Carbon Footprint Calculator
'The Pleasures of the Flesh' article by George Monbiot about the environmental implications of meat eating
'The Soil Association and Air Freight' - article on Chris Goodall's Carbon Commentary blog

Workplace carbon
We haven't much to report on this. Most of us don't have much power over the emissions of the buildings we work in and resulting from the activities of our employers but we might be able to have some influence if we are well informed. So, if you are interested, take a look at the websites of organisations which offer advice to organisations and businesses, eg The Carbon Trust

Public infrastructure
This seems to cover a huge range of public services and utilities that we all use. Again, it's easy to think that we can't do much about these but there will be areas where we can lobby, write letters, protest and demonstrate, such as airport expansion proposals where there are clearly huge implications for increased CO2 emissions from more flights.