By Megan Graham
Last week the newspapers were full of reports involving the Copenhagen climate change conference. A related but less publicised appeal, 10:10 encourages all of us to take responsibility by pledging to cut our carbon emissions by 10% before the end of 2010. The appeal urges individuals, companies and local councils to make a dramatic cut in their use of carbon emitting energy sources in the hope that this will not only slow the effects of global warming in the long term, but also encourage government policy to match the commitment of the public. All good stuff, I hear you say? It is good stuff, as it’s encouraging thousands of people to work together to make a meaningful difference to our world. We even had a campaign here at York, during which students lay down to make the shape of the 10:10 logo to publicise the movement.
The publicity campaign was an excellent idea, and an excellent thing to do. The only problem was the whole thing struck me as being incredibly small: it led me to a bit of an epiphany if I’m honest. Can it really be that out of 11,000 of what are considered to be some of the best and brightest young minds in the country, only 12 people care enough about the future of our world to do anything about it?
Now this isn’t a ‘holier than thou’ article I’m writing here, after all I wasn’t lying in the rain on the cold concrete trying to do some good for the world, in fact I’d hazard a guess I was in bed taking full advantage of my Reading Week. I have never been particularly worried about climate change and greenhouse gasses and all the rest of that ‘mumbo-jumbo’, and from the looks of it, neither are about 10,987 of you. Yet some quick, epiphany-fuelled internet research made me realise that we really should be. If we begin to rapidly reduce our carbon emissions now, the effect we’ve already had on the planet will be largely reversible. However, the point of no return will come within our lifetime, and we’ll have missed our chance to avoid the potentially devastating effects of climate change.
It may seem as though individual efforts can’t amount to much. With our world leaders now trying desperately to think of ways of avoiding reducing their country’s carbon footprint, while still appearing to care about climate change at Copenhagen, I think this only shows that right now individual conscientiousness is more important than ever. Even if the University can’t commit to the campaign, there is nothing to stop us as students trying to reduce our own carbon emissions. The best bit is that the first 10% are surprisingly easy to cut out. Simply by doing things like washing your dishes by hand rather than using the dishwasher, taking a shower instead of a bath and walking or cycling into town instead of catching the bus will all add up to make a difference, and hopefully that difference will be enough.
In all honesty, 10% emissions cuts aren’t enough- we need to be emitting 80% less carbon by 2050 to stop the progress of climate change, but to reverse the effects, there actually needs to be a pretty much complete stoppage of the use of all carbon fuels. Tricky one.
I think part of the reason 10:10 hasn’t had an impact, is because it just isn’t big enough, or drastic enough. As a believer in direct action, I think it’s things like climate camp and the wave- the big, eye catching stuff, that makes people think about their energy comsumption. The phrase used by Friends of the Earth ‘think global act local’ is absolutely right, but 10:10 doesn’t go far enough, and I think is why it hasn’t had an impact- it’s a half hearted target, that makes people think the issue is half as important as it is.