Awareness - a vital first step

The washingqueen's lack of awareness of our monthly spend on fuel is telling but not surprising. She probably thinks that by now I monitor every kilowatt hour and cubitt of gas consumed in our household and I have to admit I'd probably be up for it if the technology were available to do it quickly and easily. Truth is the only thing I was aware of before beginning this experiment was the amount of our monthly direct debit to our energy suppliers. And sadly this is a pretty crude measure of how much energy we consume and tells us nothing about where we use it, how we could be more efficient or how much CO2 we emit as a result of our consumption.

I think lack of awareness is a really important part of the climate change problem. It's so easy to live your life blissfully unaware of the links between your daily actions and CO2 emissions, and the connections between that and the global climate change problem. It is much easier to think of it as someone else's problem and to leave them to fix it too. Becoming aware of and accepting the fact that you are part of the problem has to be the first step in taking responsibility for your emissions and making changes to reduce them.

But even having made such a commitment, actually making changes seems to require finer and finer levels of awareness, and it's all a bit of a minefield. Getting a grip on your emissions seems to require a PhD in carbon. If you look at your household energy usage you need to appreciate how using a kilowatt hour of electricity can cause greater emissions damage (0.45kg C02) than using a kilowatt hour of gas (0.19kg CO2) - that is unless you are using electricity from a guaranteed renewable source. If you want to go travelling you have to assess the different emissions consequences of travelling by car, bus, train or plane. And if you want to improve the energy efficiency of your home your faced with figuring out whether it's better to install double glazing, insulate the loft or get a more efficient boiler.

We're very used to making judgments on price but it's a bit of an uphill struggle to easily factor carbon emissions calculations into your everyday living without some kind of carbon currency or easy to understand way of rating emissions. Maybe it will be like decimilisation or the introduction of the euro, once we've learnt the ropes it will become second nature but in the meantime I'm pondering the idea of developing carbon emissions stickers for appliances around the house... you know green for low (use as much as you like); amber for caution (this appliance will increase your emissions); and red for danger (turn this on and the planet dies). I wonder if that would help the washingqueen? She's going to be away for a few days so perhaps me and the boys could knock up a scheme for when she comes back. Or should that be if she comes back.