Climate Choices. Credit: Seth Wynes/Kimberly Nicholas, Environmental Research Letters, 2017

In the absence of being able to affect what happens on the global corporate scale, many people are looking for ways to change their lifestyles to help mitigate the effects of climate change. Switching to a hybrid or electric car, composting and recycling, changing your lightbulbs from incandescent to LED, driving less, adding solar panels to your home: the list goes on and we've all heard them. But some of the biggest changes don't get mentioned that often. Phys.org points us at a study that does.

Published today in the journal Environmental Research Letters, the study from Lund University, found that the incremental changes advocated by governments may represent a missed opportunity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions beneath the levels needed to prevent 2°C of climate warming.

The four actions that most substantially decrease an individual's carbon footprint are: eating a plant-based diet, avoiding air travel, living car-free, and having smaller families.

That last suggestion has put the cat among the pigeons in the wider sphere of the Internet, where people seem to equate the advice with not having children at all. While it's clear that surviving as a species involves having kids, period, our interpretation is that focusing government resources on providing adequate family planning would have a significant impact over the long haul.

The bottom line is that for many people, the above actions are not easy to implement (with the possible exception of reducing air travel), but are potential choices available. Not everyone can or will make those choices, but they are worth putting on the table as options.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-07-effective-individual-tackle-climate-discussed.html#jCp