to be myself

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6. Open a window

Most of the 25 tons of CO2 emissions each Indian is responsible for each year come from the home. Open a window instead of running the AC. Adjust the thermostat a couple of degrees higher in the summer and lower in the winter. Caulk and weatherstrip all your doors and windows. Insulate your walls and ceilings. Use the dishwasher only when it’s full. Install low-flow showerheads. Wash your clothes in warm or cold water. Turn down the thermostat on the water heater. At the end of the year, don’t be surprised if your house feels lighter. It just lost 4,000 lbs. of carbon dioxide.

7. Buy green power, at home or away

More than 600 utilities in 37 states offer green energy, but unless we read the fine print on our bill, we may not know if our power company is one of them. If we don’t live in a green power zone, we can support the industry by buying renewable energy certificates, which allow us to purchase green energy in another part of the country.

8. just say no to plastic

The plastic bags you bring home from the supermarket probably end up in a landfill. Every year, more than 500 billion plastic bags are distributed, and less than 3% of those bags are recycled. They are typically made of polyethylene and can take up to 1,000 years to biodegrade in landfills that emit harmful greenhouse gases. Reducing your contribution to plastic-bag pollution is as simple as using a cloth bag (or one made of biodegradable plant-based materials) instead of wasting plastic ones.

9. Support your local farmer

Fruit, vegetables, meat and milk produced closer to home rack. How do you find them? Search localharvest.org by ZIP code for farmers’ markets, greengrocers and food co-ops in your area. The website, which includes handy contact information in its directory listings, also identifies restaurants that specialize in regional and seasonal ingredients. Another reason to go local: the taste is great.

10. Plant a bamboo fence

Bamboo makes a beautiful fence, and because it grows so quickly (as much as 1 ft. a day or more, depending on the species), it absorbs more CO2. Most homeowners have to restrict its growth, lest it get out of control. Do this, however, and you reduce bamboo’s capacity as a carbon sink. Only large-scale plantings, which absorb CO2 faster than they release it, can favorably tip the scales. How big is your yard?

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3. Hang up a clothes line

A recent study by Cambridge University’s Institute of Manufacturing found that 60% of the energy associated with a piece of clothing is spent in washing and drying it. Over its lifetime, a T shirt can send up to 9 lbs of carbon dioxide into the air. The solution is not to avoid doing laundry, tempting as that may be. Rather, wash your clothes in warm water instead of hot, and save up to launder a few big loads instead of many smaller ones. Dry your clothes the natural way, by hanging them on a line rather than loading them in a dryer. Altogether you can reduce the CO2 created by your laundry up to 90%.

4. Capture the carbon

Coal is one of the dirtiest fuels around and a major source of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions. Half the electricity generated comes from coal. What if coal-fired plants stopped spewing their carbon dioxide fumes into the air and instead sequestered them—pumped them deep into the ground for storage.

5. Pay your bills online

Eliminating your paper trail by banking and paying bills online does more than save trees. It also helps reduce fuel consumption by the trucks and planes that transport paper checks. If every Indian home viewed and paid its bills online, the switch would cut solid waste by 1.6 billion tons a year and curb greenhouse-gas emissions by 2.1 million tons a year. Worried about security? Don’t be. Just ignore e-mails “phishing” for personal data, and monitor all (electronic) statements for any unauthorized debits. Report problems immediately, and your credit won’t take the hit.

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Few things we can do to save the environment

1. Turn food into fuel

The corn husks better than corn for producing energy. Ethanol is the alternative fuel that could finally wean the U.S. from its expensive oil habit and in turn prevent the millions of tons of carbon emissions that go with it. The half of the nearly 11 billion bushels of corn produced each year is turned into ethanol, and most new cars are capable of running on E10 (10% ethanol and 90% gas).

2. Change the tube lights

The hottest thing in household energy savings is the compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL). The wattage gives them away: many 7-watt CFLs are comparable to a regular 40-watt bulb, 26 watts is the typical CFL equivalent of 100 watts and so on. They don’t flicker as much when you turn them on because each bulb still contains 5 mg of mercury.

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Global warming already disrupts millions of lives daily in the forms of destructive weather patterns and loss of habitat. What is already happening is only the tip of the melting iceberg, for it is our children and grandchildren who may suffer most from the effects of global warming. Hundreds of millions of people may be exposed to famine, water shortages, extreme weather conditions and a 20 – 30% loss of animal and plant species if we don’t reduce the rate of global warming and reduce GHG emissions. This article outlines some ways that we can act to help prevent the Earth from warming further. While humankind has the ability to destroy the planet, we can also help protect and sustain it.

Reducing carbon and greenhouse gas emission will not only make our personal living space more sustainable but it will save our money in both the short and long term. Global warming is occurring more rapidly than it was originally expected to — only forty years ago, the big worry was global cooling. Even if we remain a cynic, however, and believe that the majority of scientists are wrong, we’ll benefit from reduced population, a more healthful lifestyle and increased savings from enacting these simple activities that will not reduce the quality of our life.