While Covid-19 has caused a lot of pain, there have been a few gains too:
Which got me to thinking - the world can come together and make pretty dramatic changes, quickly. But how long will these changes last?
Can those of us that are already aware of the importance of living more environmentally friendly lives, seize the moment, and commit to a more sustainable lifestyle for the long run?
If your job hasn’t been threatened by the virus by June, you are one of the lucky ones. Can you/will you make some long term sacrifices?
If you are young and healthy and self-isolated before the government mandated it in your country, you were making a sacrifice for the greater good - you were not likely to contract it and suffer the worst, so you were doing it to break the chain, protect your health systems and the elderly.
So can we harness that spirit of sacrifice and turn it into something that persists beyond 2020?
And unlike Covid-19 imposed changes, we can do it step by step!
As a growth marketer I know that making improvements to anything starts with benchmarking things. So here is my totally honest climate footprint based on the WWF’s environmental footprint calculator.
That needs reducing. In other articles, I have written about sustainable levels of emissions but suffice to say that a footprint over 8 tonnes is a problem. If yours is above this, you are directly contributing towards the world going past an average of 2 degree C temperature rise and all the chaos that this would bring.
As you can see, the biggest chunk of my footprint is because of travel. Flying is by far the largest source of this.
I can’t cut down on my flying 100%. I live in London and I have family and friends scattered around the world that I just have to visit. For instance, this November is my friend’s wedding in Rajasthan, India and he ran himself ragged helping at mine. It just wouldn’t be okay to miss it.
But I figure I can at least reduce my footprint by getting from London to Eastern Europe/West Asia by trains and buses and then flying from there. [I will write about why I don't think I can take ground transportation the whole way and other decisions I make, as the time comes.]
I think you can agree this is a sacrifice. Instead of taking one easy direct flight, I will be spending almost a week travelling towards India. The knock on effect is that I won't be able to take multiple holidays this year - I am forced to consolidate everything into a longer, single trip in November. Many of my friends are planning to jump on a plane right after the lockdown is lifted and I am tempted to do so myself, but this decision will prevent that.
If this experiment works, and I can avoid flying for work the rest of this year, I will commit to flying less than 12,000 kms next year. As per the graph below(taken from the same WWF calculator) that is just one return trip to India or 2 trips to Europe and one to the red zone the whole year. And then I will strive to cut it down further as time goes by.
For many professionals living in the developed world, flights based contributions will be the largest part of your footprint - just like it is for me. Can you also start chipping away at it?
Or something else? You don’t have to be doing anything big. Here are some other examples:
Each of the above could help cut your footprint by up to a tonne (or more) depending on your base. If you aren’t sure, get in touch via Facebook or Twitter and perhaps we can help you with embracing the Lowcoliving.
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