By Jimmy Wong, amoswong.com
In recent news, the Nordic nations (Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway and Iceland) via a joint statement have raised the alarm over the melting Arctic. They are worried that this phenomenon will have irreversible consequences, threatening livelihood and doubling the rate of ice melt.
United Nations (UN) has put the blame on burning fossil fuel for this melt. While the nations and head of states work on their protocols and what needs to be done, I have already start practicing “environmental-friendly” life whenever and wherever possible. How? Read on for some of my many ways.
Many of us own a car; the more fortunate ones own more than one. A huge majority of our cars run on fossil fuel; the remaining minority operates on biofuel, natural gas, liquid petroleum gas, hydrogen and electricity. My car runs on fossil fuel because I cannot afford Honda's new hydrogen car. I drive my car everyday and each minute I burn fossil fuel and contribute to the overall rise in global temperature, although in a minute way.
What I practice are ways to reduce the burning of fossil fuel and at the same time, saving me money against the rising global fossil fuel price. As you may know, Malaysia is right smack in the tropical region and hence is a very hot place. Using the car’s air conditioning consumes about 20% extra fuel. For me, whenever my car is cooled down, I turn off the air conditioning. Call me crazy, call me a fool, but switching off air-conditioning whenever you don’t need it saves fuel, saves money and saves the environment. Fixing heat reflecting films helps a great deal.
I have already changed the way I drive, from being heavy footed to very light. I seldom accelerate more than what is required, using momentum to help push the car, thereby reducing fuel consumption. I also reduce the need to hard brake by looking further ahead, decelerate much earlier on whenever I see traffic ahead.
These simple methods have helped me reduce my fuel consumption by some 15%; at the same time, reducing the emission by the same margin. Can you imagine if 20 million Malaysians reduce 15% emission? Malaysia will have a very blue sky.
Jimmy Wong
amoswong.com
I want to mention that drying ones clothing with the sun, or even as we do in the winter next to our wood stove,
saves a tremendous amount of energy. Few people bring this tip up. Besides using heat to dry your clothes the dryer sucks air from the house which must be replenished with cold air from outside.
Global warming is a very real problem in today's world. Most people are rather uninformed about it though. As scientists and biologists already know, the earth goes through warming and cooling cycles. This is global warming. It is caused by our elliptical orbit around the sun. Now admittedly, using fossil fuels and other eco non friendly methods are a bad idea, but not because they are warming the earth up, but simply becuse they are destroying the earth. One volcanic eruption puts more CO2 in the earth's atmosphere than all the CO2 man has released through industrialization. The earth will warm, there will be some kind of disaster, whether its the volcanic eruption we are 50,000 years overdue for, or if an asteroid impacts us, we will eventually have another ice age.
By living green and eco friendly we can insure that as long as humans are around we are living well and comfortably withouth destroying our home.