The northlondonhippy

Archive for December 5th, 2009

The Cli­mate Change Sum­mit opens up in Copen­hagen on Mon­day, where a bunch of world lead­ers will add to the prob­lem by pro­duc­ing a lot of hot air, but prob­a­bly no viable solu­tion to this very real problem.

Yep, I believe the cli­mate is chang­ing. I can see it and feel it and have done for a while now. Here in the UK, the win­ters seem milder and though last sum­mer wasn’t one of the hottest on record, it was hot enough. I’ve seen what’s hap­pen­ing to the polar ice caps, not first hand, but com­puter graph­ics aren’t that good, so the footage has to be real.

Is it just a nor­mal cycle? Maybe. Is human activ­ity con­tribut­ing or accel­er­at­ing the process? How could it not? We live in a closed ecosys­tem, our atmos­phere is sealed tight against the vac­uum of space. The more green­house gasses we pump into this sealed bub­ble, the hot­ter it will get.

I don’t want to be a hyp­ocrite, I want to do my part to help pre­vent cli­mate change. I use low energy light bulbs, which aren’t as bright as the old incan­des­cent style. I recy­cle as much as I can, which is messy and time con­sum­ing. And I don’t take unnec­es­sary car jour­neys, which means rid­ing the bus and tube with unwashed strangers.

I know its not much, but its some­thing. I’d like to do more.

That got me think­ing, what more could I do to help slow down cli­mate change? Then it hit me, there’s some­thing we all could do that would have an instant, imme­di­ate and mea­sur­able effect on the amount of green­house gasses released into the environment.

All liv­ing things exhale car­bon diox­ide, or CO2 as its known. Humans are the only liv­ing crea­tures to under­stand this and to be able to adjust their own output.

I’m propos­ing that every human being who is phys­i­cally able, should hold their breath for at least one minute per day. You could do it all in one go, or you can do two 30 sec­ond peri­ods. You could even go longer if you like, but I can’t be held liable if you pass out, fall down and hit your head. I only sug­gested a minute a day.

If every­one held their breath for one minute daily, that would have a huge impact on the amount of CO2 released into the atmos­phere annu­ally. These things add up quickly and if I were a sci­en­tist I could esti­mate how much CO2 would be saved, but I’m not, so I can’t. So we’ll stick to “a lot.”

Look man, if we don’t do some­thing and pretty god­damn soon, breath­ing won’t be an issue that most of us will need to worry about any more.

So I’ll be hold­ing my breath, and not just for one minute every day. I’ll be hold­ing it while our lead­ers meet this month to work out whether they can save the human race. If they do come up with a solu­tion, I’ll cer­tainly be sur­prised, but I’ll also finally be able to exhale.

You don’t want me to turn blue, do you?