… a nightmare for even the most creative advertising executive, until in floats the idea of a black balloon, which represents about 50 grams of greenhouse gas. The concept was incorporated into many climate change awareness campaigns including Sustainablity Victoria (an Australian state). 

Every Victorian household produces over 12 tonnes (240,000 balloons) of greenhouse gas emissions each year. The tips and tools on this website will help you to measure how many black balloons your home energy use contributes, and how to start making changes.

 Check out the Alliance for Climate Protection’s initial campaign that alerts Americans (through Internet maybe globally) about  how to save energy, money, and reduce pollution from their homes.

The ads bring to life the contribution that each household is making towards climate change and demonstrate some very easy ways to help reduce it while saving money. You’ll recognize the voice as that of the actor Tommy Lee Jones.  View the video

The message is simple, effective and provocative. Let’s hope it hits the mark. This website includes an A-Z lising with internal links to articles covering more than 100 topics about climate change, everything from biodiesel to washing machines.

You did watch the video right?

Google also plans to become carbon neutral by the end of 2007 by implementing energy-reducing strategies, including using computers with more energy-efficient power supplies and more efficient DC-to-DC converters.

Other Google green initiatives include a fuel-efficient vehicle incentive, a corporate shuttle program for commuting to work, and sourcing organic, locally-grown food for their onsite cafeterias. A massive1.6 megawatt solar photovoltaic array was installed at the Silicon Valley campus, the largest solar installation on any corporate campus in the U.S. and enough to power 1000 local homes. 

In 2005, information and communication equipment, within Australian businesses, generated 7.94 million tonnes of carbon dioxide almost as much as emissions from the civil aviation and metal production industries.

The Australian Computing Society has called on government to extend the Appliance Energy Label system to information and communication equipment for businesses and homes. Our current energy rating system uses stars to rate the energy efficiency of electrical products, including air conditioners, refrigerators, washing machines, clothes dryers and dishwashers.   

According to Climate Savers Smart Computing, desktop PCs waste nearly half the delivered power through heat loss. Making energy-efficient computers not only cuts greenhouse gas emissions, but reduces costs of operation. Less energy lost to heat, less air-conditioning required to cool offices, data centres, and homes.     

What can you do? Enable the power-saving features on your PC – the single, most important factor reducing PC energy use. Power management places your PC, including monitor and hard drives, into a ‘sleep’ mode when idle. Simply touch the mouse or keyboard to ‘wake-up’ your PC. Or take a few seconds to install CO₂ Saver, a lightweight program that manages your computer’s power usage for you. Of course, you already know to turn your PC and monitor off at the wall when not in use.  

Bloggers and website owners can offset the environmental impact of their Internet presence by offsetting associated carbon emission through tickgreen, a simple, fast and inexpensive solution. The process takes around five minutes they use carbon credits issued and regulated by the Australian Government, and you can show the world your commitment to becoming green by displaying the tickgreen badge on your site.  The options are many. Can you make a difference

meeting new friends is great! meeing 120 new blogger friends in one day even better. Organised to perfection. Attended by the who’s who of Australian bloggers, who engaged, exchanged, and enlightened.

For me it was like attending a Russian neurosurgery meeting knowing nothing more than “nyet”. But today I’ve created, conceived, connected, twittered and blogged.

Thanks to all my new friends for your valuable input and hand holding, including Des Walsh, Joanne Jacobs, Peter Black, Nick Hodge, Melissa, Duncan and Anthony.

Ah yes, Christmas is just around the corner, I hear you say. Seasons come and seasons go, but there’s always another opportunity for people to spend copious amounts of money on things they don’t like, for relatives they don’t cherish, to impress people they don’t like.

Has global warming dominated the environmental debate to the degree that we’ve forgotted about the environmental impact of consumerism? Ten year ago, before climate change (BCC), well prior to global debate, we talked about pollution, consumerism, and rain forest destruction. You joined Greenpeace, saved whales, and became a vegetarian.  These were the badges of concern. Action was communal, practical, warm and fuzzy.

How will the change in focus on environmental concerns affect the outcomes. Yes, per capita the public awareness of environmental issues might be higher than in 1990s, but is conservation of natural resources and wildlife taking a reluctant back seat? Should we switch the climage change focus, particularly in Australia, back to saving koalas, for example?

Tell me what you think!

Julie Edwards