A large distinction between professional and personal,
Personal
- never owned a new car, so reducing embedded carbon usage. Current car is sixteen years old, and dying, but will need replacing which will be second hand again. I only do about 3-4,000 miles a year in it, so fuel economy is not a major consideration - I'd happily pay more for road transport fuel for an additional green levy. Try and cycle for transport as much as possible, but not to the extremes of self-flaggellation
- food, buy as much as I can on the market, eggs from a farm within an hours cycle from me, veggies even closer. I'd happily buy all my fruit and veg like that, and I genuinely think English produce is amongst the best and enjoy the seasonality. Mrs ED happily ocados blueberries from Peru.
- meat, very much reduced but I do have a weakness for cheese
- last couple of holidays I've had in the UK, by car. Mrs Ed has flown, she doesn't like bikes or camping. This year will be a family holiday in Europe.
- solar PV on the house which heats the hot water tank before exporting to the grid. Perversely ends up with higher tumble dryer use, when the sun is shining, free electric after all.
Work is a bit trickier, not many people in my company qualified to do what I do, so when we have BigOil in Australia wanting to use us, do we just say no, its not within our environmental policy, or rationalise on the basis that I'm there to help them reduce their environmental footprint? Then the new job, helping companies including BigGas reduce their own energy usage, which is more environmentally friendly, allowing them to extract the gas more efficiently for someone else to burn it on a power station, though much more efficiently.
I've started taking the train to the airport, rather than sitting in the back if a taxi, unless its not logistically feasible. Trains to Aberdeen are marginal, OK to get there, mostly unfeasible home, so who pays for me to stay an extra night and catch the train in the morning?
I am however vastly impressed by the ingenuity of the industry sectors I mostly work in, with some definitely out of the box thinking, ahead of regulation. Mostly now being driven by science, economics and public perception, extinction rebellion not included mostly because they simply have no idea how to even start implementing what they state they want. I'm pretty sure technology will save us, but I may not be around to see it, I'd like to see a government initiating a personal cap and trade scheme, individual carbon budgets, emit more if you like, but you buy the excess on the market. I can't see it happening though, electoral suicide.