Can individuals do anything to reduce national carbon emissions?

Reducing carbon emissions by reducing emissions from coal-fired power stations is hardly possible unless the citizens try to reduce their own energy use too. If the citizens use less power, then power companies need to provide less.

Households could easily reduce their power and water consumption by half or more by adopting measures like the following.

An example is a sustainable house of the 1960s of old-fashioned brick veneer, that does not need central heating or air-conditioning, because of its design with a passage for draughts to go through, and separated rooms that can each be closed off, and used according to the coolest or warmest. This means that one or two rooms at a time can be used at the temperatures needed to live in, between 15^oC and 25^oC.

A home can have solar panels, sky-lights and a water-tank. Double-glazing in some windows, summer awnings, venetian blinds, roof insulation and thick curtains - all keep the house temperature close to what is needed.

Physical energy is used for most housework. It not only saves electricity but there is no need to go to a gym.

When suitable, a carpet-sweeper is used rather than vacuuming.

Light laundry is hand-washed as easily as a rinse, and spun-dry in a twin-tub washing machine. Only occasional heavy laundry needs a modern power-hungry machine by most people. Laundry dries outside on an Australian Hills Hoist or inside on a clothes-horse. No electric clothes-dryer is necessary. Pillow-slips, shirts and handkerchiefs that have been drip-dried are folded and put away with no need for any ironing at all. That is a tremendous saving in electricity.

In the kitchen, to wash-up, two basins in two sinks cam be used. and a strong dish-rack of metal coated with plastic that takes all the dishes, pans, cups and cutlery without needing drying or putting away. No dishwasher. Use the saved water on the garden.

Clothes, rather than heaters, keep people warm. But there are two single-room heaters and two portable fans. In the bedrooms, a heater is used when dressing and four heated wheat-bags warm the bed. An electric lap-robe is used in the study when sitting at the computer or desk.

When visitors come, a heater warms or fan cools the sitting room as required. While other people throw out their furniture because the covers are split and cannot be mended, give sofas and chairs the versatile British removable and washable stretch seat-covers which last for ages. I cannot understand why there are no Australian stretch-covers like them. Furniture which is expensive and does not last is avoided this way – saving dollars and emissions.

In the kitchen, meals are planned to use just one appliance: microwave, small oven, large oven, frying pan. And in the bathroom, quick showers are the norm except for an occasional luxury long one, and hair is washed weekly, not daily.

Clean with laundry vinegar, soap and bicarbonate of soda – no commercial cleaners are needed except one for polishing wood and one to wipe tables.

Tools, gadgets and stationery are kept until they are used up, not thrown out. Keep your children's good toys - your great-grandchildren will be able to play with them. Especially good are long-lasting big kindergarten blocks painted red, which can be used in creative play by children aged 1-13.

Little things help to save. For instance, reuse both paper and plastic envelopes when possible. Keep clothes-pegs in a small bucket with handles (e.g. honey-buckets) that is not kept on the clothes-line out in the weather, and so clothes-pegs can last for over forty years.

Food scraps go in a worm farm and compost bins, so only bones and packaging go out in the waste-bin to the tip – after soup has been made from the bones. As there is no rotting food material in the bin, plastic bags are not required.

In the garden, lawns of any sort not only look good, setting off the flowers and trees, but are needed to sit out on, for outdoor eating space, for children to play and for the clothes-line. An old Australian manual-mower can keep the lawn short and green – no matter that it has lots of flatweeds in it and looks brown in summer. Most Australian home lawns do not need to look like English lawns.

The best shrubs, trees, flowers and vegetables are those that will survive with least trouble and watering, both exotic and native. Self-sown plants are welcome as they demonstrate survival. A No-Mo nature strip can be covered with ground-cover and flowers that will survive without care: no-water-no-weeding. A cast-iron garden stove burns garden prunings without smoke, in cool weather, and can cook barbecue food.

We need to have sustainable houses. Modern magazines focus on new houses with novel and often highly technical features but which are not necessarily sustainable. The features of older sustainable houses, however, are not often remembered and, indeed, are being pulled down and replaced by big new McMansions which use a lot more energy and water.

If a household's power bills average daily usage in Winter becomes 13.80 kWh compared with present bills for similar households of 16.2kWh,

and in Summer becomes 4.74 kWh instead of present bills of 9.2kWh., that is a saving worth making for the individual household. Many households with similar savings would make a substantial contribution to savings of carbon emissions.

If Water average usage in litres per day in Winter becomes 32 litres per day compared with present bills for similar households of 356 litres

and use in Summer becomes 176 litres per day, compared with present bills for similar households of 455 litres per day, that is a saving worth making for the individual household. Many households with similar savings would make a substantial contribution to water saving.

Humanity is now using nature's products 52 percent faster than Earth can renew. A major reason why we do nothing to stop destroying the planet is that we believe reining in our wasteful life styles would cost jobs and profits. We can do something, however, and we can start at our own homes. And our jobs and profits can be found elsewhere in non-consuming ways.