Can individuals do anything to reduce national carbon emissions?

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.