While major infrastructure investment is required to have a meaningful impact on carbon emissions at the national level, we can all do our bit personally, according to this short video:

Getting personal: Top climate scientists share how they limit carbon emissions

Top climate scientists such as Richard Alley and Joerg Schaefer share what they do to reduce their carbon footprints. Individual efforts count in the planet-sized challenge of human-influenced global warming, scientists stress. Some of their tips:

• Ride a bike
• Drive small cars
• Eat less meat
• Buy food locally
• Turn down the thermostat

Reported on the SBS website today (in conjunction with the website The Conservation) – A commentary on the first “State Of The Planet Declaration” released at the recent Planet Under Pressure conference. Worth a read

Planet under Pressure 2012: here’s the wrap | SBS World News

The Planet Under Pressure 2012 Conference was held in London a fortnight back and released the first State of the Planet Declaration.

The conference aim was to set out the science (in a broad sense) in the run-up to the UN Rio+20 conference.

The recommendations in the statement have been passed on to the Secretary-General of the UN, Ban Ki-moon, who has agreed to take them on board.

Before commenting on the statement, here’s a gap assessment. Instead of seeing who was present — who was absent? Present were over 3,000 attendees and many more online. The peak global change research organisations were represented.

The patrons of the conference were mostly blokes and mostly Western, despite a very different mix of interested parties at the ground level. Supporters of the conference included scientific, aid and development organisations.

So development interests, gender, poverty and other issues straddling society and environment were present.

Absent were the Davos types: leaders and representatives from the OECD, the IMF, mining companies, and other such powerful economic players……….

Related articles

• This June’s Rio+20 Earth Summit in Brazil Is an Olympic Challenge the U.S. Can’t Ignore (switchboard.nrdc.org)
• NEWS | The State Of The Planet Declaration (PUP) : “A new contract between science and society” (jpinfluence.com)
• State of the planet (eurekalert.org)
• Rio Summit: Scientists warn of ‘humanitarian emergency on global scale’ (vancouversun.com)
• Scientists warn of “emergency on global scale”..the alarmists want to scare you silly (seeker401.wordpress.com)

Australia’s chief scientist, Professor Penny Sackett, tells Lateline we need to look at a broad suite of technological and scientific solutions to secure supplies of food, energy and water for the future. Read transcript and watch video.