Little Things for Climate Change

Little thing could change something? Maybe that could be a joke someone say to us. But if it’s not real, there won’t be a somewhat theory called Butterfly Effect.

At This Time of Day, every day it feels like a hot day. If lucky we maybe can get a cloudy day or even a rainy day. But without luck, the mainstream way to go to fight this heat is by turning on the air conditioner, which needs much power for cooling down every inch of the building. And then, where that power comes from? Of course, to burn more fossil fuel and letting more CO² heat up the day.

This simple cycle has been happening in the long day, but it still hard to end. We always do something to fix the temporary problem we face and letting the real problem coming into us later because we can’t see what will come to us anytime soon without any bigger sign of effect into our life.

But we know we trying or at least someone trying for us. They try to make renewable power become better future, Planting trees as many as they could, Making rules for keeping nature from any damage, Filtering any trash and recycle it at the best, and much more thing for the stability of Climate Change.

But first, what is Climate Change? It’s not just about making day hotter, but it also about melting ice in the pole, change the pattern of rainfall, change the chemistry in the ocean, unstable season, unstable cold and hot climate temperature, and even chaotic drought and flood on the ground. If this happens in the long run, Not just animals, we will suffer from extinction too because of uninhabitable earth.

So what we can do? For the first glance, let’s see some examples.

Let’s take trash as an example:

As thestreet.com says, Indonesia is the 11 bigger plastic waste producer with 5.05 million tons of plastic waste generation per year, which based on data from ourworldindata.com in 2010.

With 10.1% of global mismanaged waste, which not surprise.

Even on indopos.co.id, Indonesia Ministry of Environment and Forestry publish data that say in 2019, Indonesia already produces an average of 64 million tons of waste generation per year.

But here the problem, while we on the top twenty of the best Plastic Waste Generation Counties and our neighbor Malaysia is only in place 28 and Singapore didn’t even be detected.
From a person, their people make more plastic waste than Indonesian people.

But why? Easy answer.

Quantity will always make everything overwhelming

From worldometers.info, we know Indonesia has 270 million inhabitants and equivalent to 3.51% of the total world population, which makes us number 4 in the list of countries by population. The hard number for developing the country if you ask me.

Because Indonesia still a developing country, our waste management system needs more time of adjustment to can handle this much population.

Surely you wouldn’t realize how many 0.06 kg plastic waste from 270 million people, it’s like 16,2 kg plastic waste per day. And for everyday government must handle 16,2 kg plastic waste which spread in almost every site of Indonesia, that would be such a pain.

And this cycle goes way around, again and again, every day while the government may be only can handle 75% of our waste, that bad news.

So why not starting from self? why not try to manage our waste ourselves? we can manage the waste that we have by trying to reuse the plastic waste and/or recycle it. When we couldn’t do that then throw it in the place where it belongs, the place where the government can handle them up easily. It would take a lot of time, wouldn’t it?

But not just that, that just one example from things could make Climate Change worst. There still more things like the Greenhouse effect, Carbon emission, Ocean pollution, Overpopulation, Deforestation, and Forest Degradation, and many more.

But the thing is, the way to save the world from Climate Change is by change our way of life. Our way of life makes the way the world is. The better we do, the better the world can be.

And that can happen with little thing of actions like:

Use plastic product wisely and responsibly and also throw it away in the right place

The cheap, simple, easy use, and versatile material. So cheap, that we may throw it away without feeling any guilt and regret on our decision.

As data from storage.neic.org, majorly plastic is made up using oil that would need up to 1000 years to decompose. For plastic bags we use at groceries, it needs 10–20 years, while plastic bottles can take 450 years. So if plastic threw away to someplace, it would be staying there and contaminate that place until something takes it away.

So the awareness of the place we throw away our waste is important. Didn’t you want to live in a healthy environment without any waste contamination near you? If yes, do the best you could do for any plastic waste you make and use plastic wisely because…

The cleaner our life, the healthier our world be

Like in Indonesia, there a movement called “Gerakan Indonesia Diet Kantong Plastik” which is a national organization with the mission to encourage people to be wiser in using plastic bags, not by willfully ban for plastic but by teaching people about the negative impact of plastic on the environment and people if not use more wisely.

Use electricity wisely and responsibly

In today’s life, it’s almost impossible to live without electricity. It was an important discovery after the fire in human history.

But this power comes with a cost, we need to use fossil fuels (for now) to give everyone in this county electricity to enjoy. But in another way, fossil fuels are not renewable and could be a pressing issue 50–100 years from now according to ourworldindata.org.

And what happens if they are gone?

Before this happens, we could say the government trying to push out renewable power sources. Like Indonesia with the movement called GNSSA (Gerakan Nasional Sejuta Surya Atap) who try to push the usage of Solar Power Plant System at home, office, government, and much more. But it’s still too expensive for many people in Indonesia.

So how we handle this problem if we can’t use renewable power?

The best way is by using electricity wisely and responsibly. Control how much you using electricity in a day, but somehow we can’t know how much power we use. So in Indonesia, there was an electricity payment system by prepaid named “Listrik Pintar”. This system will give us a clue more easily for how much exactly we spend electricity in a day just by looking at the electric meter indicator every day and calculate different meter values every day. We even can see how much money we spend every day on electricity with this system.

Cause of that, we can be more aware of our electricity usage and can easily control electricity usage as effective as possible, which can make less demand for electricity and…

The less demand we ask, the less fossil fuel we burn

In another way, even our device has been adjusted for this problem and become as efficient as possible at using electricity.

If the USA has a program called Energy Star to promote energy efficiency and regulate energy efficiency standard, while Indonesia has SKEM (Standar Kinerja Energi Minimum). They use the same way to promoting energy efficiency which is by giving a sticker for efficient electronic devices according to the standards in their respective countries. By this, we can use it as a reference for buying the greenest electronic devices.

So by using electric-only when needed and using electronic devices with energy-efficient standards, we could help to slow climate change. So don’t forget to turn off the lamps you didn’t need today.

Use more effective transportation

Carbon emissions always close with the vehicle, because the most visible carbon emissions in our life are from vehicle exhaust.

But how we can cut that? Easy! Use your feet.

No, no, no! of course not that easy. This could be a very hard topic because when we talk about transportation, we need to think about needs, time, convenience, facilities, city structure, transportation space, and even transportation carry capacity.

Not everyone can use public transportation because of the previous point. But maybe the best option if want to using private transportation, get the most fuel-efficient engine vehicle. Another way, use private transportation when needed and prioritizing using public transportation.

With this, we can reduce fuel use and eliminate road congestion which even carbon emissions even more and…

The less carbon emissions we make, the less problem we breathe

Because of this problem, the government trying to promote an event on 22 September called World Car Free Day, which encourages motorists to give up their cars for a day. Even many cities in Indonesia make every Sunday become weekly Car Free Day in specific places only to promote this carbon emission cut movement.

Don’t harm the tree

Trees are a hero of earth. They help stabilize the soil, give oxygen, store carbon, food, stabilize the water flow, and give the shelter for everyone. Because of this…

The tree has right!!!

In this era, Many countries have been established rules for the cut-down of the tree. You can’t do what you want to any tree you didn’t plant without government consent. And if you still do that, the government can give you a penalty and even jail time.

That not surprising because it takes a long time to grow trees become mature. It would take 20–30 years for the slow grower or 10–15 years for the faster one according to bhg.com. So it’s better to get government permission first if you need to cut down the tree.

And this rule already takes casualties. Even there is the dedicate community for this problem in Reddit, which is r/treelaw.

Keep ocean clean

The ocean is the lungs of the earth. As earthjournalism.net says, Oceans produce between 50 and 80% of oxygen and consume more than 25% of carbon dioxide (CO2) of the planet. Not just that, Ocean is the largest and most important ecosystem. There are so many living things inside the ocean which we never even know existed.

And what if we destroy it?

That would be bad news for all of us. But the fact there were already estimated that there were approximately 269,000 tonnes of plastic in surface waters across the world in 2014 by data from ourworldindata.org.

So what we could do?

The answer would be the same as before…

Dispose it at the where it should be

We must more wisely where we leave our trash. And if we didn’t care about this, there would be a problem. Not just for the ocean ecosystem, but for our health too.

And because of that, Indonesia already trying to clean the ocean in 18 Agustus 2019 by a movement called “Gerakan Menghadap Laut 2.0” which is the movement to clean the coast from the trash at 74 points in Indonesia.

But after that, everything is in our hands. Even if the ocean already clean, if we still throw away trash into the ocean, lake, river, and even sewer. Volunteer’s efforts will be in vain and will make us closer to uninhabitable earth.

Share this awareness

Like I said before, there were 270 million people in Indonesia in 2019 and 7,7 billion people in the world. So what if just you do this Green life and the 7,7 billion minuses one people don’t… That would be worthless.

Even if we have a good quality of Green life, the good quantity will make it better. Much-much better. More people do Green life, better the benefit in the long run.

By trying to share this awareness, we can look for every person in touch about how Climate Change can change our life. If they realize this problem, they will try to live a Green life and share this awareness too. Which makes a chain that could reach every single person in the world and…

As social beings, socializing is the best way to promote Climate Change

Well, that just an old trick old man says to me, but it can make the job done. If 270 million people do it in this case. That why we need to share this awareness with everyone in touch. So if you could, please share this awareness and this article as a reference for the better future.

Just do little things over, over, and over again. And bigger things will come onto us without even we realize.

Do the best and Stay Green.