Your Planet, Your Choice

On Monday August 29 2005, Hurricane Katrina smashed into America's Gulf coast. Winds blowing faster than 140 miles an hour tore through the streets of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, leaving destruction in their wake. Within hours more than 80 per cent of the low-lying city of New Orleans was submerged.
Survivors clung to the roofs of buildings as cars were flung across the streets like toys, while rescuers below had to push the floating bodies away from them as they searched. President Bush was on holiday in Texas at the time, but returned in order to co-ordinate the relief effort. He toured the region to see the devastation caused, travelling - as always - by helicopter and private jet.
These two events may seem relatively independent. But the terrifying truth is that, if we continue our current trend of disregarding our planet's trouble and contributing towards climate change - just as Bush in his jet was doing unawares - horrific disasters like Hurricane Katrina are going to become ever more commonplace.
Whenever we burn fossil fuels, as we do without thinking in our day-to-day car journeys, we release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere - and since the year 1900, the amount we have produced has increased by 600 per cent.

Along with other gases emitted by humans in various ways, these have formed a 'blanket' around the earth and produced a result commonly known as the 'greenhouse effect'; that is, the gases act rather like the glass of a greenhouse in that much less heat escapes them than is let in. Slowly but surely, the planet is heating up. Without our greenhouse blanket, the earth's temperature would drop by a massive 33�C.
Hurricanes and other tropical storms, meanwhile, are directly influenced by this climate change. They are formed by moisture evaporating from the surface of the sea; as it evaporates, it rises until enormous amounts of heated moist air are twisted high in the atmosphere.

The hotter the air, the more moisture evaporates - and the more moisture, the stronger and more devastating the hurricane. In the last 35 years, as our use of fossil fuels has continued to rise, the frequency of powerful tropical storms like hurricanes has increased by a staggering 80 per cent.
So what can we do? What is "our bit" - the crucial step we can take towards trying to prevent rising levels of such destruction in the future? The answer is a simple one: reduce our carbon emissions, as much as we can. And one of the easiest ways to start doing this is by leaving the car in the garage and using public transport instead.
Many people's perception of public transport is of an expensive, time-consuming, uncomfortable journey fraught with hassle - this, now, is completely outdated. Many bus services now operate with one vehicle every ten minutes or better, and numerous student passes are available for all modes of public transport. It needn't be a lengthy process either: for example, the train journey from Bolton to Manchester Victoria for a spot of shopping in the Arndale takes just 22 minutes.

Even using the AA's up-to-the-minute route planner, that same journey still takes 30 minutes in a car - and that's not accounting for traffic jams or finding a parking spot. So when you make the decision to step onto a bus rather than into a car, you are preserving the world for yourself, your friends and future generations to come.

Forget the hairy armpits, tofu and sandals in winter: the green lifestyle is often far more easy and convenient than being wasteful. It really is as easy as 123 - that is, if that's your local bus number?

Author: Kirsty Upham

Bolton iJourno group