Who is to Blame for Global Warming - Industry or Households?
At the moment there is confusion about what role we have al played in the global warming story. Many householders think industry is to blame for environmental problems. They don’t differentiate between big industry and smaller businesses. Many small businesses think like many householders do, that “my bit won’t make much difference”. They all forget the cumulative effect. Most businesses, like most individual people don’t deliberately cause environmental damage but they don’t know and they don’t understand. There are some who don’t care. We all need to be aware of how individual actions can affect the cumulative impacts.
Figures from Victoria’s Greenhouse Office show the following breakdown of greenhouse gas emissions on a sectoral basis
• 55% from energy industries
• 17% from transport
• 14% from agriculture
• 2% from industrial processes
• 2% from waste management
And on an ‘end-use’ basis the emissions were:
• 32% from manufacturing
• 22% from residential
• 20% from transport
• 15% from commercial
Further information from the Victorian Greenhouse Office released in 2005, is that increasing temperatures around the world will have the following impacts in Australia and this can be translated roughly to cover much of southern Australia. We can expect to have more hot days (over 35º), fewer frosts with possible frost-free conditions, less rainfall, particularly in winter and spring, experience more intense extreme rainfall events, increased evaporation rates, greater bushfire risk and experience a sea level rise of between 7 and 55 cm
Individual operations need to manage their own effects. This needs to involve all sectors and start with both cross industry dialogue and some leaders from each sector to demonstrate that it is not all too hard. The commercial sector needs to come on board also. There is often a public perception that manufacturing, aquaculture and boating are the sectors that harm the environment. I have heard of commercial business owners’ who state that they don’t have a greenhouse impact. And they run an office, computers, cars ETC!
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