“Global Warming” has been called everything, from “the greatest hoax perpetuated on mankind”, to “the greatest challenge to face mankind”. Whilst I'm not here to debate on this subject, my primary goal is to make you aware of the simple things we can do, that will go a long way to help curb this problem.

We've heard that “charity begins at home”. This sentence means that we should first ensure that at least our nearest family has sufficient resources before we give away to charity. It's the same with global warming. Unless we all individually do something about this, there is no point in blaming how careless people are towards this growing problem. You need to start taking the necessary steps first, before advocating and attacking others.

First of all, we need to understand what global warming really is and why it is happening. Global warming is the increase in temperature of the layer of air covering the earth. Increase in CO2 (carbon dioxide) is the primary cause of global warming. So if we can minimize or eliminate this emission as much as possible, we can possibly curb this to some extent. I have listed a few things below which will help you contribute to this issue. We will start with cars and traveling.

1. Tune up and maintain your car regularly; this increases fuel efficiency by 5-7%.

2. Always keep your tires properly inflated. This improves fuel efficiency by 3-4%.

3. For a change, especially when you're planning to go somewhere nearby, walk down or ride a bike. This helps in 2 ways – it reduces carbon emission and secondly, it's also good for your health. I'm not even considering the savings on fuel and parking!

4. Always try to get the most bang from a car trip by combining errands, meetings, shopping sprees, outings, dropping children to school, traveling to work, etc.

5. Carpool to work if you can. Same goes for dropping children to school – create a group of neighboring children in the same school and have a fixed day of commuting responsibility for each of the group.

6. Use public transport as much as you can. Try to avoid your car at least one day of the week, when you go to work.

7. Try to drive more evenly, with less sudden brakes or hard accelerations. Also maintain your speed at the recommended fuel efficient speed.

Other things you can do at home:

1. Reduce / eliminate meat and switch over to more organic and vegetarian food, which requires less energy to produce.

2. Use strong cloth bags for shopping and not plastic or paper. The latter not only lasts less uses, but are more prone to getting suddenly torn and resulting in a lot of inconvenience and possible damage.

3. Don't use a dryer to dry clothes unless it is urgent. Use the old fashioned way of drying them in natural air.

4. If you're in cold countries, lower the thermostat of your heating system by a few degrees where the cold is bearable. Better still; wear some good sweaters so you don't need a lot of artificial warming.

5. If you're in hot countries, choose an energy efficient air conditioner. Increase the thermostat by a few degrees where you don't feel the heat. Wear cotton clothes so you don't need a lot of cooling. A quick 2 minute shower can also instantly cool you down.

6. Insulate your water heater as well as the walls and ceilings of your home.

7. Replace your most frequently used incandescent light bulbs with fluorescent ones.

8. If your refrigerator is over 10 years old, its time to replace it. The new ones currently available are a lot more energy efficient. Similarly, washing machines are also available in energy efficient models.

9. Don't use your washing machine or dish washer unless you have enough load. This will reduce the frequency of use and save energy.

10. Stop using screen savers in your computer, they do not save energy. Instead, switch off the monitor and / or set the power settings to switch it off after a predetermined period of inactivity. If you cannot shut down the computer regularly, keep it on sleep or standby mode whenever you're not using it.

11. Try to make your children understand the global warming problem and encourage them to switch off lights and fans when not in use. Reward them with little gifts when they do this regularly. Also encourage them not to burst crackers. Give them the money instead and let them save it separately, and then show them what wonderful things they can buy, instead of the money going up in smoke!

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