Just in case anyone has had their head in the sand for the first 5 months of this year I just wanted to confirm officially: things are getting tighter financially, and it’s going to get worse. At any rate, that’s my reading of what I see going on around me in the UK. Mortgages (if you can get one) are going up, petrol is going up as are other fuel bills, food is going up, house values are going down…

So what should we do about it? Well we can do the classic thing and moan a lot and wait to be helped by the government, or we can look at our lives and see how we can ’slim down’ our expenses, cutting out the unnecessary costs in order to leave us more to spend on the things we can’t do without.

There have been several articles in the papers recently wondering whether a recession will cause businesses and consumers to give up on their efforts to cut their CO2 emissions as there are more important things to worry about. I think that this is a complete contradiction in terms for both businesses and consumers. Reducing your CO2 emissions will always save you money, and in some cases it will cost you nothing or next to nothing.

Above all, there are all the obvious things you can do, many of which are covered in my Reduce Your CO2 Tips of the Day. Most of these apply to offices and to homes and nowadays it’s often offices who are the main culprits, committing such sins as leaving monitors, printers and even lights on all night. Businesses also have an advantage in that, if you own your offices, investing in solar or wind power will have an immediate effect on overheads whilst being considered an investment that adds value to the company. At home, it’s simply a matter of changing your behaviour, for instance by doing the round of all the sockets every night to switch them off, or not day dreaming in the shower!

Many of us know about these relatively simple actions, and to me they should not be presented so much as something we HAVE to do because the world is in danger (although this may be true). First and foremost, they are common sense. Why waste money? Why spend more money heating your house than is necessary? If there’s one thing that winds me up, it’s the comments of global warming naysayers about conusuming for all their worth, because they can, and because it won’t have any effect anyway. Let’s put aside the effect bit, and simply look at what they are proposing: let’s spend as much money as possible where we don’t need to, just because we can.

Ok, enough ranting. Reducing CO2 emissions is about becoming more efficient, and in many cases with little or no effort. Right now this is what everyone needs to know, and it’s what I’m saying to anyone who will listen. What would be really good, would be if governments tried out the same message. Let’s stop talking about more or less green taxes and where they go. Let’s cut down on the doom and gloom, which causes huge divides of opinion, apathy in some, and panic in others. Let’s just concentrate on using our common sense and sitting back to enjoy the fact that by saving money on our energy bills we have stopped the credit crunch from affecting us.

 Oh, and we’ve reduced our CO2 emissions in the process….