Resolve to Shrink your Carbon Footprint
What is the best way to fight climate change? Which lifestyle changes can make a real impact? An opinion piece in The New York Times asked this question, and offered a quiz to help readers measure their knowledge.

The answers are somewhat surprising. Research shows that we often focus on— and take comfort in— changing habits that have minimal impact.

The four most impactful changes we can make are avoiding airline flight, eating a vegan diet, living car free, and using renewable energy.
Eating an organic, vegetarian diet and installing heat pumps are a good start, but only moderately effective.

We need to do everything we can to mitigate the climate crisis, but simply buying fewer things, lowering the room temperature, using energy efficient appliances, carpooling and recycling are of lesser impact.

Further, the author, Sander van der Linden, a professor of psychology at University of Cambridge points out that the public perception about the efficacy of recycling was the result of a misinformation campaign by plastic manufacturers, who promoted recycling, though most of the plastics cannot be re-used, and have overrun our landfills and oceans.

Similarly, there seems to be a misperception that electric cars are pricey. In actuality, they can be cheaper to own, and tax credit incentives reduce their cost further.

Most importantly, as citizens it is essential that we hold businesses and our government accountable, dispel myths about what actions are and are not effective, and commit to changing our lifestyle— curtailing air travel, purchasing clean energy and eating a plant based diet.
Here is the full list the best ways to reduce emissions, ordered by effectiveness:

Here is the link to the original article for those of you with access to the NY Times.