UN tells how to do it

Are you ready to clean up your environmental act?

"Kick the Habit, a UN Guide to Climate Neutrality" can show you how.

And what exactly is climate neutrality? It is the ambitious goal of producing no net greenhouse gas emissions. First, you reduce your emissions as much as possible and then you purchase carbon offsets to neutralize the rest. It's called climate neutral rather than carbon neutral because other gases are involved, although carbon dioxide is the big culprit at almost 80 percent of greenhouse gases.

Amy Fraenkel, director of the regional office for North America of the United Nations Environment Programme, released the international report at a recent forum on climate change at the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe. The UN organization shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore.

The book rates Web sites where individuals, companies and institutions can estimate their carbon footprint and ones where they can purchase offsets.

Purchasing carbon offsets means contributing toward something that helps with climate control, such as renewable energy projects, transportation and reforestation.

Companies and not-for-profits that sell these charge from $5 to $40 per tonne of carbon dioxide alleviated. A tonne is a unit of measure that is just a little more than a standard ton.

The book encourages people to take small steps toward cutting carbon emissions, such as replacing incandescent light bulbs with fluorescent ones and turning off computers and peripherals when they are not used.

Leaving appliances on standby might be causing 1 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, similar to what the aviation industry emits, estimates the International Energy Agency.

Individuals have control over their own carbon footprints - how they travel, their homes and what they eat, for example. Other things such as what goes on at their workplaces might be harder to change.

While the 200-page small-format book is a little difficult to wade through because it's international in scope and deals with everything from individuals to companies and cities to countries, it does have interesting examples.

Growing corn and vegetables produces almost no carbon dioxide. Chicken is the most innocent meat from an emissions standpoint, with fish creating about twice as much carbon dioxide and grain-fed beef twice as much as fish. Lamb and shrimp are the worst.

On the bright side, The Hague in the Netherlands uses seawater to heat houses.

The book reports on issues such as ethanol and nuclear energy.

Chicago

Going green can create new jobs, said Suzanne Malec-McKenna, commissioner of Chicago's Department of Environment.

The city's goal is to reduce greenhouse emissions by 25 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050, compared with 1990 rates, she said.

Besides working for cleaner and renewable energy, the city must prepare for the weather changes that global warming will bring, said Malec-McKenna.

These include more days when the temperature is above 100 degrees and spikes of 117 degrees. This will cause more respiratory illnesses and maybe more fires.

Developing countries

Seventy percent to 75 percent of the world's residents live in slums and poor villages, said Ashok Khosla, a former academic and director of the UN Environment Programme and founder of an organization dedicated to environmentally sound development.

More than 1 billion people do not have clean drinking water within one mile of where they live. In fact, hundreds of millions of women walk hours every day to get water. And they spend more hours collecting cooking fuel.

Burning that fuel leads to 1.5 million women and children dying each year prematurely from indoor air pollution, Khosla said.

One thing these very poor people have is television. That means they realize how other people live, and they aspire to those lifestyles.

To provide livelihoods for all and environmental health for the world, people in developed countries must cut down on their use of the world's resources while others improve their lot, Khosla said.

- Deborah Donovan