I live in a modest house in a small place, in a secure country and it’s beautiful.  I am therefore privileged; privileged in a first world way that sometimes concerns me.  Why should I be so lucky?  But I am and, as a consequence, I know gratitude.

I am also convinced that change is coming.  For the best part of a century, we have lived lifestyles based on fossil fuels – coal, carbon, oil and their byproducts.  I believe the many scientists, who tell us over and over again, that we are warming the planet and, if that warming continues, catastrophe will be upon us.

I am trying to understand what I need to do, and the extent of that action, to not add to emissions to the atmosphere.  I like my lifestyle but I doubt that it is sustainable.  If everyone lives as I do, then our lifestyles will be over sooner rather than later.  This blog is about my personal journey of reducing emissions to a sustainable level and sharing what that life looks like.

I have very little formal training in this area.  In the 1980’s I built, what I thought at the time, was a sustainable house; in the late noughties I qualified as a ‘Home Sustainability Assessor’; and, more recently I have completed part of a course on building design, including two units on sustainability.  I have never used any of this training for paid employment but I do think about what I have learnt and apply it domestically.