Last night I spoke to the Athelstone (SA) Kiwanis group about the One Person Can project, and by way of a demonstration I asked for three volunteers to look around the room and tell me how many people they could see who, to their knowledge, took a particular climate-friendly action. I asked one to report how many people they could see who turn off unnecessary lights, another to say how many people take short showers, and the third to say how many people buy Green Power.
All responded by saying they couldn't see anyone who they knew took those actions. I then asked for a show of hands. Almost everyone in the room said they turn off unneccesary lights, about 3/4 claimed to take short showers, and I didn't ask for a show of hands on buying Green Power, but several put up their hands anyway. And this from people who talk to each other on a regular basis!
Don't get me wrong, they're a great bunch of people - I'm certainly not thinking they should have known about each others' climate-friendly actions. The demonstration just underlined the fact that we really don't know how many people are already taking actions that reduce GHG emissions. We might assume that most people don't bother. Perhaps we should start assuming that most people do!
Wouldn't it be sad if half the population of Australia (or more!) were taking actions that reduce their GHG emissions, and the other half were doing nothing simply because they mistakenly think nobody else is doing anything.
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