A sensible choice of a common,

Stern (2006) suggest even if emission peaks in decade or after; the impact on global warming will be large; with effect associated with water like drought, flood etc. The paper argues climate change externalities are public with no incentive to agent who cause it and underdeveloped countries are predicted to suffer more than one with good economy to adapt it. Communicating the Stern(2006) view, The Guardian mentions "Climate change is the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen." The paper recommends three policy actions; a) carbon pricing, b) technology policy and c) energy efficiency and suggest that early effective action will outweigh the cost. Nordhaus (2007)  reviews the Stern(2006) and mention global warming is a problem which doesn't differentiate state boundaries and might result in loss of 5%, conservative estimate and upto 20%, wider consideration, in GDP. Looking at the estimates and recommended action it feels that many issues are related to economic activities we are performing. Thus, In this post, I will  suggest how a sensible choice of an individual or household can help climate change mitigation and making "A World" a better place than before.

US EPA presents the GHG emission by economic sector (Figure 1). Which simply suggest everybody have something to do.

Figure 1; showing economic sector wide GHG emission (from US EPA)

If we carefull think all these sector are related to us in many different ways. Industry emitting 21% of GHG produces utilities and goods for us, building which we live or work in contribute 6% of GHG, and electricity and heating we use account 25% of GHG emission. There can be two pathways for intensification a) increased user, b) increase per capita use. In both of these pathways there are many choices for us, and sensible choice helps.

US EPA, what can you do at home suggest that replacing light bulb with efficient one can save 75% of energy; similarly heating and cooling smartly, using energy efficient product and reducing, reusing and recycling the used goods will not only save huge amount of GHG but also reduces the money out of wallet. Likewise at road we can choose to reduce GHG emission by driving smartly, regular maintenance and use public transportation.

Figure 2: Showing major household emission contributor From US EPA

  Riahi,(2007) discuss about the possibility of climate friendly product and climate change mitigation.  The author explain how climate change mitigation will help change in technologies, make them efficient and reduce in the energy intensities (Figure 3). The paper describes the economic effect on energy sector will not be uniform. Coal will suffer and renewable energy will boom, making modest effect in the sector. 

Figure 3 reduction of emission by different sector in different scenario (see: Riahi,(2007) for detail)

From the above discussion it is clear that a sensible choice of behaviour change and adopting climate friendly goods/product can mitigate climate change. Even a new emission or energy efficient technology or climate friendly products fails if we fail to adopt them and helps faster we can afford them. If we all serve as early adopter (figure 4) to climate friendly good, emission reduction target can be reached sooner avoiding harms.

Figure 4; early adoption matters (from: en.wikipedia.org)

 Thus, In my thought, based on above mentioned detail, a sensible choice is to adopt, consume, behave and engage ourself in environment friendly ways to make a earth better place to live with climate friendly economics.