Get on your bike to save the planet

SAVING the planet shouldn’t be any big deal.

Forget about all those scientific terms and lingo about ‘carbon footprints’ and ‘sustainability’ for a moment. For when you look at it in the most fundamental way, the future of the planet essentially depends on how we live our daily lives. Not that that’s always easy.

Are we going to walk, or cycle, a lot more often rather than drive; are we going to save diminishing oil supplies by cutting down on home heating and are we going to get really serious about recycling? We could also do things that don’t cause any pain – like leaving the environment alone. However, as was recently referred to in an editorial in this newspaper, we Irish have a destructive urge, as is evidenced by the wholesale abuse of landscape during the so-called Celtic Tiger era.