This is a great question, it shows that you are thinking about your impact on the environment and how we might change our habits to help support nature.

Becoming self sufficient is a powerful way that we can have a direct impact on climate change. But first, let’s consider what self sufficiency looks like in a home.

Energy

Creating our own energy through solar panels is a great way to be self sufficient. Just one house using solar panels is equal to taking away the greenhouse gas emissions of three cars in one year. The more of us that have solar panels, the greater the emissions savings over time.

Creating your own energy is also a good idea so that big energy companies do not control the price of electricity and have less money to pollute the planet. We can hold the power, literally!

Water

Rainwater tanks are an awesome way to rely on yourself and reduce your water needs. Most households can reduce their water use by around 21% by having a water tank. These savings are super important particularly in Australia, as we are often faced with drought which will worsen as the climate keeps changing.

Food

Growing your own food is not only fun (and delicious), but has a great impact on the environment. Growing crops like vegetables and herbs at home means that we are supporting healthy soils that can store more carbon. Plants are also brilliant carbon sinks, as they breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen.

Another great impact of growing your own food is keeping our food local. A lot of the foods we buy at the supermarket travels a long way to get to our homes, which means that we are using a lot of energy, fuel and resources carting food around. Local and fresh is always best!

Waste

Here we get to my favourite part, talking rubbish! Managing our waste at home is a very impactful way to be more self sufficient and help the environment. We can help by using a compost bin or worm farm for our food waste.

The food we throw in the rubbish bin is sent to a landfill, where it releases a greenhouse gas called methane as it breaks down in an unhealthy way. Methane is much more powerful than carbon dioxide, and so has a strong negative impact on climate change. When we compost our food scraps at home, it breaks down in a natural ecosystem and does not produce methane. Once our food scraps are composted, we are left with fantastic living compost to put back into our soils.

Stuff

An important way to become more self sufficient is learning to manage all of our stuff! This could be clothes, shoes, toys, games, electronics, just about anything you can think of in your home. Many of the things that we buy not only cost us money, but cost the environment, as it takes a lot of energy and natural resources to make products. For example, it takes around 2,700 litres of water to make just one cotton t-shirt!

You can become more self sufficient with your stuff by using some of the ‘R’ strategies: Reducing the amount of things we buy, Reusing our things as much as we can, Repairing broken things, and Recycling what we can no longer use.

So, going back to your question, if everyone became self sufficient, this would lead to a large collective impact on reducing our carbon emissions. Self sufficiency can also help us to save money, learn from and help those in our community, and get creative about how we live our lives.

Although we need government and big businesses doing their job to significantly reduce their impact on the climate, making changes at home and at school is something that we can and should all be doing, to learn to live more sustainably and take care of our amazing planet Earth.

Great question! Greta Thunberg started learning about climate change at school when she was just eight years old and her class watched documentaries about climate change. What she learnt stuck with her, and she became worried about the future and frustrated that people in power were not doing enough about it. When she was very young, she started making more sustainable choices in her life, including not eating meat or travelling by airplane.  

Greta has Asperger's syndrome, which is a condition on the autism spectrum, and she now talks about it as her superpower as a climate activist. From a very young age, she had a strong sense of what was right and wrong, and knew that if we were going to save the planet, humans have to act now.  

It was this sense of right and wrong about the environment, and her anger at world leaders ignoring the climate crisis, that led her to start protesting, starting with the Swedish government. In August 2018, when she was 15 years old, she didn't go to school and sat down outside the Swedish Parliament with a sign that read 'School Strike for Climate' and some information about climate change. She posted about her strike on social media, and slowly but surely, people came to join her in Sweden, and then around the world.  

Greta now is a fierce climate activist and continues to fight for climate action and climate justice. One of the best things about her story is that she did not start out trying to become famous or start a worldwide movement, but instead she chose something that she could do in her own life. Just by taking a small action, she inspired other people to take action too. Anybody can be a Greta, just start small and stick with it! 

This is a fantastic question, because it shows that you're thinking about fairness and justice when it comes to climate change! 

Climate change affects each country, city and family differently, and some places and communities unfortunately will be hit harder than others. A way to start thinking about this is by thinking about how different people were affected by Covid-19. Although we were all facing the same problem, some countries with good healthcare services and money were more prepared to deal with it, but some other countries that struggled with poverty and poor living conditions suffered with more people getting sick.  

With that in mind, when we look at all the countries in the world, some are at higher risk because their land is close to the sea level, including Bangladesh and Kiribati, and they may lose land and homes to sea level rise. Other countries, like Haiti and the Philippines, are more at risk because they already experience a lot of natural disasters like hurricanes and floods, which will become more common as climate change impacts are more unpredictable and severe. Finally, countries that suffer from poverty and war, including Yemen and Afghanistan, are at risk as their governments cannot help their people adapt to climate change, or access basic needs such as food and water.  

At home in Australia, climate change can have worse effects on communities that suffer from health issues, such as older people, as higher temperatures can cause health issues. Some rural places already commonly experience natural disasters like bushfires and floods, and will face them more often into the future. Aboriginal people are also at a higher risk from climate change, as they experience more common climate-related health issues and have less access to financial and social support.  

Although a lot of this can sound stressful, I hope that you do not lose hope, but instead know that it is so important that we not only look after ourselves, but other people in our communities that may be struggling. Climate change will impact us all in the future, and the way we can fight it is by supporting each other, and doing all we can to protect people and the planet.