• Home
• News
• Sport
• Entertainment
• Comment
• Property
• Property News
• Commercial Property

• Jobs
• Motors
• Motoring
• Family Notices
• Dating
• Free Ads
• Archive Search
• Local Directory
• Business Bid

• Horoscopes
• Competitions
• TV Guide
• Vouchers
• Charities
• Local Links
• Buy Photos

Lorely's life column

NEVER in our history have we been so concerned about the effects of our activities on the future wellbeing of our planet.  Some people have written to me to say this is nonsense and that climate change is inevitable and nothing to do with thus. 
At the risk of prompting further letters I have to say that this flies in the face of the vast bulk of scientific evidence, and most scientists now agree that unless urgent action is taken now we won’t have a sustainable planet to leave to future generations.
And to those who say Britain is responsible for only 2% of the world’s carbon emissions (the implication being we’re so small why should we bother?) I say unless we show the world we take climate change seriously, why should the worst perpetrators modify their behaviour either?
A couple came to see me in surgery a while back wanting advice on constructing a wind turbine on their house.   Turbines really only work where there’s regular wind, and on a housing estate a large investment may only generate enough electricity to run a light bulb.
There are much more effective (and cheaper) ways of reducing our carbon footprint.  Homes produce 28% of the country’s carbon output, so we can all start there. The three most effective ways are insulation, insulation, insulation.  Draft excluders, roof fibreglass and insulating matting and double glazing are the most effective – not to mention personal insulation like putting a woolly on when you feel chilly instead of turning the heating up!
Another really excellent and relatively cheap idea is to have temperature control valves on each radiator.  Rooms can then be heated when they are used, rather than heating the whole house all the time.
Then there’s good water management.  A bath takes about 10 gallons of water: a shower about a fifth as much.  A ‘sensible’ sized shower head can cut water use by half again.
If you’re having a new boiler make sure it’s a condensing boiler, which is about 20% more efficient than an ordinary boiler.  Smaller family homes can have a combi-boiler which only heats the water you need at the time you need it, making even greater savings.
When you’ve done all that, you can then get onto the sophisticated stuff.  Solar heating, professionally installed, will cost about £3,000 but you’ll have no summer heating costs and greatly reduced winter ones (solar panels also work on ‘grey’ days as well as sunny ones!)
Then coming along the track we have micro generation, ground source heating, rainwater harvesting, re-using ‘grey’ water for toilets and so on. 
In 25 years time all these will become commonplace, and homes will be built so that they not only can generate their own heat but feed surplus back into the national grid as well.  This is all perfectly possible today, and is already being done in other countries.  All we need is the political will to make it happen.

Lorely Burt MP
Solihull

• | More
• «Back
• «Home
• Contact the Editor about this story

• 

  MP Lorley Burt opens a new pre-school room at Active Angels Day Nursey in Shirley. (s)