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Welcome back Young Climate Warriors!
Are you ready after the summer holidays for your next climate-change-busting challenge?
Were you inspired by 99-year-old Captain Tom Moore, who walked 100 laps of his garden and raised over £32 million for the NHS earlier this year?
Captain Tom walked 2½ km in 100 laps. How many metres or kilometres is your journey to school, the park, your friend’s house, or the shops? Take a guess! Can you ask your parent or carer to check on a map or phone – were you right? Nearly right? Or super wrong?? How many times do you think you could walk that distance this week, instead of driving – help fight climate change and give your car a break. Challenge yourself with a personal walking target this week - walk 1km, 2.5km like Captain Tom? 5km? Or even 10km? It doesn’t have to be all in one go, it could be lots of short journeys that you might normally be tempted to use the car for – just like Captain Tom’s laps around the garden. As a Tanzanian proverb has it, ‘little by little, a lot becomes a lot.’
By using the car less and walking, scooting or cycling more, you’ll be tackling climate change AND keeping fit and having fun! Don’t forget to HIT THE RED BUTTON when you’ve completed this challenge.
Transport is the biggest cause of climate change in the UK today. In 2016 it overtook energy production and now accounts for 28% of emissions. Cars burn fossil fuels – petrol and diesel – and give off exhaust gases, including carbon dioxide and black carbon, which cause climate change. New cars are becoming less polluting and the number of electric cars is growing - all great news! But, unfortunately, we seem to be using our cars more and more each year, so the emissions are still going up. Can you try to use your legs more and your car less??
It’s not just cars: the number of vans on our roads has DOUBLED since 1990, partly because we are all shopping more online. Maybe you can clock up some extra kilometres by shopping locally - on foot! - instead of using home delivery?
If you’d like to find out more about Captain Tom you might like to watch the first 1 ½ minutes of this BBC clip: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/embed/p089nz71/52312019 You might also like ‘six epic journeys to school’ - a great BBC Newsround article, including some video clips, explaining the immense efforts that some children around the world make to get to school. https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/22015415 Remember to HIT THE RED BUTTON at www.youngclimatewarriors.org when you have completed the challenge!
