I lost count of the number of people who commented on the unseasonal weather whilst out going about my business this weekend. Here, in Sheffield, we had about 15cm of snow fall over the course of Friday and Saturday. This was described as being “dreadful” and “foul” by some of my fellow shoppers, who were panic buying all the milk, bread and meat they could get their hands on. I have to say, I made the most of it and had a great time playing with my dog Pippa. She particularly enjoyed me throwing snowballs over drifts more than a metre deep in our local park where she would land submerged in soft powdery snow. Here’s an action shot.
Joking aside, there is a reason for this unseasonal weather. Prof Sir John Beddington, the UK government's chief scientist is quoted in the news today saying that there is already enough CO2 in the atmosphere for there to be more floods and droughts over the next 25 years. Because the planet’s climate system operates slowly, there are long delays in CO2 level rises in the atmosphere. This means weather patterns we’re seeing now are as a result of CO2 emissions emitted more than 20 years ago. Governments across the globe are just not meeting Green House Gas reduction targets. We need to accept the fact that we will see more and more weather anomalies over the next 20 to 30 years.
"The [current] variation we are seeing in temperature or rainfall is double the rate of the average. That suggests that we are going to have more droughts, we are going to have more floods, we are going to have more sea surges and we are going to have more storms.”

Do something NOW for your children and your grandchildren

We should all be making an effort to reduce our carbon footprint. In our personal lives we have a responsibility to our children and our children’s children. Whether it is recycling, driving less or driving a smaller car, flying less or just consuming less stuff. We basically need to be less selfish and less consuming.

But what about at work?

Does your organization take measures to reduce its environmental impact? In our office, we recycle pretty much everything now. We underwent an office refurbishment project a couple of years ago, and in the process, energy saving lighting was installed and carpets made from recycled bottles was laid. We also use our own power management solution for shutting PCs down at the end of the day and at weekends. This is a very simple and effective way of reducing CO2. After all, why should a device be left on when no one is using it, you wouldn’t do that at home. Sadly some people just don’t care when they are not paying the bills and for their own convenience they chose to leave their PC on. Well guess what? There is a way to switch devices off and it won’t inconvenience users.
Read about power management with NightWatchman Enterprise
You, as an employee have the power to influence and make a positive difference to our future.