The European Union launched a new awareness campaign Monday urging its citizens to help stop global warming, adding that just the smallest changes to everyday routines, like turning down the thermostat by a degree, can make a difference.
BRUSSELS, Belgium — The European Union launched a new awareness campaign Monday urging its citizens to help stop global warming, adding that just the smallest changes to everyday routines, like turning down the thermostat by a degree, can make a difference.
The campaign, dubbed "You Control Climate Change," gives citizens some 50 practical "easy-to-do" tips to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said.
"It makes clear to which extent we all are responsible for climate change and what individuals can and need to do to limit this threat," Barroso said.
The European Commission said that households within the 25-nation bloc contribute some 16 percent of the EU's total greenhouse gas emissions, most of which comes from the production and use of energy.
The EU awareness campaign, which encourages people to "Turn down. Switch off. Recycle. Walk," on posters, will be launched in each member country in the coming days, officials said.
Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, who joined Barroso at the launching of the campaign said his government would urge all citizens and business to participate.
Environmental group Friends of the Earth Europe criticized Barroso, however, for not abiding by his own call to cut emissions, because he owns a sport utility vehicle.
Barroso answered that the campaign was not forcing people to change the way they lived, but was only voluntary.
Tips being used in the campaign can also be downloaded from a special EU Web site -- http://www.climatechange.eu.com -- which includes other suggestions like turning off TVs, computers or stereos rather than putting them on standby-mode, a move which the EU said will save 10 percent in the energy those appliances use up.
As part of the campaign, school children are encouraged to sign a pledge to reduce emissions and to track their progress in cutting pollution.
The commission said that every European citizen is responsible for 11 tons of greenhouse gas emissions, mainly carbon dioxide, per year. Most of those emissions are caused by the production and use of energy, around 61 percent, it said, followed by transport, 21 percent, both of which use fossil fuels, like coal, gas and oil, that release carbon emissions when burned.
Source: Associated Press
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