We’re seeing the affects of climate change seemingly every day – whether it be wildfires in Hawaii or Canada or extreme weather like blistering heat waves around the world or storms that cause major damage and are life-threatening.

Often, we also hear what governments, policy makers, businesses and colleges and universities are doing to try to slow the progression of climate change. But what can YOU do?

StateImpact Pennsylvania’s Rachel McDevitt is writing a series of stories on ways that individuals can fight climate change and joined us on The Spark Thursday,"Home energy and electricity use make up an estimated 20% of the country's greenhouse gas emissions. It's a big source of our personal emissions. We have some control over how that works. I mean, your home, what you do in your home, that's a big part of what you're doing to generate possible emissions."

McDevitt offered some energy saving tips,"Go around your house and see if your air is leaking from any place. Do you have older windows? Do you have doors that don't seal very well when you close them? You can buy pretty cheap foam rolls of weather stripping. You can put that down so it minimizes air leaks. You can get a programmable thermostat. Some people may need some help installing those...But if you get a programmable thermostat, you can install it. There are lots of videos on YouTube and then you can set it so that you're not cooling your house when you're at work all day. Maybe you can put the temperature up to 80, 85 when you're not at home and then you have it set to turn on that does cool down to like 75-72 by the time you do get home...So you're not using energy that you don't need, right? You can switch out all of your light bulbs for LEDs, which use very minimal amounts of power. Once you have LEDs it's actually less important that you switch them off when you're not using them because they use so little power. But the biggest things in your home that are going to be sucking up that energy are the the heating and air conditioning. So anything you can do to help them be more efficient, which would be sealing those air leaks and then not using them when you're not at home, that's going to cut down on your bills and it's going to cut down on the emissions they generate."

McDevitt said that often saving energy and money on your energy bills is a matter of changing habits.

We’re seeing the affects of climate change seemingly every day – whether it be wildfires in Hawaii or Canada or extreme weather like blistering heat waves around the world or storms that cause major damage and are life-threatening.
Often, we also hear what governments, policy makers, businesses and colleges and universities are doing to try to slow the progression of climate change. But what can YOU do?
<a href="https://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/">StateImpact Pennsylvania</a>’s Rachel McDevitt is <a href="https://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2023/08/11/what-can-one-person-do-about-climate-change-part-1-start-at-home/">writing a series of stories on ways that individuals can fight climate change</a> and joined us on The Spark Thursday,"Home energy and electricity use make up an estimated 20% of the country's greenhouse gas emissions. It's a big source of our personal emissions. We have some control over how that works. I mean, your home, what you do in your home, that's a big part of what you're doing to generate possible emissions."
McDevitt offered some energy saving tips,"Go around your house and see if your air is leaking from any place. Do you have older windows? Do you have doors that don't seal very well when you close them? You can buy pretty cheap foam rolls of weather stripping. You can put that down so it minimizes air leaks. You can get a programmable thermostat. Some people may need some help installing those...But if you get a programmable thermostat, you can install it. There are lots of videos on YouTube and then you can set it so that you're not cooling your house when you're at work all day. Maybe you can put the temperature up to 80, 85 when you're not at home and then you have it set to turn on that does cool down to like 75-72 by the time you do get home...So you're not using energy that you don't need, right? You can switch out all of your light bulbs for LEDs, which use very minimal amounts of power. Once you have LEDs it's actually less important that you switch them off when you're not using them because they use so little power. But the biggest things in your home that are going to be sucking up that energy are the the heating and air conditioning. So anything you can do to help them be more efficient, which would be sealing those air leaks and then not using them when you're not at home, that's going to cut down on your bills and it's going to cut down on the emissions they generate."
McDevitt said that often saving energy and money on your energy bills is a matter of changing habits.

When people come together and talk about really interesting topics, great questions spark better understanding and opportunities for new ideas to form. On The Spark from WITF, hosts Scott LaMar and Aniya Faulcon start the conversations about what’s happening in the world and at home. Share your ideas at https://witf.org/programs/the-spark.

When people come together and talk about really interesting topics, great questions spark better understanding and opportunities for new ideas to form. On The Spark from <a href="https://www.witf.org">WITF</a>, hosts Scott LaMar and Aniya Faulcon start the conversations about what’s happening in the world and at home. Share your ideas at <a href="https://witf.org/programs/the-spark">https://witf.org/programs/the-spark</a>.

The Spark

When people come together and talk about really interesting topics, great questions spark better understanding and opportunities for new ideas to form. On The Spark from WITF, hosts Scott LaMar and Aniya Faulcon start the conversations about what’s happening in the world and at home. Share your ideas at <a href="https://witf.org/programs/the-spark">https://witf.org/programs/the-spark</a>.

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