Fill your Thermos with hot tap water and save the planet

Tim Dowling
The Guardian, Tuesday December 9 2008

Just stop for a minute and think about how much you are doing to save the planet, just by being poor. Now think about how much more you will be doing to save the planet in, say, six months' time.
Very soon a large chunk of your carbon footprint will become the problem of the guy you sold your car to. Shops will retain more heat thanks to you not happening by and opening the door. There will be no need to offset that ski trip you won't be going on. Expensive, electricity-hungry appliances won't make it on to your shopping list. Instead you will rediscover simple, wholesome, low-impact pleasures: thick socks, a Thermos full of hot tap water, a few moments spent haggling over the price of a distressed turnip or scavenging along railways lines for kindling. These are the things that make life worth living, or at least they will be.
In the meantime the planet will thank you, provided we haven't already reached some sort of tipping point whereby none of our efforts can do anything to prevent a cataclysmic period of warming. But this is not the time to ponder imponderables, unless you're being paid for it. You're doing your bit to curb CO² every time you decide to stay in bed all day, and every time you forego air-freighted, intensively farmed sea bass so you can afford an extra two litres of cider.
Take smugness where you can find it - it too will soon be in short supply.
Recession-busting tip: A hollow-stemmed plastic wine glass can be adapted into a festive funnel, designed to conduct wine poured by waiters at Christmas parties down a rubber hose and into an expandable plastic bladder concealed beneath your clothing. No one will suspect a thing - they'll just assume you have a drink problem!
What's going cheap right now: Tainted pork, office space, USB memory sticks, jelly.