Climate change: What are the most effective ways to save the planet

It is now an indisputable scientific fact that the earth's climate is warming, and the impact on human life is already evident: Global warming has increased the chances of flooding in Miami and elsewhere, threatening the lives of millions of people along the Brahmaputra River in South Asia and disrupting plant and animal life.
So we no longer have to ask whether climate change is happening, or whether humans are to blame. What we should be asking is: What can I do for myself?
What can you do to help slow the planet's warming? Here are our suggestions.Show more

1. What is humanity's top priority in the coming years, and what does it mean for me personally?
Top priority? Limit the use of fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas, and switch to cleaner, renewable sources of energy, while increasing energy efficiency. Kimberly Nicholas, Associate Professor at the Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies (LUSUS) in Sweden, said: "We need to reduce co2 emissions by almost half (45%) over the next decade."
There are things you can do on a daily basis that can contribute to this change -- like driving and flying less, switching to "green" energy providers, and changing your eating and shopping habits.
Of course, climate change won't be solved by changing your personal shopping or driving habits, but many experts agree that it's important and can influence others to do the same (sooner or later), and that other necessary changes can only be made at a larger, more systematic level. Such as changing the system of subsidies that subsidise the energy and food industries (which still encourage the development of fossil fuels) or devising new rules and incentives for farming, logging and recycling.
Refrigerants are a good example of the importance of this approach. An advocacy group of researchers, businessmen and ngos called Drawdown found that scrapping HFCs (chemicals used in fridges and air conditioners) was the most effective way to reduce emissions, which are 9,000 times worse than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The good news is that we've made global progress on this. Two years ago, 170 countries agreed to begin phasing out HFCS in 2019.
This matters, says the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an intergovernmental body under the United Nations, because we need "unprecedented changes in all aspects of society to cope with climate change". "Everyone has to be involved," said Debra Robert, IPCC co-chair of the report.