Here are a couple of things that we take so much for granted that have an effect on global warming. Think about how we could do without them.

Airlines Must Lose Their Right to Pollute the Skies
We must reduce aviation's expansion or give up on tackling climate change

Despite the Mediterranean weather we've been enjoying, the annual exodus to even sunnier climates - much of it by plane - is almost upon us. Our love affair with flying is fuelling phenomenal growth in the airlines' activities: flight numbers are projected to double by 2020 and triple by 2030. But it is also driving phenomenal growth in the airlines' greenhouse gas emissions, and therefore their contribution to devastating climate change. According to scientists at the Tyndall Centre, one of the UK's foremost climate change institutes, aviation's emissions are growing so fast that they will gobble up all reductions from every other sector if they are left unchecked. Yes, think about that again. Unless the airlines cut their emissions significantly in coming decades, we won't be able to emit any other CO2s; not from manufacturing, travelling by other means, heating our homes, building - nothing - if we want to meet our targets and stabilize atmospheric CO2 levels.

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Air Conditioning: Our Cross to Bear
Those air conditioners that keep things cool and comfortable inside are helping make the outside world even nastier.

When it's hot and humid out and the air conditioner's not running, America suffers. Babies break out in rashes, couples bicker, computers go haywire. In much of the nation, an August power outage is viewed not as an inconvenience but as a public health emergency. In the 50 years since air-conditioning hit the mass market, America has become so well-addicted that our dependence goes almost entirely unremarked. A/C is built into our economy and our culture. Stepping from a torrid parking lot into a 72-degree, air-conditioned lobby can provide a degree of instantaneous relief and physical pleasure experienced through few other legal means. But if the effect of air-conditioning on a hot human being can be compared to that of a pain-relieving drug, its economic impact is more like that of an anabolic steroid. And withdrawal, when it comes, will be painful.

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