A practical suggestion.

While it is true that there must be action by local and national governments and the human community as a whole organised in some new political form on the gases which are warming the atmosphere, there are actions which can be taken by individuals and families.

I suggest that everyone sets aside money to buy wind and solar energy equipment. Every time you pay an electricity or gas bill, put an equal amount into a special fund. When there is enough money, use this fund to buy apparatus for photovoltaic and wind energy to charge a traction battery (not a car battery). With the electricity you can provide a part of your house lighting or other things which use 12 volt DC electricity. By this means you can begin to reduce your energy needs and also begin the change over to renewable, non-carbon emitting energy. This is a plan for gradually phasing out your use of centrally distributed energy. You can estimate the value of the solar electricity you collect and add it to the fund.

You will reduce your energy needs because you will find that at first you don't have a lot of power and will need to switch off lights carefully when you are not in the room. This is good practice in energy saving. Also you will look for things like fridges (solid state heat pumps) which use little energy.

Now is a good time to start doing this as people in governments are already talking about the necessary increase in energy costs. While they are talking and making up their minds to do it, we can all admit to ourselves that at present the money we pay for energy does not cover the damage that the nuclear and carbon emissions do to the world. To pay double the price by paying into a solar fund is a good way of recognising this.

As time passes and you add to your system your electricity bills will get smaller and your fund will grow more slowly. This is a gradualist approach which recognises that none of us can go out and buy a complete system big enough to cover all our home energy needs. But there is no need to do so. We can steadily enlarge a solar system until it is big enough to take over the bulk of needs. If enough people did this there would grow up a second hand market which would be a good way of increasing size, as for example you might want to start with a 50 watt wind generator and then trade up to a larger one after a year or so.

Some things you can do with your power:

• Lighting
• Garden tools such as lawnmower
• Fridge
• radio and television.

For some of these you may need an inverter to convert 12 volt battery power to 240 volts AC. If you use the inverter for short usages such as lawnmowing or vacuum cleaning you will save a small amount of mains power but also gain a feeling of independence. You can also take out power for a short time faster than the sun or wind is putting it in.

If a million houses installed as little as 40 watts of solar power (suitable for about 4 fluorescent lights for several months of the year) we should be saving about half a million kilowatt hours per day for at least six months of the year (each installation can produce about half a kilowatt hour per day). It would cost £600 million.

Rupert Sheldrake may be right - the more a thing happens, the more likely it is to happen. It is clear that governments are going to be reluctant to do the right thing. What is needed is a public ready to do something even when governments are afraid or reluctant to act. Moreover although at present wind and solar power on a small scale is expensive (I have spent about £600 for a 40 watt system), as demand increases manufacturing costs should begin to fall. There is considerable potential for the cost of photovoltaics to fall. If they get down to a cheap enough level they will become the power source everyone will want to use and may even drive out carbon and nuclear power without any further action.

Not enough money is being spent on photovoltaics research to bring down the cost. If the money spent on nuclear research including Fusion were put to photovoltaics we might well have an energy source cheap enough for everyone to use. It seems more likely than a practical fusion reactor.