(This is the personal story of one member of The Vegan Society.)

I used to fly around the world in my first career. I was a research scientist, advancing the frontiers of human knowledge ... but it was still an upside of being made redundant in 2001: I could give up flying.

I looked around and saw acres of solutions and hardly a drop of political will to put them into action. So I had to start taking matters into my own hands ...

My great-uncle had thought nothing from cycling from Sheffield to Cambridge and back for the weekend, back in the late 1940s. My family passed the cycling passion on to me - I'm glad to have been car free all my life.

I started going to the Centre for Alternative Technology, and working on my house: low-energy lightbulbs, draft-proofing, insulation, efficient appliances, nothing left on standby, air-drying my clothes, taking on a share in an allotment ...

I was delighted to find at http://carbongym.cat.org.uk/carbongym/ that eating low on the food chain is a really significant way in which I was reducing my climate impact!

I'm still waiting for the politicians to catch up - hoping that the Green Party can turn things around ...