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On the radio this morning one of the guests was asked, "Apart from changing your light-bulbs, what have you personally done about climate change?" and they said "Well it's complex, I don't know all the facts, so... well we've changed our light-bulbs, but..." [done nothing else].

That's a pathetic excuse. You do not need to know the details.

Almost no-one claims to understand the details of international finance, but we still reckon we know what should be done about bonuses, and we make decisions about which bank to put our money in. But the vested interests in the climate debate seem to be succeeding in making things seem too complex for us mere mortals to understand or do anything about.

But it's really easy to know what to do, and you don't need to follow the ins-and-outs. Here's what to do:

• Avoid international flights
• Insulate your home, and get a new boiler if yours is ancient
• Use public transport more often instead of the car
• Try and choose food that's local and in-season

There's acres of detail available if you want to read more detail, e.g. some tips from New Scientist and this excellent free book about energy but the basic advice is as simple and boring and unchanging as the above stuff.

As an academic researcher I've hated having to avoid international flights. There have been some brilliant opportunities popped up over the past year, to go and do some research visits or go to international conferences - and I've taken up some of them, but some of them I've let slip specifically because of all the international flying that would be involved. And that's my loss. Just like it's a loss to not have the freedom to go flying off on holiday every year, or to have energy-saving lightbulbs that still take a few seconds to warm up to their full brightness which is a hassle.

You can see how it adds up in our brains. Hassle + complex = ignore it for now, maybe think about it later. That's a natural reaction. But the complexity is irrelevant, because we can all do these things we need to, so we need to try.

I saw this a while back but it turns out my uni is involved: Score, the stove that turns heat into sound into electricity. It's an intriguing project for technical reasons: turn heat into sound? Sound into electricity?

And in case you're wondering why anyone would want to turn heat into sound into electricity in real life: well it's for the developing world, where people often use stoves for cooking, and they could benefit themselves (e.g. with LED lighting) if they could harvest some of the surplus energy as electricity. Nice project.

A while ago New Scientist ran an article with lots of practical advice about cutting your carbon footprint, along with numbers (measured in tonnes of CO2) to tell you how important each one was. So I had a go. Here's the results so far.

Things I've done:

• Avoid air travel as much as possible, this is one of the biggest things. I've had holidays by train, been to conferences by ferry, all great. Although I haven't always been able to avoid planes for going to certain places. NS said I could save 1.6 tonnes CO2, so let's say my score here is 0.8 tonnes
• Convert electricity supply over to a green supplier. (It's cheaper than our old one too...) Score: 0.8 tonnes
• Paid attention to buying food that's local(ish) and in-season. The asparagus season is just ending, it was nice. Score: 0.7 tonnes
• Turn the thermostat down "by 2º" in winter. Bit confusing this, what if it's already turned down? Anyway I think I did do. Score: 0.4 tonnes
• Run the washing machine at 30º rather than 40º, and cut down on tumble drying. Still do use the tumble dryer, so out of 0.25 tonnes I score about 0.15 tonnes
• Energy-saving lightbulbs, of course. There's a couple of fittings where they don't fit so I don't score the full 0.15 tonnes here: 0.1 tonnes
• Avoid canned drinks (aluminium smelting is a massive energy-user apparently). This is tricky cos I like cans of pop, and I like cans of beer. Glass bottles are better apparently, not sure if plastic bottles are OK. But I've been boycotting Coke anyway, so I've definitely cut down on cans to some extent, let's say out of 0.3 tonnes I score 0.15 tonnes
• Avoid leaving things on standby. Bought a really clever device which detects when the telly is off and turns off the set-top box, the DVD player, etc. Score: 0.04 tonnes

Things I can't/won't do:

• Various things that we can't do since we're only renting, e.g. "buy a wood-burning stove" (0.9 tonnes), change the home insulation (0.8 tonnes), change to a more modern boiler.
• Go vegan (1 tonne). No way, sorry. I like vegan food sometimes but that's a lot to ask.
• Get a microwave - no room for one in our flat.

Things I already did:

• Not owning a car (1.5 tonnes). No point having a car anyway if you live in London.

So, out of a possible 8.44 tonnes I score 4.64, or 55%. Not bad, that's a saving of about half an average UK person's CO2 usage apparently, although as a percentage it looks a bit lower than I was hoping. Well, let's hope it's worth it...