녹색생활양식 확산을 통한 온실가스 감축방안 연구

Abstract

Developing Measures for Greenhouse Gas Reduction through Promoting Green Lifestyle Though fossil fuels have contributed greatly to the welfare of human beings since the Industrial Revolution, they have also caused and propelled climate change, a universal environmental problem for the human kind, with the green house gases emitted from the consumption serving as the main culprit of the climate change. Since a major portion of greenhouse gases is emitted from everyday life of people at home and public and commercial sectors, living green lifestyles in everyday life can reduce a substantial amount of greenhouse gases. In order to promote green lifestyles, then, it is necessary to know the emission pattern of greenhouse gases on the national level, the people's perceptions and implementation of green lifestyles, and obstacles to the green lifestyles. Therefore, by means of literature review, analysis of available statistics, and a questionnaire survey, the present study investigated the people's percepti-ons and implementation of green lifestyles, estimated the amount of greenhouse gas emission, analyzed its characteristics, and identified the obstacles to the implementation of green life. Based on the results of the investigation, the researchers explored the measures for promoting green lifestyles. The researchers surveyed 1,000 people throughout the nation on their perceptions and implementation of green life. As for the green life, 65.6 percent of the surveyed people responded that had heard of it, 75 percent indicated a deep interest in it, and 80 percent responded that they would live green lifestyles in the future. As for the implementation of green lifestyles, people showed generally high levels of positive responses except on certain items in the categories of transportation, cooking and dietary life, and energy saving. In particular, the car pool system and the 7th-day-no-driving campaign showed very low rates of response in the transportation category. In the category of cooking and eating, 'cooking somewhat insufficiently' and 'vegetarian dieting' received relatively low participation rates. 'Purchasing environment-friendly goods' also marked low participation in the purchasing category. In the category of energy, five items received relatively low participation rates: 'Using pressure cookers rather than electric cookers', 'reducing the time for taking showers', 'reducing the time for watching TV', 'using stairs in buildings lower than five stories', and 'reducing the cooking time'. Monthly emission of greenhouse gases per person was estimated from their use of fuels, electricity, water, and personal and public transportation means, in addition to their generation of garbage. In the case of personal car drivers, greenhouse gas emission was the greatest from their cars, followed by the emission from electricity, fuels, and public transportation. Emission from water consumption and garbage generation was relatively low. The pattern and amount of emission differed depending on the types of emission sources. Fuel consumption showed differences across the number of household members, their housing types, and the size of their living spaces. Water consumption varied by the number of household members, while electricity consumption depended on the size of the cities or towns, income, the number of household members, and the size of their living spaces. The use of personal transportation means varied across the gender and occupation, whereas the use of public transportation means had two more variables such as the number of household members and age. Results showed that single-person households emitted the largest amount of per-capita GHGs while GHG emission from electricity appeared to be inversely proportional to the number of persons in a given household. There were several reasons for failure to adopt green life styles. The most frequent response was that they "do not know how to life a green life." It was followed by "It is troublesome and inconvenient", "There is no direct benefit from its implementation," "My implementation would not make a big difference," and "Never thought about the green life", the last three showing similar frequencies of responses. Then came the responses, "Do not agree with the importance or significance of green life" and "Too busy", indicated by some people. Based on the results of the study, the following measures are suggested to promote the green lifestyles. First, help people to overcome the obstacles to the implementation of green lifestyles, and encourage them through continuous monitoring. Second, build up the infrastructures to promote the green lifestyles. These include establishing the green-life information dissemination system, introducing facilities to help the green lifestyles, incorporating the green lifestyles into urban planning, and improving the residential environment through increasing environment-friendly architectures. Third, improve the related laws and systems. In order to ensure the continuous implementation of green lifestyles, incentives need to be offered continuously. For example, sports facilities using self-generated electricity could be rewarded with some types of incentives. Regulations need to be made to impose a limit to the consumption of energy by the size of the architectures and to require the sellers to provide the buyers with information about the consumption of energy when buildings are sold. Fourth, intensify the education and campaign for green lifestyles. The education and campaign program should be based on the results of the monitoring of the people's perceptions and implementation of green lifestyles and the patterns of greenhouse gas emission. Homes, schools, and work places should be the sites for experiencing and implementing green lifestyles. Fifth, strengthen the governance and networking for the promotion of green lifestyles. In addition, it is necessary to develop measures which will effectively curtail the increase in the number of households with high GHG emission such as single-person households. The current study identified the people's perceptions and implementation of green lifestyles through a questionnaire survey, estimated the amount of greenhouse gas emission by different categories, and analyzed the characteristics of the emission according to the variables such as housing types and household members. Since the results were obtained from the questionnaire survey with a limited number of people, there may be a generalizability problem. In spite of the limitation, it is expected that the present study will contribute to the government's education and campaign to promote green lifestyles, to raise people's awareness regarding the climate change and environmental problems, to improve people's attitude, and to actually implement green lifestyles. These changes will lead to the nation's reduction of greenhouse gases and, eventually, to the mitigation of climate change.