We are generally better off these days but this hides the damage to the planet from some of our habits that encourage the use of energy and the resulting unnecessary carbon dioxide.

A good example is in some of our gardens where there is little evidence of washing being hung out to dry even on the sunny days this April.

More than 40 per cent of homes have tumble driers because they are convenient in busy lives but they use large amounts of electricity and for most of the year they are unnecessary - the wind and sun are free and don't produce carbon dioxide.

It is also fashionable to block pave the drives of many houses, often covering the whole front garden, to provide off street parking and reduce maintenance. Such tidy frontages can cause environmental harm and contribute to climate change. Surprisingly planning permission is not required.

Hard surfaces increase the amount of rainfall that runs off straight into the drains and then immediately into the rivers increasing the flooding downstream. A typical 20 house road with block paved drives adds 500,000 litres to the drains every year and this is water that should percolate slowly to the water table and take many weeks to get into the rivers, rather than a few hours.

Permeable blocks that allow 80per cent of the water to pass into the soil are available but the favoured use is dense concrete block paving that lets little water through and itself is a major contributor of carbon dioxide. The production of each ton of cement used in its manufacture releases one ton of CO2 and there is more from the countrywide bulky transport.

While they are at it, many householders rip out the hedges and replace them with brick and block walls. Brick making is energy intensive, producing more CO2, and walls don't absorb carbon during the growing season as hedges do, nor do they help transpire water or provide habitats for over-wintering insects.

We have a fixation with being tidy, unlike the natural world, and the grass cutting in our city open spaces needs rethinking. Rather than cutting urban grass 15 times a year, using machinery that produces more CO2 than a big 4x4, we could cut the main area just twice, to allow wild flower growth, and only trim a metre wide strip next to pavements. These clippings should be collected to avoid using those CO2 producing blowers to clean the footpaths and there would be no need to spray weed killer along the edges.

Local councils will only be able to convince us about such changes if they have a clear strategy for carbon dioxide reduction and regularly publish details of the progress being made. It will need all us to work with them as partners in reducing the district's carbon output as at the moment it is still growing.