Giving Compass' Take:

• One Planet Development Policy is a Welsh government scheme that encourages individuals to build eco-homes that limit the number of resources they need to just the necessities. 

• Families in rural areas of Wales are transforming their homes to be more environmentally friendly, but would this initiative work for families living in the urban centers of Wales? 

• Read about why most Americans, unfortunately, do not believe that climate change will affect them.

Fighting climate change is much more than a day job for Chris Vernon and Erica Thompson. It is their entire way of life.  They are part of a groundbreaking Welsh government scheme under which people get to circumvent tight planning rules so long as they build an eco-home in the countryside and go back to working the land on which it sits.

The "One Planet Development Policy" was adopted by the Welsh government in 2011 and so far, 32 households have signed up.

The aim is ambitious: In a small country where people on average use three times their fair share of the world's resources, Wales wants its One Planet people to use only the resources they are due. Which means a simpler smallholding life, spending and traveling less, growing and making more.

The scheme has mostly attracted digital-era smallholders with a stubborn determination to return to a subsistence lifestyle in the rolling hills and valleys of rural Wales. And not to ruin the planet with a consumerist, throwaway lifestyle.

"We've known for 20 or 30 years now what we need to do to address the problem of climate change," Vernon said from his half-built home.

"We don't need more data. Whilst I was sitting in my office working on the computer I got the feeling I could be doing something that demonstrates how we can address the problems." Eight months pregnant and elbow-deep in local clay plaster, Thompson said their home had to be zero carbon in construction and use to win government go-ahead.

As Vernon explained, each household must only use their global fair share of land: "If you take the entire global resource … you divide it by the population of the planet, you get a number: 1.88 hectares, it's a fairly arbitrary number, but that's the number that is your fair share."

Read the full article about battling climate change in Wales by Max Baring at Global Citizen