To resent the cognitive dissonance that exists around climate change

I'm not a scientist but I imagine they probably take temperature readings from various locations around the planet. I don't think they just think "Oh what a rubbish summer I'm having" and come up with a figure based on that.

But as I said, I'm not a scientist and it's a difficult concept to grasp so I may be wrong.

Your last point doesn't really make sense. At the time of the last ice age, humans were still hunter gatherers and I imagine they'd have just very gradually made their way south. I know you haven't said that there will be an ice age but how do you imagine uk residents would adapt to an ice sheet one mile thick over most of the country?

Last year was not the hottest at all we barely had a summer!

But it did reduced their population by at least 250 million, which has a huge ongoing environmental benefit.

Everybody lumps the US and China together. US CO2 emissions peaked in 2007 and have been falling ever since, mostly through the use of new technologies. China's emissions continue to increase.

The US uses 16% of the world's energy each year to produce 26% of the world's GDP. China uses 24% of the world's energy to produce 18% of the world's GDP. The UK uses 2% of the world's energy each year to produce 2% of the world's GDP. The EU uses 10% of the world's energy to produce 13% of the world's GDP.

It is not the US that is using energy inefficiently. Nor is the rest of the world forcing China to make its cheap tat. China is doing that voluntarily. Buying less cheap Chinese tat would go along way toward cleaning up the mess.

My personal take on this is the focus should be more about environmental preservation. Humankind has been “lucky” that the Holocene period has so far been extremely stable when it comes to global climate. This is an exception and not the norm when we look back over thousands/millions/billions of years.

Those kind of timelines combined with the fact the human psyche doesn’t like what it can’t control, provides a false illusion that where we are now should stay the same and not change.

Human activity may contribute to climate change but these things are inevitable anyway so we should prepare ourselves for it. Our focus should be on making our world as habitable as possible so, recycle, reuse, make decisions based on need rather than to make ourselves look good (individuals and governments!). For example, electric cars reduce pollution in the immediate area, but they create problems in countries where the rare metals and minerals are mined, so the reality there is that countries who want to adopt electric cars in the name of becoming “carbon neutral”, are actually just pushing the problem somewhere else instead of working to resolve the fundamental issue.

We can stop buying the cheap rubbish they produce that has to be transported across the world to us

I want us in the UK to be better, it's not a race to the bottom to be the worst for climate change, why can't we try and be the best. It would be nice to be good at something for a change

It’s not that people are “single issue” environmentalists- it’s more that everyone has things they care about more than others.
Everything you do as a human is consumption and has environmental impact. Some people value consumption of big cars more than flights and some people value consumption of air freighted avocados more than intensively farmed bacon. It all has an impact. You just value different things to them.

Gently, you list all the things we should be doing to cut our carbon footprints but having a second child (and I presume you have more than 1 as you say 'children') was more harmful than doing all of those together.

I am not criticising your choice, but you are no different from those who you call out, you've just picked a different set of choices to justify. We all have our heads in the sand.

I'm just pointing out that whatever is important to someone's personal economy, is where they draw the line.

But that’s the case for everyone, we all have our reasons and lines in the sand. I drive to the office because the train is ridiculously expensive for what it is, I abhor food waste so am tight on that, I don’t do fast fashion and outgrown kids clothes get recycled or repurposed. I have a dog and a cat who I’d never consider giving up. My kids are adopted, which you could say is environmentally friendly though that wasn’t remotely a consideration when starting a family.

I think awareness of climate issues will always come into conflict with what people feel are acceptable impacts on family life and finances. Your limits will be different to mine, but both choices will suit our circumstances at the time. There’s a limit to which people are prepared to martyr themselves for something that seems remote, out of their control or where they have very limited personal effectiveness.

It wasn't aimed at you! I was just saying I'm not going to give up every single thing. I've given up quite a lot if you read my post, but my pet would be a step too far for me. That's all.

And there’s the point in a nutshell. You could close the entire UK down and it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference so getting hot under the collar because Naomi has a Range Rover is utterly ridiculous.

I wouldn’t give up my pet although I won’t be getting another one when she eventually passes away, but I don’t have kids, I’ve given up driving, I’m vegan and I only travel in the UK now. Oh, I try to buy used where possible too. I think we should al so what we can but I also don’t see the point in us all living completely joyless lives.

And we have plenty of families with four or five cars lined up outside their house on the street, one for each parent, one for each kid, and a 'fun' one for the weekend for mum or dad.

Stationary cars are hardly polluting while being stationary, though... And yes, it may not be a need for you but we do need multiple cars. When my partner's car broke and spent 4 months in a garage, we had to share one. Which either meant me dropping him off to work, then driving home to start my own work and then doing the same again in the evening (that's 4 car journeys instead of 2) or him taking my car and me being effectively housebound (limited public transport and, again, I can't fork out £6 just to do round trip to the supermarket or the gym). It would be wonderful if we all could hop on a reliable bus or bike but a lot of us can't because there is no infrastructure in place to do so and the public transport option is not always affordable. It's external structures that made individual car ownership a necessity, not personal choice. I didn't even learn to drive till I moved out of London at the age of 38. I had no need, now I do.

"You can't stop climate change by not having children. The population won't go down fast enough even if there were zero children born from now on.

And if we solve the problem then people aren't a problem. When the global population starts to fall it's going to cause so many problems."

Nothing will stop climate change. But population reduction will help.

How can people solve the problem? We can't tech our way out of it.

The problems falling populations cause are based on our current economic model. It's unsustainable. The problems climate change will cause will be far harder than that....

You can't stop climate change by not having children. The population won't go down fast enough even if there were zero children born from now on.

And if we solve the problem then people aren't a problem. When the global population starts to fall it's going to cause so many problems.

The greatest dissonance is people who have children lecturing others on Climate Change.

There is nothing you can do, or that your children can do, to mitigate the damage that their existence will cause to the planet. Forget SUV's or wood burners, children are the single most damaging thing we can do to this planet. But nobody wants to admit that.

There are teenage soldiers in our armed forces who have more conviction in their beliefs than your average middle class "eco worrier". That teenage soldier is literally prepared to die for their beliefs, they signed up for it. Meanwhile, Debby from Darlington is crying into her organic porridge because there's a cyclone in the Gulf of Mexico.

Will Debby actually do anything about it? Not a chance. The fact that she has three kids who have been inhaling iPhones since they could walk is lost on her.

It's already too late to be honest. The climate changes and tipping points are occurring at a faster rate than even the worst case scenarios and more intensely than imagined. There is already modelling showing that human life may be impossible on the planet by 2050 and will be hellish for most of us long before that. We'll see some desperate attempts to fix things with geo-engineering before too long lets just hope they won't make things even worse.

Agree with this, i actually would prefer to use public transport for some journeys but always regret it as its a mess. Wildly expensive, filthy, often delays or cancelled so unreliable- it's not surprise lots of people are put off.

Agree with others that we need serious regulation on this to stop over consumption. But it's never going to happen because governments need it for their growth plans so until we fight the patriarchy it's not going to change. I did wonder whether the fires in LA might get more Hollywood backing behind climate change. If its affecting them perhaps they'll be more vocal amd start leading the way with more sustainable living....or at least getting rid of one of their private jets.

A 4/5 year voting cycle does not lend itself to helping make 20/30 year decisions

Yup. People are the issue yet I get mocked for saying climate change is one big reason I didn't have children. Plus why have a baby when they are likely to suffer the most.

'But I recycle' is often the response, or 'we only holiday in the uk' as if that makes them equal.

Total cognitive dissonance.

Climate change is a collective problem that requires collective solutions. You're right that there's a lot of cognitive dissonance, but I'd point the finger more at government than individuals.

The government accepts that climate change is a massive problem, yet the tax on fuel hasn't been increased in 15 years. The government have refused to invest in clean energy from tidal power. The government have completely failed to invest in the technologies of the future that will make it cleaner - where is the rollout of electric car charging points, why is there only one modest factory making car batteries in Britain, why is it taking years and years to order mini nuclear reactors, etc, etc?

We'll never fix climate change by having a go at each other for our personal choices. We'll fix climate change by investing, as a country, in the technologies that mean the personal choices don't matter.