I'm a mum going to COP26 - AMA

[ParentsForFuture]

We're Charlotte and Rowan from Parents for Future UK, a growing group of parent climate campaigners. We're going to COP26 in Glasgow to demand ambitious action on the climate emergency and are planning what will be the biggest mobilization of parents ever on a single issue, with other parent groups. Mumsnet reached out to us to come on and answer your questions on COP26 and how parents can make their voice heard. Our work is led by parents and rooted in love (and fear). Charlotte (Mumsnetter) is from Bath and Rowan is from Oxford, and we each have two children, aged 3 and 7.

Rather than worsen the quality of life and increase energy bills for those already struggling, how about we don't have loads of people flying on polluting flights from around the world.

Evidently the organisers of COP26 haven't heard of Zoom.

Instead of hammering those on low and middle incomes, eg. with more expensive energy, we should first look to more positive and easy action.

• Improved public transport country wide

• Education on smaller families (and easy access to contraception)

• More durable consumer products (a win win, as it helps the environment and people's wallets).

Thank you, everyone.
I don't fly anywhere anymore.
I'm a vegan, as are my family.
I'd get rid of the car, but public transport where I live is unreliable to say the least.
I recycle and actively reduce consumption. My house is so well insulated, it's lovely and toasty with not too much heat!
Is it too little, too late, though?

I wish consumer products were more durable and more easily mended.

Sounds like it's MP and employer then

Stubborn optimism Is required

The actions you take are noted at a national level ... as a nation we eat less meat than 10 years ago for example

That does put pressure on government and business

It is frustratingly slow , faster would be better , but things are changing

In the UK each unit of electricity produces half the carbon than it did ten years ago, that's a massive change that's been barely noticed

The focus on what individuals can/should do is just wrong to me. The systems need to change. There are too many choices that are too complicated, or too expensive, or against which we have too little individual power. You could spend half your life on your phone in a supermarket aisle trying to trace the provenance of palm oil or almonds in a product, and you’d still be limited in what you can do.

We need to stop feeling guilty and start feeling angry at those who have perpetuated or have allowed these systems to perpetuate, hiding behind ‘consumer behaviour’ when that behaviour takes place in a broken system. We need to demand better.

I was fascinated, though, at the report that suggested that switching the average pension away from damaging investments had something like twenty times the impact of other individual changes. Our power is where our money goes and pension funds are a big one. Not possible for everyone, of course. But for those of us with pensions in workplace funds we can try to get those funds changed internally - my last workplace succeeded in doing that because staff demanded it. And self-invested funds are obviously an option that would have a disproportionate impact.

In the UK each unit of electricity produces half the carbon than it did ten years ago, that's a massive change that's been barely noticed

I was working in the energy sector ten years ago and the suggestion that renewables would be at grid parity with fossil fuels or even nukes in a decade would have got you laughed out of the room. But despite the massive cost reductions they are still getting around 10% cheaper every year. It’s amazing, and it does give me a lot of hope.

Some really hard stuff - like large-scale storage and flexible grids with EV and other distributes storage models, and a huge increase in electricity for transport and heat are still ahead. But what has been achieved on renewables in the last twenty years has been absolutely phenomenal.

I think the fact that the COP26 articles on the BBC are not the most read on the BBC website, despite high levels of media coverage says it all. A lot of people don’t care.

Looking at top 10 read articles it appears at number 10, behind articles on Netflix, football, a microwave explosion.

Most people don’t really care. As I say looking around my estate, that’s about right. You can’t rely on consumers- change simply won’t happen. It has to be imposed on us all. No choice. But rationing of environmentally damaging goods for everyone.

But rationing of environmentally damaging goods for everyone.

There’s so much choice editing than can happen for us before it gets even so far as rationing.

So if it becomes illegal to import or sell products that have contributed to deforestation in their supply chains as it looks like will now finally happen, then cheap chicken becomes (slightly) less problematic. Higher mandatory energy efficiency standards for new homes and extensions (we’ve wasted so much time and money on this one, mandatory standards over the last decade would have saved so much in retrofits now).

When companies were told they would have to pay a tax or reduce the sugar content of fizzy drinks, they by and large didn’t give consumers a choice - they made the choice for them. That’s what we need from our retailers, builders, carmakers and banks now, but for carbon.

@JassyRadlett 100% agree with you. It’s all so simple- just look at how the plastic bag tax has changed consumption.

.... but companies won’t change unless there’s a financial incentive or regulatory requirement to do so.

It's simply a junket for many of the attendees. 2 week annual pissup and fine dining on expenses (and a trip to the clap clinic on the way home)
Zimbabwe boys Costco booze run

@Blofeld

.... but companies won’t change unless there’s a financial incentive or regulatory requirement to do so.

This is partly about making sure companies operate on a level playing field, if there are costs associated with better choices , companies need to be sure those costs won't cost them business

@Blofeld

.... but companies won’t change unless there’s a financial incentive or regulatory requirement to do so.

That’s overall true - and they need to see that they won’t be disadvantaged by moving early.

Some have already done quite a bit (but not nearly enough yet) - Unilever is actually relatively good here in terms of the progress they’ve made and are committing to in what goes into their products. Companies like that actively ask the government to regulate to enable them to meet the CSR/ESG targets they’ve set themselves without being terribly undercut by destructive competitors.

There is a huge role for the government in setting those standards.

But yes the plastic bag tax shows that people are actually a lot more open to this than we are often told, and if the playing field is relatively level then the benefits will be measurable.

Precisely no one was going down to the corner shop instead of Tesco for their weekly shop because they could get a free single use bag there.

@Noodlewave

How much of a role should population reduction take in reducing our environmental impact and do you think enough is being done about it?

@Noodlewave The over population argument isn't one I support I'm afraid. The problem is we don't all use the same amount of carbon.

Folk in the richest 1% of the world's population use x175 more carbon than someone from the bottom 10%.

I'm far more concerned about the contribution of fossil fuels, hence our latest campaign parentsforfuture.org/nonewfossilfuels and support for the Stop Cambo and Paid to Pollute campaigns.

@Moonwatcher1234

Thank you for trying…I’m nowhere near as educated as I should be on this issue but hopeful that there are people like your group out there trying. My question is: what are your thoughts on insulate Britain? To me it seems a bit of a dead cat strategy with everyone focussing on the inconvenience caused rather than the central message so maybe not the best idea but would be interested to hear what you think. Thanks.

@Moonwatcher1234 Thanks for your question. I'm massively torn if I'm honest. I don't support the method, but I absolutely support what they are trying to achieve. And I always think of those posters saying 'If we had a better idea, we would do it. But we don't - do you - if you do please share?' Or something along those lines. These folk know exactly what we are facing and are trying everything they can to avert societal breakdown.

@ParentsForFuture

Did you know that since signing the Paris Agreement, the UK Government has paid £4 billion of public money to North Sea oil and gas companies? That is taxpayers money being spent supporting an industry that pays billions out to shareholders and that is wreaking havoc on our planet. And money that could be spent investing in green technology.

And yes, as we’ve said in other responses, both of us have made some changes to how we live to try to make our personal lifestyles more aligned with our activism - including things like diet.

Total Tax revenue to The Exchequer from North Sea Oil and gas production since 2015 is roughly £3,100,000,000, oil prices have been low since ~2014.

Prior to this multiples of that amount were being pumped IN to U.K. coffers each year. The insinuation that this is sneakily taken from people's pockets is inaccurate and disingenuous. The money you are talking about will have supported infrastructure, job creation and other initiatives around supporting oil and gas in the same way that other industries are supported in the U.K.

www.statista.com/statistics/350890/united-kingdom-uk-north-sea-revenue/

@Maireas

Thank you, everyone. I don't fly anywhere anymore. I'm a vegan, as are my family. I'd get rid of the car, but public transport where I live is unreliable to say the least. I recycle and actively reduce consumption. My house is so well insulated, it's lovely and toasty with not too much heat! Is it too little, too late, though?

@Maireas - sorry I missed your original question. I have a slightly different take on this.

Single most important thing. VOTE. Current Gov is urging the world to Act on climate - while it has 40 new oil, coal and gas projects in the pipeline before 2025.

Second. USE YOUR VOICE. Join a grassroots environmental organisation. We need to act as a community to increase pressure on our Governments to act NOW!

Support the StopCambo.org campaign. If you are a member of a parent group - sign our letter to demand an end to fossil fuels parentsforfuture.org/nonewfossilfuels

@BrightSideRightSide

Your position on hydrocarbon extraction is inconsistent but also unsustainable.

You say you don’t want any new production sanctioned. Yet you also say “'completely eliminating' our usage of fossil fuels is impossible since our society itself still runs on them”.
You also recognise there needs to be a transition.

But that transition requires a seismic global shift that changes every aspect of modern life. This isn’t just about gas guzzling cars but it’s about the fact hydrocarbons are used in nearly every aspect of life.

Hydrocarbons are needed to manufacture steel needed for new trains, concrete for new infrastructure, in aspirin widely used as affordable pain relief and of course, in the manufacture of solar panels and wind turbines.

What we should instead focus on is decarbonising the process of extraction and production as much as possible. For example, offshore production facilities can be powered by wind turbines and abandoned reservoirs used for the storage of excess carbon. This approach is far more realistic and enables a managed transition instead of blindly saying “we must stop new production”.

This also doesn’t even get into the geopolitical importance of countries, whether the UK or elsewhere, having security of supply or indeed of placing the burden of production on poorer African countries to satisfy our unavoidable reliance on hydrocarbons in the near and long term.

What are your views on this? And secondly, why do you focus on oil and gas production when, for example, seabed dredging by large fishing vessels emits as much carbon as aviation, or that concrete production produces as much as 6% of the world’s carbon?

Seabed dredging is something that can be easily regulated by nation states and lead to defined gains. When regulation of this and similar contributors to C02 emission is combined with measures to improve the climate impact of oil and gas production, this is a far more sustainable approach that takes into account the reality of our global economy and the way in which lives are lead around the world. And in this context, I’m not just talking about our nice lives in the West but also in countries less developed than ours where changing to electric cars, biomass heating and veganism simply isn’t feasible due to severe unrelenting poverty with no state assistance.

I appreciate this is more of a rant than a question but when we’re demanding change, surely it’s better to make demands for specific, identifiable and quantifiable changes across numerous aspects of our daily lives as opposed to one close to impossible demand that no modern country can support in the near, medium or even long term future?

Because @BrightSideRightSide oil companies, "big pharma" and big businesses can only be evil and are easy targets for virtue signallers to feel like they are "sticking it to The Man" safely without comeback. Protests against the uncooperative Chinese and Russian states are less palatable.

They get a warm glow of self righteousness with little risk. The fact that all of these organisations contribute most of the factors that support their comfortable and easy level of existence passes them by along with the facts that these are the sorts of organisations that have the resources, will and expertise to find the solutions to climate change and help society to enact them!

Why so little acknowledgement that it's an energy TRANSITION that's required rather than: "Renewables good, gas bad and talking sensibly about nuclear is too hard"?

The gas taps can't just be turned off overnight

@MrsSkylerWhite

“We could probably save the world snd still have bonfires once a year“

And the billions of fireworks too? Why? There’s just no need for them, they serve no purpose at all.

@MrsSkylerWhite Not that I'm a huge fan of bonfires, please let's not worry about them when we really need to focus on the biggest issues like winding down the fossil fuel industry.

Families are dying from the impact of the climate crisis, and it's important we try and keep everything in perspective. We need to target what matters most.

@Phlaps

Why so little acknowledgement that it's an energy TRANSITION that's required rather than: "Renewables good, gas bad and talking sensibly about nuclear is too hard"?

The gas taps can't just be turned off overnight

@Phlaps - sory if it hasn't come across in this feed, but I don't think that's correct in terms of our campaign work. We support Paid to Pollute and Stop Cambo together with our own campaign and all three have a strong focus on a just transition. We understand fully that the taps can't be turned off and most certainly shouldn't be in many countries withing the Global South. But we are also painfully aware that this isn't news and the transition so far has been painfully slow. Also that we can't even use the reserves we already have if we are to have a hope of sticking to 1.5degrees of global warming.

@Heruka

I disagree with those advocating for a virtual summit. These are such sensitive diplomatic interactions - humanity is required. We are lucky to have virtual technologies of course, but they are a poor cousin of eye contact, feel and tone when trying to connect meaningfully with another person.

@Heruka I'm really with you on this. This is a massively important opportunity for our leaders to try to agree on measure to secure a safe and hopeful future and more just, safer present for many. It's imperative it's face to face.

@Cattenberg

Thank you for doing this. Please ignore the sneerers. I’d be interested to know how it goes.

@cattenberg the negative comments are also massively helpful. While we are a small grassroots organisation we want it to be as inclusive as possible. So it's really important we try as much as possible to understand everyone's concerns and perspectives. We need everyone and won't achieve this if we stay in an eco bubble.

But maybe it's also important for us to say that we don't actually want to be doing this. I don't want to be away from my kids this week. I'd like to have a night in front of the TV instead of thinking about what I could be doing better to try and secure a safe future for my kids and for all those families suffering the devastating impacts on our climate inaction right now. But at present, despite the rhetoric from business and governments, global carbon emissions continue to rise. We both have 3 and 7 year olds, so sitting back and turning our heads the other way isn't an option.

So happy you are keen to know how it goes. Please do take a look on our social media feeds for updates! And THANKS SO MUCH for the support.

@Maireas

What do you think is the single most important thing an ordinary person can do, which will have an impact, or are we past that stage now?.

@Mairaes - I think I've answered this elsewhere now.

But VOTE!!! And use your voice, and add your voice to a wider community. Sign petitions. Write to your MP. WE are not the cause of climate change. The systems we have in place are in. And I'm afraid at least in the country, absolutely nothing will change in this respect with a conservative Government.