If you ruled the world, what would you implement to help with climate change

[GiraffeInTheCity]

Daydreaming if world domination whilst doing a rain dance...

If you ruled unilaterally, what would you do to make things (anything) more climate friendly? I would

• set net zero targets for much sooner (net zero 2050/2030 feels like ages given the emergency) and would require companies to have solid plans to get there. Probably set it for the next 3 to 5 years. Massive fines if you don't meet targets.

• mandate large scale public transport infrastructure upgrades in big cities where there isn't enough (tax the billionaires to pay for it) and make driving in them difficult (ULEZ, scant parking etc)

• renationalise energy and water, with the view to run it on clean energy and without pumping effluent into the rivers / sea. I imagine there would need to be massive upgrades here too to achieve that. Not renationalising because the private sector is being a bunch of thieves dishonest, But because things need to move quickly now, this is an emergency.

• make eating meat / dairy / fish illegal (I know I'll get flamed for this one...) --

-- What would you do?

@StartupRepair I know! We need a benevolent dictator 😂 (or this mumsnet thread) to run the country

I feel the same. I have family living on the other side of the world. We just zoom call or whatever and have rare meet ups. That's the way of it.

@Maireas @GiraffeInTheCity @SergeiL Aviation currently accounts for less than 2% of all global emissions and is currently investing massive amounts of money to decarbonise.

Along the same lines as you, OP.
Stop fossil fuels use.
Stop creating things that are reliant on fossil fuels.
Stop making cities car-centric.
Stop logging rainforests, end subsistence farming and find alternative work for the people who have to provide income for their families but who are being exploited.
Ban third/fourth homes. If you have a second home it should be let out for a period to help with holiday seasons etc.
No flying to business meetings/conferences- do it on zoom, etc.
No private jets.
No households with more than 2 cars, so ensure public transport is efficient and affordable.
Green and sustainable build technologies only.
Stop factory farming and reduce livestock/food animal production. I wouldn't stop people eating meat but it doesn't need to be daily and should be responsibly farmed.
Likewise limit fishing for the same reason.
Review and rebrand what holidays are, and how they are taken.
Stop billionaires pissing around with space visits/tourism and focus on saving the planet we inhabit.
That would be a start.

Micro renewable generation is very inefficient, wind turbines in particular get more efficient and cost effective as they get bigger. Maintenance of large arrays of both solar and wind is much easier compared to lots of small installations.

There are plenty of companies who install solar on large roofs.

Bristol is something of an exemplar for public transport networks.

Allotments

@Scrowy

Totally 100% agree with you!
In fact I think I would try to restrict herd sizes, although this would be very difficult.

I would ban or at least severely restrict the use of palm oil and soya.

Definitely flights for me.
No private jets.
No flying planes that are not at least nearly full.
During lockdown with no flights the air was cleaner and pollution dropped massively - I really hoped it would be a force of change, but of course it wasn't.

It's interesting how different people have different perspectives.
Maybe a carbon credit quota per head to be used as you want.
Flights if you have enough credits. Car if you have enough credits etc

The farming is difficult though because you can't blanket say meat / dairy because the difference in a grass fed, locally sourced product and an imported steak from a feed lot in Argentina or New Zealand lamb is just incomparable.

I think working towards a higher self sufficiency rate would be highly beneficial.

This is gathering pace. There are already requirements in some sectors for extended producer responsibility, in automotive the requirement is currently that 85% can be recycled. This will be extended to all sectors.

The simplest way to deal with plastic would be to have a minimum recycled content requirement along with EPR. This would create a market for recyclate and if there is a market companies will invest in the facilities capitalise on it.

Whilst the 2% is true, that relates simply to the travel itself, and not the industry it takes to make it happen, the manufacturing, the buildings required etc.

It is also something that the average person can do to make a difference. Many of the other drivers of emissions cannot be easily influenced by the average person.

Anyway, my point is, people have a mindset and that is what needs to be changed. The same as my Amazon habit. The same as the people who need a new car every few years. The same as the people who don’t believe a meal is complete without meat on the plate.

Of course there are the people who have family across the world who they wish to visit. But there are also many more people who need their ‘abroad holiday’ fix at least once a year and are not prepared to give that up.

My personal opinion is that you can't do much about climate change without basically dismantling capitalism.

Which will never happen.

Start a national educational/apprenticeship programme to recruit and train young people into jobs and careers to re-engineer our way of living. Some of the areas we could recruit and train for:

• Road restructuring to prioritise cycling, public transport, electric vehicles, pedestrians and to make private car ownership less desirable.

• Water security and cleanliness (testing water quality, fixing leaks, using grey water in toilets, desalination, end dumping of sewage, etc).

• Retrofitting older properties to both stay warm in winter and cool in summer, be energy efficient, installation of solar panels and heat pumps.

• Ending use of plastic except where necessary - companies would need to apply for a permit to produce something plastic, so no to plastic toys and tat and packaging, yes to medical equipment and essential machinery parts, for example. We will need people to engineer and produce the non-plastic alternatives.

• Engineering, design and production of alternatives for transport, home appliances, industrial production, construction.

So many challenges for our young people, and we could be subsidising their training in essential careers.

I would require:

All new build houses to have solar panels and to require design plans to incorporate solar efficiency where at all possible

Flight taxes - everyone gets one 'tax free' pleasure flight per year. Any subsequent pleasure flights (e.g. holidays are taxed incrementally). All 'non-critical' business travel flights are taxed. Exemptions to made for 'emergency/essential' personal flights.

All 'non-critical' (e.g. medical emergency etc.) private jet flights are heavily taxed.

@SergeiL Something like 99% of aviation emissions come from kerosene combustion compared to manufacturing the aircraft, I'm not sure about ground ops, I'll have to look it up. It just concerns me that some people might take avoiding flying and meat production as the be all and end all when they very much are not.

The "final mile" of delivery by Amazon etc is actually a massive problem.

I would make it a condition of planning that any new house built should have its own means of generating renewable energy, and a battery to store excess. They should all be "eco" with excellent insulation etc.

I would ban the installation of new gas boilers into properties that don't already have one, no new gas supplies to be connected. All new properties or currently off grid properties should be heated with an air or ground source heat pump or an electric system fed in part by the house's own electricity generation.

I would force all electricity companies to start moving customers to flexible time of use tariffs so that electricity is cheaper when we are generating lots of renewable energy.

I would invest directly in hydro electric power, solar, and wind, rather than relying on private companies to do it. The public purse should benefit from power generated by solar/wind/water not private companies.

Well, that's something at least.
It's probably not great to have umpteen flights a year though, currently.

@WillPowerLite education and skills is really serious. Sustainability needs to be on the national curriculum and a module of every University course. We also need upskill and reskill many of our technical trades to new technologies.

@Daftasabroom I agree but also people say well 2% here and 3% there don’t matter so I won’t bother changing but all those little percents add up. I think it would be really useful for people to know what they can do to make a difference.

Selfishly, I also just do not know what I would eat if I wasn't allowed meat, eggs or dairy. I am intolerant to pulses, beans and chickpeas. I can't eat soya. I can eat small amounts of nuts but not that much. And things like almonds are hideous for the environment anyway. I can't just eat plates if vegetables as they just go through me.

I'd basically be condemned to eating bread and potatoes for the rest of my life and I'm not sure I am happy to accept that.

What I would do (UK focussed):

Subsidise electric bikes, and provide free charging infrastructure everywhere for them. Mandate cycling facilities (cycle storage at the very least, with increased facilities as the building size increases).

Improve public transport, including high-ish speed rail infrastructure at the very least, as well as reducing costs. It says 1hr 20 minutes to make the 50 mile journey to my nearest city. The other city (also 50 miles away) takes only 50 minutes - which is great. However, the rail firm have recently got rid of the guard's van from the trains on that route so you can no longer take a bicycle without calling a number and booking a specific return trip, thereby again reducing the number of people who travel by rail. Good bus arrangements are also essential - in my town if you want to get to the station or the hospital 90% if the time you have to take 2 different buses to get there. This is really off-putting.

Make taxes on polluting vehicles much more punitive with rebates where required for work purposes (i.e. farmers) or where a certain number of hours voluntary work is done which requires them (i.e. we have a local 4*4 team which transports doctors and nurses to work in weather where public transport isn't running or rural roads aren't safe in anything but a 4x4)

Solar farms - these don't actually have to use farmland up, because if you put them on reasonable height legs they let enough light in underneath for plants to grow. Growth of various plants is actually improved by a lack of direct sunlight and it reduces irrigation requirements. Retrofit solar farms onto all suitable rooves. Recognising that we won't get rid of personal transportation i.e. cars, use solar panels to cover car parks - it will also reduce frost risk in winter and can be used to collect rainwater from areas where it would otherwise cause a run off flood risk.

Mandate solar panels on all new buildings.

Change building standards to passivhaus requirements and subsidise eco friendly retrofits to homes. I.e. exterior shutters etc.

Grey water systems as previously mentioned.

Massive tree planting exercise including in towns to reduce urban heat islands.

@Scrowy

Well, there are plenty of fertilisers which don't contain animal products. Kelp is great or food waste, also waste from the wine industry is meant to be incredible.

Please send me your info re. Animal agriculture emissions being vastly overstated? I've never seen anything reputable which supports dairy or meat production being good for the environment.

I agree that traditional farming methods are far less harmful than industrial farming, but they aren't generally economically viable and at the end of the day the animals live unnaturally short lives and still go into the slaughterhouse. - (as scared animals and come out chopped into little pieces- people like to tell themselves something 'humane' happened inside.....).

The point is we don't need animal products to be healthy, there is mounting evidence about this which is easy to find. It's both cruel and very bad for the environment.

Plus I never thought I'd be vegan but honestly, I feel way healthier than I've ever been before- mostly eating WFPB with biscuits / cake / choc every day but not having to worry about my weight!! . (Partner says the same and he was typical male meat eater.)

@spinachmonster

Don't want this to turn into a farmer / vegan argument- let's face it we'll never agree!

Traditional methods are seen as unviable against imported inferior products.
You can't afford to employ staff - which may be a problem on a 300 cow herd but on 30 cows? Not so much if an issue!

Certainly for most meat the animal's lives are cut short- that you cannot avoid, but kept well, fed well, and managed accordingly some native (albeit lower yielding) cows can live very long lives - up to their natural life span.
I have seen cows get into their late teens / 20s often. Agreed not many Holstein cows in top production herds - but personally I wouldn't farm these.

Milk and meat should be more expensive.
It's insulting for the animal and the farmer.
Consumption would decrease because of this.
If government wanted to ensure lower income families could afford it then they could subsidise accordingly.

Ban air travel.

Encourage two or less children per family in rich nations. (Two DC in the UK have a much higher carbon footprint than two DC in a much poorer nation).

Stop trees being cut down.
Encourage biodiversity.

Planting new trees is not a replacement for chopping down trees that have taken hundreds of years to reach full maturity.

Mature trees support lots of insect, bird and fungi life, a sapling cannot replace that.

Move to renewables only within 5 years.

Meat to be eaten much less, say maximum of twice a week.

Probably good job I don't rule the world. I wouldn't be popular!

Change has to be seismic or nothing happens, but it has to be achievable or again nothing happens.

Net zero in 3-5 won’t happen, so nobody will try.

Public transport anywhere needs to be free - that’s the seismic shift to get it used. But it takes an enormous cost.

Energy and water just needs a dividend restriction when there are leaks or underinvestment.

Your fourth, which you think you will get flamed for, is the most achievable of all in the same way that gradually banning smoking has been possible and highly effective.

Yes to meat being a luxury.
Expensive and well farmed, rather than the mass produced, race to the bottom it is currently.

The limit on air travel would have to be implemented world wide as otherwise people would fly to another country within their limit then take a plane on to their final destination.

The point is we don't need animal products to be healthy

lots and lots of people do. Eating a diet rich in fish and eggs and a little bit of red and white meat along loads of veg and some fruit that have been grown using natural fertilisers (livestock dung) is very healthy.

Are you trying to tell me eating that kind of diet is unnatural in comparison to swallowing a load of artificial pills and eating lab grown proteins?

there is mounting evidence about this which is easy to find

if by 'evidence' you mean vegan propaganda I agree, there is loads and it's permeated into popular thinking due to a carefully orchestrated campaign by powerful people in the media who have financial interests in as many people as possible buying mass produced vegan food.

If you dig down into who has funded that research and the usually extraordinary narrow focus of the study (e.g. on Brazilian feed lots) which has then been extrapolated to apply to all farming including e.g. low input native grazing cattle in permanent pasture in Yorkshire you find a very different picture.

if you don't believe me look up James Cameron's influence in Game Changers and what he has to gain from it.

It's both cruel and very bad for the environment

neither of these things are true of the vast majority of normal family farms in the UK.

www.vettimes.co.uk/news/impact-of-cattle-farming-on-greenhouse-gases-vastly-overstated/

www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/environment/2239637/environmental-impact-of-grazing-cattle-overestimated/

climateandcapitalism.com/2018/06/26/why-avoiding-meat-and-dairy-wont-save-the-planet/

I would make it much easier to construct renewable energy farms i.e. wind,solar.
The absolute idiots who claim they "ruin their view" would be completely ignored and this would not be a reason to stop planned farms.