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?

@twinkletoesimnot

"Heard of calf at foot dairies?"

Yes, but what percentage of the dairy consumed in the U.K. is produced at one of those?? I'd be extremely surprised if it was as high as 1%?

I don't think there's many of those, and it's still an issue that male calves are killed at such a young age. Dairy is a cruel industry. As for meat, aren't there societies which eat a very low meat diet and seem quite healthy, in Pakistan or India for instance? People in the Hunza Valley used to have one of the longest life expectancies.

ebikes should be more affordable and the cyclist/motorist relationship vastly improved. I walk everywhere I can, if it’s too far to walk I cycle, if it’s too far to cycle I drive.

@twinkletoesimnot

"That's not true either...."

So are you saying calves aren't removed from their mothers?? I'm afraid I'm the massively vast majority of cases they are here in the U.K. please

Sorry posted too fast! Please share your sources to show this isn't routine practice in most dairy farms.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=oahihUHPyGs

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

Amazon already have lots of collection "lockers", so it wouldn't be much of a problem for them to "incentivise" people to use them by offering free delivery to a locker or a charge for delivery to a home (end the free delivery via Amazon Prime subscription). If people had to pay a few pounds for the convenience of home delivery as opposed to it being free to collect it from outside the local supermarket, it would really drive behaviour.

Even better would be a national scheme of delivery lockers which all online retailers/couriers could use, including Royal Mail, to reduce the volume of all the other delivery vans driving from house to house delivering relatively small parcels.

@spinachmonster

You said 'all' you have now changed to vast majority.

Even one is a step in the right direction isn't it?

Change doesn't happen overnight- especially when £££ is involved.

Anyway, as I said above, not looking to waste my breath on an argument when we will never agree. Too busy looking after my cows and kids to find sources today, when let's face it - you won't bother to read them.
You can't even read the vegan propaganda and see that for what it is.....

Tackle the disposable culture- clothes that are worn twice, washing machines that break after 3 years, cars that can’t be fixed after 10 years,

Also stop car insurance companies writing off cars that could be repaired.

My 13 year old car was "written off" last year by a moronic neighbour who reversed into it. Damage was only cosmetic, but her insurance company didn't inspect it, didn't even look at photos of it. They just wrote it off because of it's age based on my description of the damage!

I bought it off the insurance company, who gave me £2,200 (value was £2,500 less £300 "scrap" value). It only cost me £1,500 to have the bodywork fixed and the car MOT'd to get it back on the road.

It's madness that so many "repairable" cars are written off and end up in scrapyards just because the insurance firms are too lazy to inspect them! (Not helped of course by "approved" accident repair firms grossly overcharging to fix them!).

I will say if you really believe modern farming isn't in any way cruel, I'm afraid you haven't seen the reality of farming (I have, sadly. I grew up with it all around me.)

I don't believe you. I think you have got everything you know from YouTube.

No one who has genuinely grown up around farming would start waffling on about cows being forcibly impregnated. It's straight out of the the vegan propaganda handbook. It's nonsense.

Why do vegans always claim they have extensive knowledge of farming when it's so painfully obvious from the way they phrase things that they haven't the foggiest idea.

I'm laughing at the suggestion that instead of eating the cows and sheep we should just eat the crops they eat instead.

Have fun munching on your grass then I suppose? That's pretty much all my cows and sheep eat!

Close the US.

I find it endlessly frustrating that my personal efforts at recycling, repairing and reusing are pointless whilst the largest nations on the planet continue to pump out pollution.

Trouble is those largest nations are producing pollution as they're manufacturing the stuff we buy! So we should be reducing our consumption, not obsessing about recycling! We, as a country (like most of the Western World), have basically "outsourced" our manufacturing pollution to those countries. In just the same way we used to ship our waste over to the Far East for "recycling" which basically meant they dumped it over there instead of us dumping it over here!

As a non-driver living in Bristol, I can tell you that it's utter shite for public transport.

"If people had to pay a few pounds for the convenience of home delivery as opposed to it being free to collect it from outside the local supermarket, it would really drive behaviour."

In that case we would pay to have it delivered or drive to the supermarket. We have a lot of home deliveries because we need specialist items not available in the shops, it is difficult for us to leave the house and we don't have lots of time to go wandering about several miles getting individual items.

It's a hell of a lot better and more affordable than many many other places.

Looks like the planet is working on it. Maybe humans don't need any help eliminating ourselves, though. We are doing a pretty good job of it ourselves. The recent heatwave has been alarming, but nobody is suggesting changing anything. Plenty of people driving about, jumping on flights, buying aircon, endless loads of washing being done - only occasionally wondering why it's so hot.

Ban private kets and ban bottled water

Most of the specifics have already been said. All of it should have been implemented at all the times we’ve stopped to say that things need to be changed, back in the 80s, the 90s, early 00s, 2008, 2016. I’ve given up hope of it changing now as greed and individualism is too entrenched and it seems that the very tools needed to change are no longer the subject of discussion. Instead, every single time there have been calls for change, the pedal of globalist consumerism was pushed further to the floor to enable the extreme wealth of the few.

What’s needed is a complete paradigm shift to enable humans to see themselves as part and parcel of the planet’s ecology. Perhaps all those carbon tax and allowances schemes for individuals that have been talked about over the years should be put in place at long last. We should be enabling caution, thrift and localised small improvements.

I'm with you on flights and perhaps meat. Water is a life essential so you'd need a non-transferable minimum allowance. Also in practice that would imply cutting off water if you'd exceeds your allowance, which would be unmanageable.

Also ban short "Just Eat" and "Deliveroo" deliveries by car/van, and allow only cycles to deliver fast food over short distances. It's crazy, especially when it's so often old/polluting cars delivering a McDonalds from just a few streets away. Why can't the lazy oafs either make their own meals or walk/cycle to pick it up themselves?

• immediately halt all new oil projects and switch to developing renewable energy infrastructure - focussing on wind power in the uk
• encourage corporate divestment from oil
• Massive tax on flights with higher rates for frequent flyers and business class flyers (i know this one would be unpopular)
• massive push for electric cars and vans with a trade in incentive and strong infrastructure
• strengthen reliability and regularity of public transport locally so people feel less inclined to use cars.
• Invest in heavily in rewilding schemes (done properly, using native plant species)
• Slow down new housing plot development, instead focusing on first repurposing existing unused buildings in town centres to create desirable social/affordable housing and regenerate empty/ghost town centres or shopping malls in village communities with spaces for communal gardens/allotments/play areas.
• high tax on meat and animal products

Into* village communities

For all those looking for some optimistic news on wind energy click here. For hydrogen try here.

Wind energy is set to grow by 500% within ten years, hydrogen production by 6000%

Redistribute land and wealth, not completely, but sufficiently so that everyone had enough land and enough time to work it to produce a decent proportion of their own food.

The food is healthier, tastes better, and the exercise would be good for you. Zero food miles.

But then capitalism depends on the majority living unhealthy lives, for themselves and the planet.

You're not having any of my land.

I like the idea! There was a lot more land available to us peasants before the enclosure acts drove us into cities to work for the industrial revolution. Common land for food used to be a thing.