Are we really happier just not knowing? Ecosystem collapse as national security threat.

[EveryNowAndZen]

Anything that starts "What [insert the government / the tax man / your GP etc] doesn't want you to know..." usually gets a hard swerve from me because I find it so unnecessarily conspiratorial. But this podcast, a conversation facilitated by Caroline Lucas, discussing the Joint Intelligence Committee report Global Biodiversity Loss, Ecosystem Collapse and National Security, felt very topical as we lumber on toward another week of high temperatures. Climate scientists and environmental activists have cautioned about the societal implications of biodiversity loss for decades; global accountancy, actuarial and insurance firms have flagged the impact of a changing climate very openly for the last 10 years. In our lifetime, and certainly in those of our children, we will see societal change across continents, where power is increasingly leveraged on access to resources such as water and crops.

How is this not what we all expect to see at the top of any party political manifesto, spoken about in more specific, illustrative detail than simply 'the climate crisis'? Or is it, as the podcast title implies, that we're all happier not knowing?

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/696e0eae719d837d69afc7de/National_security_assessment_-_global_biodiversity_loss__ecosystem_collapse_and_national_security.pdf

https://open.spotify.com/episode/6h1wZLd8iSJuEKXbOV0WdT?si=rBXJfN4FQkKFbVo0LuvG3w&utm_source=copy-link

Do you ever have a nightmare where you're shouting or screaming, but everyone around you can't hear and just carry on doing what they're doing? That's how I feel about this. It's been a threat for ages, and almost nobody wants to listen.

You only have to listen to Trump, Maga, Reform and their followers on the subject to see how many don't take it seriously - 'it's summer, it's supposed to be hot', 'there's always been changes in climate, look at the ice age', 'I'm not adhering to a hosepipe ban, I pay for my water and the fat cat bonuses of water company executives' etc etc

I don't think they'll take it seriously until they're having to get their 10l of water a day from a standpipe, watching their children go hungry and seeing the forced migration of millions due to climate change.

They'd rather get their facts from some loud mouth on social media with no background in climate science than listen to experts who've spent their lives studying the subject and coming up with solutions.

@moggerhanger I'd want to listen, but also feel completely useless. DH and I made a lot of choices which have made our own lives more expensive/difficult in the name of being eco friendly only to discover down the line that many times the choice we made had negative environmental implications anyway. We've researched and invested in companies doing good things globally only for them to be purchased later by multinationals who don't have the same credentials in an attempt to green wash.

We almost didn't have children because it's the biggest environmental impact factor around but eventually we said there has to be a balance. We can shout, march, shop local and organic, invest and vote in the best way based on the information we have at the time but this is also our one and only life. Spending it being terrified for the future or making huge sacrifices now which seem to be a drop in the ocean compared with the global efforts feels like it's too much of a burden on the individual. Which is why I suspect many others prefer not to listen/engage with the conversation at all.

For decades some people have been saying that they likely cause or war in the future will be water.
I think this hot spell across Europe, which is affecting the natural order, invasive foreign animals and plants which are having devastating effects on indigenous species, is just the start.

Individual choices do nothing and change nothing. Governments aren’t willing to change and listen, until then nothing will improve. Those governments who do go on about heading towards ‘net zero’ are not the biggest causers of the issue and their impact will also be negligible. I don’t see there being any positive outcome, as the worlds big polluters will continue and we will all keep sending our waste their way as they want the money more than a long term solution.

But this has been mainstream news for all my adult life.

The trick to sensible policymaking (or being sensible in general) is to recognise things can be big and real and serious but also not, with 100% conviction the biggest and only thing. Or we can only manage one issue at one and risk making terrible policy.

Why, for example, are worries about catastrophic AI scenarios “at the top of every party manifesto”? A significant portion of very informed people who are close to it think there’s a decent chance AI will kill us all. Not everything can be top of every list.

Or why not bioterrorism? Or radical depopulation, or many other catastrophic scenarios that aren’t crazy at all.

Because if we think like there must be one overriding crisis the whole time we will be constantly caught off guard and constantly in a panic. And a lot of the time we will be solving the wrong problem.

It’s a bit like blind loyalty to a commander in chief in a war setting. Yes sometimes it’s needed, but it can also erode critical thinking and lead every problem to look like a crisis.

I hear you. Every farmer I know is worried. Some are talking about giving up farming. There will be a food crisis at some point, with shortages and even more price inflation.

Write to your MP with your concerns and what you want to see happen. Mine has been really responsive.

Honestly I do believe we are better off not thinking or knowing about this. Its the very nature of humans to be completely captive to short term thinking and selfishness. The climate is changing and we will do nothing about it. As always, less well off people will suffer vastly more.
Love those around you and seek to enjoy as much of your life as possible, thats all we can do.

@GeneralPeter Yes, perhaps my phrasing was a bit broad brush with reference to the manifestos -it is certainly possible to hold multiple concerns in mind at once. But the environmental threat is, for humans, existential. I think we're at a point where, to use your words, 'catastrophic' no longer sits in the 'crazy' corner.

@SD1978 This is a trope carted out by lots of climate sceptics: individual choices have no impact, the plane will leave the runway anyway, China this and the US that, is that a smartphone you're typing on? I think individual agency absolutely matters, and I think some groups of environmental activists scripted the 'government change, not individual change' very deliberately in the last decade, partly because change in government policy has greater impact, but also because people are resistant to messaging which implies curtailment of personal choice, convenience and comfort.

@Bikenutz yes, I know some dairy farmers who are considering their options. A food crisis is inevitable. We grow some of our own food on an allotment -it keeps us going between June to September, and we only really buy in protein in this time. But it's been relentless keeping the crops going this summer with the persistent heat and limited water -we're shading for the first time and mulching really heavily to lock in moisture. Even the fruit trees, which should be resilient, are showing signs of heat stress. Crops which we would normally keep ticking over such as leafy greens are frazzling before our eyes.

Yes the nightmare is reality before our very eyes

@dairydebris But I've got DC, so don't feel like I can be so philosophical about it. Like @twothingscanbetrue describes, DP and I had both been engaged in environmental causes before having DC and, wrongly, as it turns out, thought it would only be a matter of time before the climate issue would become more broadly recognised and we would see positive change. Surely, we would not, as a population, ignore the evidence and carry on regardless? We 'risk assessed' and decided that, on balance, we would have DC. Our one precious life etc. So yes, of course we can hold our circles close, but it is hard to see that so little seems to be changing in terms of effort to reverse and mitigate and so much is changing in terms of catastrophic impact, while mine, and everyone else's DC, will be left to face the consequences of our preference for simply 'not knowing'. Heartbreaking.

@EveryNowAndZen I’d agree with it being a catastrophic risk (I doubt it’s existential in the sense of killing all of humanity, but that’s a very high bar).

I think the moral-crusade aspect of net zero has been a double-edged sword though. And I think making it the top of every list would make that worse.

Double-edged because it’s shut down a lot of sensible policy discussions. Like, environmentalism became anti-nuclear power in the 1970s and that became a core part of the environmentalist identity. I think that turn did massive harm to the climate. I think the UK’s net zero targets would be achieved much quicker and cheaper if we focused on the best overseas projects over expensive UK ones, but we don’t because a politician who advocated that would risk be attacked as being a denialist (by the left) or wasting money overseas (by the right). There’s big MN opposition to summer air conditioning that there isn’t to winter heating (even though that’s massively more carbon-intensive) because it’s about political identity more than actual impact. Etc.

It’s too late. Climate change is heading one way. The only hope is if science can come up with miraculous things. The human race is heading towards extinction (which probably isn’t a bad thing for this planet).

This makes me angry, and I don't mean you posting it OP, am glad you've done so. Was listening to Neil McCoy-Ward talking about it yesterday on his channel and honestly it just beggars belief, but not for the reasons some PPs have mentioned.

We can thank Labour for making life so hard for our farmers that many are giving up. Why do we have potential food shortages? Because we are shooting ourselves in the foot and not supporting farmers. The UK government is making things much worse.

There's another document that covers the alleged 'cyber attack' risks that could target our water supply and cause severe water shortages. But no mention that data centres, 562 at the current count (which will be designated as 'essential services' - link below) are sucking up water at an alarming rate, and more data centres are being built, to add to it.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cyber-security-and-resilience-network-and-information-systems-bill-factsheets/data-centres

https://www.datacentermap.com/united-kingdom/

Look at the 2026 Risk Register, 9 new categories added this year!

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6a50d66b1228eb26a4cab76c/National_Risk_Register_2026.pdf

I feel the public are being set up for something with all these dire warnings (don't forget Russia is going to attack and we'll be at war soon!). I'm not even sure I want to say it out loud, but I've a very bad feeling about all this.

@GentleSheep The contents page of the National Risk Register deserves a screenshot:

I remember reading a global logistical forecast by PricewaterhouseCooper around 10 years ago, looking specifically at impact on intercontinental transport and shipping of goods (including food and medical supplies) of a changing climate and anticipated effects, and it was similarly shocking to see really dire scenarios spelled out with eye- watering candour and rated 'highly likely'. And this information is published online for anyone to access -it's not some secret.

@GeneralPeter For me, the anti-nuclear stance represents a very painful bit of cognitive dissonance, which, as you describe sits at the heart of much of the climate debate. I was raised on anti-nuclear marches, experienced the Chernobyl fall out at significantly closer range than the UK, and have remained very cautious around the idea of nuclear power being some kind of uranium bullet for the carbon crisis. My brain literally hurts when I sit with the fact that there is this capacity to generate vast amounts of 'clean' energy, yet the byproduct is so unbelievably toxic that it can not truly be considered safe, as we cannot control its safe-keeping beyond our own lifetime -we're leaving our DC with very serious problems either way.

There are far wider implications than your post suggests, though. The Institute of Actuaries and the university of Exeter produced a report last year that is truly alarming, but I haven’t seen anyone speak of it.

They predicted that by 2050, climate change will result in between 80 million and 4 billion human deaths. There should be much wider acceptance of this because false optimism is preventing people from facing what is going to happen in a very short time scale.

https://actuaries.org.uk/document-library/thought-leadership/thought-leadership-campaigns/climate-papers/planetary-solvency-finding-our-balance-with-nature/

I’m really worried about this. Not just loss of biodiversity but how insecure as a country we are regarding food supplies. Locally thousands of acres of prime arable land are being given over to solar panel farms.

So losing even more wheat, barley, etc. i don’t blame the farmers, if they’re not making money by growing crops who can blame them. But they should be able to make money from growing crops.

I accept we need to improve our ability to produce energy but i believe we should have solar panels on roofs not fields. Use verges and central reservations on motorways, etc. make car parks have solar panel “roofs” above them, make all new houses have to have solar panels. Don’t use decent agricultural land.

@HoppityBun I've just cast my eyes over the linked report -that is shocking! I hope others take a minute to look at it too. One would think that reports like this would be much more in the public eye -afterall, the impacts will be felt by us all directly, it's right there in black and white. It's like @moggerhanger says, the nightmare in which nobody hears you stream.

We only have 50 years left of oil and natural gas left.
As we approach the end of it, imagine the conflicts to get hold of the remaining dwindling supplies.
Canada is burning to the ground as we speak. Almost 1000 wildfires at once, some 50k-100k hectares big.
Look at the weather changes we’ve experienced in the past 10 years.
It’s not heading in a positive direction.

I am just so sad

People don't give a shit, do they, as long as they can do what they want.

I went to the shops this morning, and as I passed people's front gardens there was one thing that stood out a mile. Almost none of them were actual gardens with grass, soil, plants etc. I'd say that 19 out of 20 of them were a car park with no living thing visible at all. Most of the ground was entirely covered with an impermeable surface that will cause any rain to run straight off and not into the soil at all. Not a single living thing can find a home in their so-called 'gardens'. The biggest irony was the sheer number of (lets all pat ourselves on the backs) electric & hybrid vehicles that were parked on the least environmentally friendly gardens you could possibly get.

Just what is the fucking point?