With forest fires burning across Europe and another heatwave on the horizon, how much are you personally willing to change your lifestyle for future generations?

[Chocolatefreak]

Genuine question for discussion purposes. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that you believe tackling climate change and environmental degradation is a shared responsibility, involving not only governments and corporations but also individuals.

With that in mind, how much would you personally be willing to change your lifestyle if it meant giving future generations, including your children and grandchildren, a better chance of living on a stable, healthy planet?

For example, would you be willing to:

a) Dramatically reduce your consumption of meat and dairy, so that more agricultural land could be used to grow food directly for people rather than feed livestock?
b) Restrict air travel and most car journeys to occasions where they are genuinely necessary?
c) Stop buying more than you need, only getting clothing, gadgets, and other consumables only when they are genuinely necessary rather than for convenience or entertainment?

If not, where would you draw the line? What changes would you consider reasonable, and which would you consider asking too much?

Guess no one can answer this.

I enjoy listening to luxury travel podcasts as a kind of escapism (I haven’t been able to travel in years really due to various commitments). One thing that comes up a lot is very wealthy people describing how a tour of Antarctica is really life changing because they really saw the effects of climate change first hand. Of course their trip was all careful and well organised and caused minimal disruption and blah blah blah. I find the cognitive dissonance and arrogance astounding. It reminds me of the 90s rich kid gap year students who trotted off to Galapagos voluntourism turtle saving projects.
Anyway in answer to the question I do what I can to live sustainably but probably more motivated by finances, health, and a quest for simplicity than climate change if I’m honest.
I’m not 100% certain that if I won the lottery I wouldn’t be travelling a hell of a lot more. I’d still buy second hand everything though, apart from pants. And I’d draw the line at swanning around Antarctica.

And everyone's ignoring the carbon intensity of the economy. China's dirty coal driven economy.

Meanwhile other countries are destroying the planet with war and weapons.

On the first point, fair enough.

The second point just feels irrational to me. Obviously there’s an option d where you stay home and buy those same offsets four times a year, which would be even better for the environment.

But leaving that one aside, if you pick a over c becuase it makes you feel better, how’s that morally different from people who buy the 4x4, knowing the numbers, because it makes them feel better?

Yes to this.

I live in the US where data centers occupy entire counties and guzzle natural resources.

I do not own or operate a data center.

I do drive a small suv. It is a safe car with all wheel drive, which I need in snowy/icy winter conditions.
I haven't bought new clothes or footwear for at least 15 years (I buy secondhand).
I make do and mend.
I cook from scratch and eat very little meat, stick to seasonal ingredients.
I never order stuff from Amazon (packaging, transport).
I fly to see my elderly mum whenever I can afford a transatlantic flight and get the time off work.

Sure it does.

If I decide to stop burning wood to heat my house and instead switch to efficient modern heating, that reduces carbon emissions.

Just like switching from eating beef to eating vegetables in your example. If you reject that, you reject the logic behind home insulation, heat pumps, etc too.

If I instead pay to ensure someone else stops burning wood for fuel then the benefit is the same. It doesn’t stop becuase it’s too cheap or they are too foreign or something.

Why would it?

My dd is going to Dublin at the beginning of August for 5 days, her return flights were about £90 from Edinburgh.

I just googled and a ferry from Scotland to Belfast costs a minimum of £155 with 4 hours of driving on each leg of the journey.

This is why people use cars and planes instead of trians and ferries.

It's so easy to bash people whose lives you clearly know nothing about.

I really wish MNers would stop sneering at AC and repeating silly tropes like 'use dryers' and 'drive everywhere' without making any effort to understand that millions of Americans don't have handy back gardens with swivel clothes lines to hang out their washing on. They live in apartments, which save land and preserve the natural environment. Similarly, millions of Americans don't, in fact, drive everywhere, because they rely on public transport in the cities where they live, from busses to local trains to commuter rail, or even ferries.

And as for AC - it's not a mark of moral rectitude to boil your way through the heat and humidity of summer (or the other three seasons if you happen to live in a part of the US where it's always hot and humid). It is 94°F (approx 34°C) where I live today, and the humidity is about 72%. I make no apologies for turning on the AC and leaving it on all night. I need to sleep because I have a job to get to tomorrow.

Disposable cookware and plates? Seriously...

We've cut down on flying from (almost) once a year to once every five years. We're not prepared to stop flying completely when so many others aren't prepared to cut down at all.

We don't have a car at the moment and travel mainly by public transport.

I don't eat meat and DP only has it occasionally.

We're trying to be less wasteful when it comes to shopping, especially when buying single-use plastics and cheaply-made items which won't last long.

Who do you thinking is making most of the (non-food) items we buy? We can't just outsource our manufacturing to other countries and say the pollution caused by their factories is nothing to do with us!

Well it is true the average American generates 3x the carbon emissions of the average Brit. Your lifestyle does need to change.

The USA is in the top 10 of world polluters by capita.

The bashing is warranted, even if the specific examples are not very good.

Aristotle pretty much covered this in the Nicomachean Ethics, so the answer has been around for about two and a half thousand years. I don't want to fly because I make the moral judgement that not flying is better. That makes me feel good because I am acting in a way that aligns with my values. Buying a 4x4 because it feels safer - where I know they are horrible dangerous environmentally greedy things - would not align with my values.

I find it strange that the societal costs of flying are lost on you. I could carbon offset, I guess. But I would still be contributing to culture in which weekend flying on a whim is 'just the kind of thing people like us do.' It normalises flying and creates additional demand, which again, will have massive carbon costs.

I understand that other families will have things that matter to them in a way that changes the maths. For example, parents overseas. My best friend is visiting family in Poland this week and yes, I hope she will carbon offset her flights but also I know she is on a very tight budget and she probably won't.

Why should I push myself and my family to fly when I don't want to, where other choices feels better, and where not doing so leaves just a tiny bit more in a horribly overstretched planetary pot for others?

I don't think my adult kids are willing to do much. I've only got about 25 yrs left, but my kids have 50+ . They don't read MN so can't answer MN.

Guess they can't

The problem is us “normal” people could do all of your suggestions. We then have celebs/royals/wealthy jumping on planes for a half an hour trip.

I am disabled and rely on a lot of pre-cut veg/fruit. I’ve been told that I am “part of the problem” which seems unfair given the above .

Exactly. It’s all performative bollocks.

How are you the issue? Either it's pre cut or you would have cut it if you were able?

I have no idea, but I'd support one if the government came up with something! I suppose it would be an app where each person is allocated x miles per year and you could sell them if you didn't use them, save them up for a longer flight or buy more if available.

I basically have very little trust in populations doing things that make their lives less comfortable/convenient unless they are made to.

Glad we don't have this stupid model and people buy their flights with money

It’s the use of “excessive” plastic that comes with precut stuff. I understand that but without it done for me, I’d have to massively reduce what veg/fruit j could have for me and my daughter.

You'd still buy them with money but only if you had the miles available to you. Like food rationing in the War where you still had to pay for stuff but could only buy up to the amount in the ration book (unless you saved or swapped ration stamps).

Me and DH have been vegetarian for 40 years. We don't eat ultra processed food. We last flew in 2017. I am 72 and have only ever flown 6 times.

I rarely buy clothes and when I do they are often secondhand. Most of our furniture is secondhand.

We do have a petrol car but try not to make unnecessary journeys.

The normalising-flying one is interesting, though contestable (you are increasing demand, which as a first-order effect pushes prices up very slightly and means those seats can’t be taken by someone who probably wouldn’t offset. That turns those four seats from non-offset to offset. You might induce more supply or more demand too, especially if expansion is unconstrained. Which effect dominates isn’t clear to me)

The other one seems a plausible enough explanation. Neither you nor the 4x4 driver want to budge because you have a certain self-image to protect.

On your final para, we disagree on the premise (which is that flying-while-triple-offsetting leaves the planet worse off). You certainly don’t owe it to me to fly or not to fly!

I lived in a flat with no garden and no dryer. I still don’t have a dryer and it rains a lot where I live..I walk any distance mea than 2 miles, I have seen videos of Americans driving to the end of the street. There are videos of them just using disposable shit all the time. My best friend is American so I do actually have some insight. Maybe rather than get defensive do something about awareness.