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?

It's not destroying the environment. Go out and do it

In many ways it doesn’t really matter anymore what people say they are prepared and not prepared to do many of the current choices we have will change/be removed it’s just a matter of time.

Those who thought a nice holiday in Bordeaux this summer, or food crops wiped out in Asia right now, the Acropolis being shut during high summer, coral reef bleaching across the world, in the UK we are currently fortunate that we can naval gaze and mull over what we might be able to give up, but some of these choices will be removed no matter what we do as individuals.

Flash flooding could hit almost any house in the UK, clearly dropping its value, because house prices is something we care about.

In the UK right now we are all too selfish to be of much use to cooperate climate action, people don’t like poor children having funding to create opportunities, or disabled people having any spare cash to have a day out, or pick up their own dog shit, or take their own little away, or not burn smoky fuel in garden fires, or keep their woodburners in a fully centrally heated house because it’s cosy, they can’t be bothered to mow grass so install plastic grass because they like the look but oh no that icky mud which comes with it, the list is truly endless.

The future generations will look back on this generation (Gen X mainly now) and quite rightly say they were/are as selfish environmentally as boomers are financially.

We, as a species, have had plenty of warnings from actual scientific data, we have had plenty of elections to demand action from our politicians but we have ignored, and continue to ignore it all. If anything we have gone in the opposite direction.

If lack of taxpayers is your issue then currently just an under 50% of those in work don't pay any tax plus another 1 in 5 are economically inactive. It would be better to change that situation rather than further expand the UK population on an increasingly crowded island.

Flash flooding - okay build flood barriers and flood defenses then. Sorted

Population control does not require the killing of people, contraception and smaller families achieves that.

The UK fertility rate is now at r 1.39 children per woman for England and Wales in 2025, sharply down from 1.9 in 2010 and remaining well below the 2.1 replacement level. Cost is a large factor in this.

But it can happen because road drains become completely overwhelmed, so you have no idea when and where it can happen. It can happen miles away from a river.

It can happen to almost any house/business at any time.

It’s not, build a barrier - sorted.

But when it’s people’s house price in the firing line people do listen a bit. Because it’s all everyone cares about.

And cost is directly related to how well our planet can sustain us, so just naturally climate change is already enforcing changes on some people’s choices. And it will continue to increase these small at first but gradually increasing circumstances when red meat becomes so expensive it is a twice a month treat, when councils ban woodburners because air pollution is so bad, when you pick holidays with lower risk of wildfires, or heatstroke or flooding.

These restrictions are coming whether we consciously make changes or not.

So build flood protection

Where?

The problem is that until big organisations and the government make the changes, the tiny things we do are so negligible.

We had natural flood protections in fields, but new builds cover a lot of fields that used to protect the village in the middle, a lot of places haven’t had a flash flood so people think “well it’s never flooded here before” but then it’s just never been swamped with rain when the new housing was built, or the number of driveways or plastic grass covering pockets of land that used to soak up water.

You can put flood protection in as a home owner, but as a nationwide expense? Not going to happen, it’s hard enough for communities who have a river that bursts its banks to get effective flood protection, water is heavy, fast moving water is impossible to stop, that’s physics and we can’t control that.

It’s easier and cost effective to just accept their will be some unlucky houses, couple of hundred houses lose their value, not really that much of a problem overall.

Would be easier to demand all driveways and gardens to be green paving, but even the home owners whose houses might be saved would be “oh I’m not doing that I don’t like it”.

We managed to collectively reduce carbon emissions during Covid so we could do it again if the will was there. We hardly took the car out, holidays in the UK, bought very little other than food. Actually those things were fine ( not saying lock down was fine just some aspects of it ).

Who wants to live like COVID forever?

No government is going to lockdown their citizens for climate change.

You could equally say next pandemic let nature take it cause and survival of the fittest, that would equally help reduce omissions.

Hard enough to get flood protection okay then change that. I'd rather a nation wide flood protection upgrade than any performative cutting emissions nonsense given we have no impact

Honestly nothing we do as households will help until China stops emitting 30 percent of the worlds co2 and Trump et al stop bombing relentlessly.

Exactly

Climate change is already at the equator and rapidly heading north and south.

When it finally really hits the UK, when we might just see a call for cooperative action it will be far too late, far too late.

Once a certain number of tipping points hit, and the globe isn’t that far off, we are at about 1.4C rise, the educated guess is 2C, it’s then runaway disaster after runaway disaster.

We live so far removed from what sustains us nowadays, like plastic grass, get that icky soil away, whereas soil is everything, no healthy soil, we are utterly screwed, but soil isn’t pretty or glamorous is it? It can’t be photographed and make people envious or marketed as a desirable product.

What might help is a social nudge if more people stopped revering carbon selfish lifestyles. If the desire to grow rather than buy, to cycle rather than drive, to have a natural look rather than fake, to have fewer clothes but are worn well, to have just enough not ample, if these things were valued over greed and status we might, might be able to slow climate damage enough to adapt enough. Maybe.

Wonder how ivankas development of her 'undiscovered island" impacts?
When people who could make a change actually do, then lets talk.
In the meantime i live a good life. I compost. I recycle. I buy as much eco products as i can. And i also love my holidays.

Well, I have 2 DDs, but they’re adopted. I therefore didn’t reproduce, though this wasn’t a deliberate decision to reduce my carbon footprint, I was just infertile.

I don’t eat dairy (I’m intolerant, due to suffering from acid reflux) but I do eat meat. I also eat eggs. I’m not changing anything there because I also struggle with gluten. It’s hard enough finding food I can eat without feeling unwell.

My family and I hardly ever fly, though we are this year because of a family wedding. We do drive, though.

We’re also careful to recycle.

There’s nowhere for large amounts of water to go.

Water companies struggle to fix leaks, they struggle to cope with the amount of sewage water just for normal living.

Where does the water go?

When there was predictable amounts of rain it got soaked in, but after a dry spell like now the ground is so hard that even normal amounts of rain flood off because the soil can’t absorb it until it is a bit damp.

This is a direct consequence of carbon emissions, papering over the cracks does not solve the root cause.

So yes @Sdmfn your or your children’s house could end up worthless through flooding, as could ours, although we did think about this 20 years ago (because it’s been known about for decades) and bought a house at the top of the village (never buy at the bottom of a slope). And the houses in the nice old roads in the middle of the village, have flooded x3 times in past 5 years, not knee deep but through the doorways. Some homeowners have installed storm drains, the road gutters are now regularly cleared, a stock of sandbags are available, but it still might not be enough. Where can the barriers go? Along pavements so you can’t cross outside your block our you have to jump a barrier, wade across the road then jump another barrier? It could be an adventure but not very practical. So where do they go? Because the only place in most towns away from houses are the roads, but that cuts people off from work, emergency services, education, food.

It’s not possible to barrier the land. You just have to hope the rain clouds miss you!

Never been on a plane. Don't do dairy. Don't drive.

I have no interest in becoming vegan as malnutrition on top of coeliac disease and the inherent contamination in much of the food chain is a bit of a downer. And if there is something that makes my life easier or more comfortable, I will buy it.

Vegetarian for 50 years. Last flight 18 years ago. Clothes vinted. Solar panels,2 batteries,all electric. Batch cook. Washing line dried,full loads only. I'm 75, of the make do and mend era. I darn socks.old duvet cover was made into curtains a couple of years ago. 6 water butts,4 greenhouses,grown a lot of our own fruit and veg. Did the carbon footprint, said it was low, but I need to get an electric car,or use public transport. I live on the edge of a village. Last time I got a bus, I was travel sick. I can't afford an electric car,on my pension.

Do you wish to fly and travel and broaden your horizons?

Improve drainage and storage