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?

We recently enjoyed our holiday to Switzerland. Saw lots of lovely cities and towns. Saw beautiful lakes as well. We had a lovely time. We flew there and back.

Most of those places are out of reach in cost for most ordinary people and require a longer time than most people have holiday time for. India for example is massive and so culturally rich it deserves way longer more than a two week package!

Well my friends sailed to Australia via France, Gibraltar, the Canaries, Caribbean, through the Panama Canal to Fiji, and on to Aus. So saying you can't get to countries other by plane is rather ridiculous. I've sailed from the UK and around the med.

Lots of people do it.

You can get there very comfortably on a combination of Eurostar and excellent Swiss trains.

Yeah, that’s what I said.

I have said I’m vegan, don’t travel by plane and buy quality to reduce how much I buy. I do live in the world and don’t want my life to be too hard though so I’m not going to do things which would make my life lots harder due to time restrictions etc.

While I agree with your sentiment of living lightly on the planet and the need for all levels of society to be eco-consciousness your proposed solutions need further work.

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?
Agricultural land is not land where you can simply grow any crop or graze any farm animal. For example, try growing corn in the Welsh mountains instead of grazing sheep. Even on land where you can rotate between plant crops and grazing, the success of crops depends on the land being grazed to replenish its soil nutrients. In a nutshell, dramatically reducing meat and dairy isn’t going to free up land to grow crops to ‘feed people directly’. It’s a lot more complex.

b) Restrict air travel and most car journeys to occasions where they are genuinely necessary? Air travel only accounts for 11% of transport greenhouse emissions and the airlines are currently fielding the first versions of net zero aircraft. It’s better imho to continue to focus on road transport which accounts for 75% of transport emissions. To reduce emissions, reducing journeys is one way but unlikely to win votes or public compliance. Improving net zero road transport of individuals, people, and freight would work better which we certainly have the technology to do if there were the political will to implement it.

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?
Frankly, I think that things like fast fashion and fads (esp toys, cosmetics, gadgets, wellness craze) are caused by companies producing things and then creating slick advertising or paying influences to tempt people to buy the latest or try the latest thing. I know it’s not supply being made to meet a demand because much of this stuff ends up unsold and dumped in the ocean. It’s a huge problem and companies need to stop over producing stupid stuff.

Yep There was a two page spread in a womens mag two weeks ago showing where loads of celebs are going on holiday. Some of them 2 or 3 times a year.
While i live in a top floor SH flat thats like a fucking sauna getting told air con is bad for the climate and being warned about water shortages. Ive already had two baths today because of the sweatbucket i live in and will have a third before i go to bed. Im not going to bed a sweaty mess while that lot jet around the world in posh hotel rooms with decent showers (bad enough i have to rinse my hair with a washing up bowl) so i will have as many baths as i need while stupid fucking water companies tell us to have showers when housing associations will STILL only fit baths.

Politics? Yes of course.
But tbh I don't think politics will make any difference in this matter.

Have you watched Episode 4, series 5 of Clarksons Farm. It's really interesting and shows farming and nature aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.

A, meh
B, I moved to outer London and had to get a car, fucking hate it and miss cycling everywhere. Please make it so that the things I need (including my kids educational setting) are within cycling distance and I’ll bin the car. I’ve barely flown.
C, already on it

also growing our own food in small amounts, have cloth nappies and clean and repair remarked than binning.

My point was, a vote is a tiny thing, but collectively it's huge.

I'd be willing to do a lot.

I tried a vegetarian diet a few times but I felt exhausted all the time. So I wouldn't be willing to be completely vegetarian. But I have cut down on meat, and the meat I do buy is higher quality or game meat. I could eat less tuna and eat more small fish instead

We went down to one car, which is electric. Our holiday this year and last year is being done without flying.

Most stuff I buy is secondhand.

But I'd support some form of rationing for flying, food, water and clothes etc if it made the difference.

I think there are a lot of things which I'd do if they were made easier. I tried to give up buying anything in plastic for Lent and found it impossible.

I’m not changing anything . I wouldn’t be disappointed if the human race died out . It could just be the natural order of things just like the Ice age .

I think this is why the Green Party- for example- are focusing on inequality and a wealth tax so much.

The Switzerland you visited is disappearing because of visitors.

"Switzerland has become somewhat fatigued by its visitors, too, and some regions have introduced measures to deter heavy tourism"

Read More: https://www.islands.com/2170912/why-more-travelers-saying-goodbye-switzerland-vacations-2026/

Switzerland is also suffering due to climate change - glaciers melting, less snow, higher frost lines. www.meteoswiss.admin.ch/climate/climate-change.html

Yes agreed re the farming - I commented on another poster above - some land is only suitable for animals. But we can eat less meat, so farming is less intensive, and the land is less stressed and it's healthier for us.

It won't just be humans who die out though. All the animals will die too.

I’m vegetarian and have very little diary, couple of yogurts a week and small amount of cheese.
We fly once a year. DH and I both have an hours commute each way and I can’t do my job without a car.
As for consumables, I only replace large household items when they are beyond repair. Clothes I could cut down on. Always take old clothes to the clothing bank and old duvets to the homeless shelter or animal rescue so at least they are reused.

Not necessarily, no.
In practice, mostly yes.

No. Other countries are doing far worse than me. Also, I only eat meat from the local farm and no out of season veg that has travelled thousands of miles.

@ShetlandishMumSomeone used the phrase 'change not blame' on another thread which struck a chord with me the other day.
Us normal folk shouldn't be shaming each other/getting defensive - there's always more we could all be doing. Most people do their bit but to do nothing seems a bit of a cop out.
I guess I do feel the people that should be shamed are mp's and corporate business owners who aren't willing to act.

To be honest not willing to do much more differently at all really. We have solar panels, and an electric car. We have very little food waste. Recycle what we can.

But we do fly more than average i think. Probably head abroad 4x a year, once via eurotunnel and 3 return flights a year.

However. I feel any changes we make as a family are a drop in the ocean and pretty pointless in the grand scheme of things. Elon and Besos are blasting rockets to space, my local water company is merrily discharging endless gallons of raw sewage into the sea, all the bombs that were being dropped in Gaza probably had a massive impact on air quality and pollution, the 1% still have their private jets and massive yachts, the deforestation of the amazon has been an issue for decades, etc, etc. So if I choose to fly to Rome for a weekend or not, how much difference does that really make in the grand scheme of things?

Countries like China, USA and India cause most of the world's total pollution.
And they won't change.
It's peanuts or less what we do in Europe as individuals.

Not everyone travels abroad on holiday every year, either because they don't want to or they can't afford to. We have travelled to a lot of places in Europe by driving and I know plenty of people who have driven much further or gone by train.

I wouldn't be adverse to flying if I really wanted to go somewhere - I just don't see the need to fly somewhere every year.

I'm not sure about cruises. I've never been on one but Im not sure how they compare to flying.

I drive an EV. It’s technically my car but I hardly use it so DH uses it the vast majority of the time but when I need it, he will use his petrol car. We are looking at changing that for an EV in the very near future. I won’t ever go back to an ICE car.

Apart from a small glass of Kefir in the morning, I don’t have dairy because it doesn’t really agree with me. I try to limit meat, and would quite happily go vegetarian, but DH does like meat so it’s difficult. We don’t have it every day though.

We fly on one short haul holiday abroad. I have a disability which makes travelling painful. I don’t know how long I will be able to keep travelling for, so for now, rightly or wrongly, I’m going to continue to.

I don’t buy a lot of clothes or gadgets and I look out for secondhand toys and clothes for DGS as does his parents and other grandparents.