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?

That’s not exactly correct. Working class families would buy a big joint of red meat for Sunday roast and then the leftover meat would be used in various dishes until Wednesday or Thursday. Then it was fish or rabbit or horse or chicken until the next Sunday. We actually eat less meat per capita than 100yrs ago because our jobs are less physical.

I already do a,b and c to a large extent- my frugal/hippy lifestyle is fab ( to me anyway!)- my kids still chuck plastic bottles in the bin go to McDonald's but what can you do?

An Asda chicken sandwich costs £2.20.

About 8 years ago I bought a chicken sandwich from Asda and when I read the pack it said the chicken came from Thailand.

That sandwich stopped me eating meat.

Sure.
My humble guess is that it makes no difference what Europe or UK do or don't.

Look to India, China, USA - they don't seem to care. At all. They only care about money and
convenience for themselves.

No it’s not. Christ. Humans are part of the ecosystem and environment. Having children is not damaging the environment, it’s having too many children as a species that damages the environment. There is a difference.

That is a massive contribution. Not having children.

I mean to be fair, if you'd seen the state of the River Wye due to runoff from these industrial chicken farms along it, you'd have stopped eating chicken even if it was British.

Sleeper train. I got the sleeper from Brussels to Vienna one holiday, and a sleeper across France then ferry to Corsica. It was fantastic.

I would also support flights being made more expensive and the money being used to subsidise trains or something. I think it's wrong that flights can be so much cheaper than the train.

I’d be honestly willing to do anything and everything. Dh though- I’d guess we’d be torn apart- as it is it’s difficult even now!

Not sure what your point is? If it’s the fact that the UK cannot feed its own population without importing food well yes, that is correct and the case for most islands since 1900.

China's carbon footprint as a country is big but that's because we outsource all of our manufacturing there. But their per capital footprint is less than the US. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita

Yeah I’m looking at trying out Eurostar plus European trains.

i’m disabled and use a wheelchair so it’s not necessarily simple.

i visited friends in Switzerland by plane this summer and the plane was great - accessible by design. The internal trains were quite tricky by comparison.

If you stayed quietly in a room all your life that's not really living

They have their own company providing a service. I don't want to out them tbh.
Lots of people sail across the Atlantic every year, it's pretty eco friendly in that wind power costs the planet nothing.

There's quite a few electric boats now running solely on solar with battery storage, both motor boats, and narrowboats. Some are crossing oceans.

We rarely take long haul flights (haven’t flown for several years and not long haul in over a decade)
we drive a hybrid and an ev
we have solar panels, a battery and have a well insulated home
we reduce food waste where we can and grow our own on an allotment
kids and husband commute via public transport or bicycle.

so, we are already hitting the things that make some of the most difference.

hopefully china’s co2 emissions are about to peak and will start to fall as they move heavily into renewables. They produce 32% of the worlds emissions so using paper straws makes no difference compared to their outputs. Reducing demand on Chinese made goods and buying plastic crap in general might.

I haven’t reproduced. That was circumstances but, as it turns out, I’m relieved for any children I might have had and relieved for the Earth. Apparently having one less child or not reproducing is the best action one can take for the environment

I’m vegan.

I don’t travel by air and haven’t done so this century. I will never do so again.

I don’t have a car.

I’m trying to cut down on stuff, but that one is quite hard. I don’t buy new clothes.

India's per capita emission also very low. Way below the U.K.

I don't see how my behaviour will affect the number of active arsonists.

What about the massive cruise ships criss crossing the globe, disgorging thousands of passengers to places that are increasingly unable to cope with their numbers. I always thought that cruise ships were worse pollutant wise than air travel. Where do they disgorge their waste when they are in the middle of an ocean for example.

Yes I vote, however there is no party that has sensible climate plans and is actively promoting them.qq1¹

The tories, I don't know their climate policies

Labour, don't think climate change is massively on their agenda, i can't think of a single environmental policy they're promoting. Subsidised bus travel maybe, and that's it?

Lib dems - couldn't name a single one of their policies, are they still around as an actual political party?

The Greens - they've kind of forgotten their original mission of protecting the environment and that being their main aim. Literally think they are now mainly known for transgenger issues.

Reform- they would happily punch the hole back in the ozone layer, as long as some dodgy bitcoin man made a generous donation to Nigel.

So its all very well asking if I vote, but if none of the political parties are discussing climate change then that doesnt help my decision. Also, climate isn't the only issue I care about. Childhood poverty, cost of living crisis, women's rights, interactions with other nations and political likelihood of getting dragged into wars, corruption and sleeze, etc, etc, etc all feature in deciding which box i tick in the booth.

No, it's not. But tourism has been marketed as a status symbol and so people continue to fly to long haul destinations for very little purpose other than to take photos and say yeah, I had that experience, without it truly being enjoyable. Again, I cite queues - getting to the airport, flying, passport control, arranging tickets and travel insurance and all that crap, for an expensive and often fairly meaningless experience.

My point was made in the context of a previous poster saying people choose not to eat meat because it's expensive.

You can buy meat in a cheap supermarket sandwich.

My point was that the meat will have been raised in God knows what conditions, fed God knows what, slaughtered God knows how and then act that the meat will have been shipped nearly 6,000 miles around the world.

It is. It is easily the most harmful thing to the environment that you can do. That child will have to be housed, clothed, fed, and kept warm for the rest of its life. It will have to travel to school and work, and will likely go on holidays and buy electronics. It is almost certainly at least leaving the same carbon footprint of the parent, and stands a good chance of having children itself. Generations of carbon footprints caused by your decision to have a child.

But I do think people should have them if they want them. I just don’t think those people should then lecture others about eating less meat.

Im changing fuck all.
I will still fly still have my air con on.

Yes and it will be full of hormones and god knows what so people can get their meat fix.