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?

You need to investigate Interrail passes. They're free for under 12s!

Oh ok, yes, to you £2.20 is cheap for 1 sandwich, whereas the bottom 80% would probably be thinking, that’s crazy, I can’t pay £2.20 for one sandwich.

I’m going to buy that Lidl loaf of bread for 59p, a pack of cheese for 83p, and some chutney for £1.89 and make myself 15 sandwiches @ 22p each, one tenth the price. That’s the lunch sandwich for 3 people sorted the entire work or school week.

Southern Europe where they put up solar farms the sheep still graze the field and use the panels as shade. Also most of southern Europe is putting solar farms in car parks. Keeps the cars sheltered. There are smart ways to mix the use of space and land.

Why not fly and triple-offset?

a. Carbon effect of staying at home: 0 (for simplicity)

b. Carbon effect of flying economy return, London-Bordeaux, family of four: +0.8 tonnes.

c. Carbon effect of flying, with triple-offsetting: -1.6 tonnes.

c is clearly better for the environment than a. If carbon footprint is a matter of morality, c is more moral than a.

(Cost of the triple-offset, about £65. £100-200 if you really want to gold-plate the offsetting. Bordeaux is pricey but £200 is easily recoverable for a family of four if you fly somewhere that’s cheaper than Scotland. If you do that four times a year your family would be real climate heroes).

Well I'm off to weave my own sanitary towels and knit my own yoghurt. Night night.xxx
(Feeling optimistic reading about what people are doing.)

I'm child free so there's a big saving on my carbon footprint. We only have one car, I WFH 3 days a week so that saves the car doing 300 more miles a week. I ain't going veggie tho, I don't go abroad every year (never went on a plane until I was 26!) so I think I've done my share, it's the giant companies that need to do more.

@GeneralPetermy partner has worked in decreasing carbon emissions many years and always argues carbon off setting is often just 'green wash'.

I wouldn't change anything else.

I've been vegetarian since I was 12, don't drive, haven't flown in 15 years and take holidays by rail or ferry, and am typing this on an 11 year old laptop. But I do eat plenty of eggs and dairy and buy clothes from Primark and the like. I'm not going to live an ascetic life or make things difficult for myself.

Yes, we've gone vegan, no actually drivable car, buy as little as possible.

I feel genuine guilt for bringing my kids into the world.

Same as me!

God no.

I wouldn’t be willing to change my life much, but I have solar panels, an electric car, carbon offset any flights I take, I won’t buy any new clothes this year, avoid single use plastics in most areas of my life and have just upgraded my 6 year old iPhone and don’t plan to get a new one for at least that long again.

And I’ve not had children, which as I understand it is the best thing you can possibly do for the environment.

But that’s pretty much my limit of what I’m willing to do voluntarily.

No. Because nobody else is. I don't eat much meat. I don't fly more than once a year usually. So it's not down to me to save the planet.

Well we are, so ner 😆

Do you vote?

Too many obviously refers to birth rate. Having more than 2.1 children per woman is damaging, but less than 2.1 children per woman is not damaging.

I agree the planet doesn’t need more people on it.

I’ve been vegan for 16 years (for the animals though), don’t drive so always take public transport, don’t travel by airplane often, only buy phone/laptop/new tv when absolutely necessary ie. when broken, not bothered about all the latest gadgets.

there’s absolutely nothing more I can or will do. It’s the powerful people in the world who are able to change it, however I’m afraid they never will and don’t want to: the planet won’t be here much longer and will soon be burned to the ground (yes I’m being pessimistic and hope things can change but it seems impossible now)

Eventually, a decision will be made to reduce the worlds' population to about a billion. How that's accomplished?

That’s what the I’d didn’t have children is btw, it’s carbon offsetting to excuse wasteful behaviours in other areas imho.

Someone has to have kids, everyone alive on here is going to depend on someone’s child to care for them at some point in their lives.

It’s wrong to count children against an individual’s footprint.

Yes it can be, if the wrong schemes (poorly verified, not truly incremental). But it’s also true that many parts of the world are far behind us in carbon removal/substitution and much poorer than us, and that supporting those places to decarbonise is a much better way to remove carbon cheaply than trying to do it here.

There is also a cultural aversion to market-based solutions in the environmental movement that I think is often at the root of opposition. It feels like cheating, it feels like buying indulgences, so it’s rejected by those for whom climate is a big moral issue. The issue is that: just because something hurts doesn’t mean it’s effective, plus many people just don’t want to sacrifice personal convenience, so you are pushing at a closed door beyond a certain point (even though they may be willing to offset multiples).

No, that decision won’t ever be made.

I am sure it will. Obviously, behind our backs.

It won't be a decision - it'll be huge events that cause many deaths at once or crop failure, rising heat and cold that will affect the weakest and poorest first.

Same here. I try to do my bit too. Though I do fly once a year and I do eat meat most days. It worries me that the most powerful nations in the world seem to do absolutely nothing. It needs ethical and moral leadership.

Time for your bedtime medication methinks.