Starting to panic about climate change

[DorothyL]

I keep reading how climate change is getting really bad and how we're reaching the tipping point/point of no return. It keeps me awake at night and makes me feel so anxious and worried for my children. I struggle to feel happy because I keep thinking that we're literally facing the apocalypse. How can I deal with this?

no matter how good human ingenuity is, it won't solve the fundamental problem, which is population overshoot. The earth cannot support this many people indefinitely, and certainly not to the ideal middle-class standard we see in the west. Something's got to give, sooner or later.

I would like to believe that renewable energy will solve the problem, but it still doesn't address the central issue, of too many people on an earth with finite resources. Even if we completely replaced fossil fuels with renewables, that would require massive infrastructure. Imagine how many solar panels and wind turbines you would need to power, say, Manchester? And even if it was feasible to do, those panels and turbines need to be built and maintained, which involves large-scale polluting mines and manufacturing, so we are still destroying the earth, and mines are finite, anyway. There is no way to get around this.

And even if we solved the energy problem with cold-fusion or something, it still doesn't solve the soil issue, and the myriad other issues that our kids will have to face up to over the next 40-60 years. It's all horrifically scary.

Ok, get involved and do bit. Buy less, use less, waste nothing. Think about every drive, every switch, every item bought. Dec 25 is for company and some good food, not presents.

Every person who treads more lightly makes a difference. Don't campaign - do something.

Campaigning is doing something! But yes, it's not the only thing worth doing.

It is critically important that people who care about this campaign and agitate and get involved with activism. Lifestyle choices like recycling and minimising car travel etc are good, but they won't make a dent in the issue. The majority of pollution comes from industry. It's a system-wide problem, and it requires a system-wide solution.

Industry only cares about profits and expansion.
It's hopeless.

I'm not going to watch any shit that features Al Gore. Wasn't he the one that said that all the arctic ice would be gone already when in fact the arctic ice has INCREASED by at least 50% in the last four years!!

My student son is as worried as the OP. Is there a decent book I could buy him which would help him realise what 1 person/family can do to help the situation?

no matter how good human ingenuity is, it won't solve the fundamental problem, which is population overshoot.

Yes, we'd be far less fucked if people had started thinking about this 50 years ago.

It's not hopeless! Industry operates under government jurisdiction. We have the ability to pressure our governments to pressure industry.

Effective change doesn't require all or even most people to fight for a cause - just enough people. A critical mass.

I don't know.
I think it's governments that do what industry wants.

But I would love to be proven wrong.

I'm more immediately concerned about the electricity supply THIS winter.

Or is it all (Russian) disinformation on the web?

You are absolutely right to worry, it is terrifying, and there is very little that we can individually do, other than changing our own lifestyles and putting pressure on politicians, and most of us are too knackered to do that at the end of a long day. So do the little you can do, share your worry with your friends and family and encourage them to do what they can too, and try not to lie awake worrying

Yes, we'd be far less fucked if people had started thinking about this 50 years ago.

I think we did start worrying about overpopulation 50 years ago but tried to solve it the wrong way like with china's horrific and ultimately ineffective one-child-policy.

The only proven way to reduce population (humanely) is to raise the status of women. Once women have power over their lives, and genuine choices, they naturally opt to have fewer children, and for some women none at all. This has been shown again and again.

This is why any environmental movement which fails to acknowledge and attempt to address the global status of women is bound to fail.

I sympathise, OP, because have recently come to the conclusion that I have been living with ecological dilemmas for many, many years that are all rooted in my relationship with nature and the environment. Of course I was aware of many of these things anecdotally; what I hadn't really understood was what a fundamental issue this was for me. It explains a lot of things I have struggled with in the past. Unfortunately, now I've really grasped what all these individual dilemmas were stemming from, all I can see is one huge environmental catastrophe

Governments/the EU are all kowtowing to corporate lobbying.

Yes, of course, to raising the status of women.

And look - the costs of solar and wind have fallen far far faster than anyone thought they would. We're getting better at making more energy efficient cars, fridges, houses. There are easy, quick wins for a lot of us in putting in loft insulation, buying more energy efficient cars (you can cut fuel consumption by a third while keeping to the same type of car - it's not just SUV to Prius).

Sorry to keep banging on about this, but despairing is a bit like a chain smoker saying there's no point stopping smoking because they're bound to get cancer anyway. Maybe we are all fucked, but there's a very good chance we're not.

Chardonnay,

Industry's made up of people. They're not all evil. And there is plenty of money to be made in clean energy.

(As Peter Mandeleson once sort of said, I'm intensely relaxed about people making squillions saving the planet)

China is a strange example because they were first told to reproduce and then told to stop, but we're all in debt to their one-child policy. I realise there's some talk that the policy was meaningless but I'll wait until this is ratified to believe it.

Most people think it's fine to have 3 or 4 children as far as I can tell, the idea that overpopulation is a reality seems yet to have sunk in to the mainstream press.

What was the PJ O Rourke line? Over-population means way too many of you, just enough of me.

To be honest, talking about overpopulation doesn't work for me in this context. It's another way of throwing our hands up and saying we can't do anything - there are too many people! Truth is there's a ton we can do in terms of using resources better - and as pp have said in the medium to long term good old fashioned feminism can sort it.

Those of you say who say we're fucked, how do you get through the day?

I try to buy less, use less, recycle, walk and so on.

and then I come on MN and read about people buying 26 presents just for one child

You have to do your best, DorothyL. I feel better when I walk to the market and buy food direct from farmers and cook it myself in a nutritious way. It's the most ecologically responsible way of eating I can think of. Recycle everything.

Going to a UK supermarket is unbelievably depressing! All those fat unhealthy people driving to fill their trolleys with factory farmed and processed food and cheap, mass produced goods.

Agreed bohochic, but also I survey most of my extended family who are also mostly morbidly obese creatures that consume all the time, be it buying cheap plastic shit from cheap shops or stuffing themselves with cheap food.

DorothyL I often don't get through the day without a major wobble. I do try to buy as little as possible, use things until they wear out (I HATE so called 'fast fashion'), not eat much meat, cook from scratch, grow veg, recycle and reuse wherever possible, use public transport and walk to places. I know it probably makes fuck all difference but it makes me feel slightly less like I am wallowing in the consumerist swamp that lots of other people seem to be.

Birthrates are in fact falling worldwide. They have been since the 1960s. Unfortunately, this is not going to prevent continued population growth until 2100, by which time countries like Pakistan will have populations of 300m who need to be fed... those nuclear weapons could come in handy.

So, it seems there are worse things to worry about than climate change.