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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Anyone else terrified about climate change

175 replies

catstring · 14/08/2018 23:39

How on earth can we sleep at night knowing we are just sleepwalking into the abyss. Our children and their children will suffer won't they.

OP posts:
LadyLaSnack · 15/08/2018 08:40

Yes I’m terrified, and frustrated. Not for me obviously but for my children.

If we are now talking about mitigation rather than prevention is anything even being done to mitigate?

Huge swathes of the Amazon continues to be chopped every day, inane plastic tat gets churned out to fill our oceans and landfill, fracking has been given the go-ahead in the uk.

If governments really were interested in saving the human species, is it really outwith the realms of control to limit air travel, immediately put steps in place to drastically reduce the burning of fossil fuels, to ban some of the ridiculous needless manufacturing which happens? Halt mass farming of meat and force us back to a model where meat is a treat, and not a daily drudge of processed ham slices and chicken nuggets. I mean if we were literally being offered the option of either losing these things or boiling to death right now we’d probably be happy to give up the ryan air hen weekend in Budapest and hamburgers.

Even if it’s too late, there’s loads which could at least be attempted, but no one wants to lose votes. Instead of coming together and trying to put out this raging fire, instead, here in the uk, we are entirely focused on the Brexit clusterfuck, which is the current matter wasting time and energy and dividing us more. What a ridiculous joke of a species we are.

I know no one wants to do it, but we’re literally talking about the end of our world as we know it, and not in a billion years when the sun explodes - soon - within our children’s lifetimes.

I do get cheered slightly by the fact that if/when it really all does go to shit, the world will reset and some forms of life will thrive and new form life will begin without us there to screw it up. That’s something I suppose.

LaurieFairyCake · 15/08/2018 08:43

As far as I’m aware the fact is humans are going to be dead within 150 years.

It’s literally game over.

That drama programme linked to in the last post states ‘the human has already been born who is going to suffer catastrophic effects of climate change’.

To change it around (and by change I mean some of the human species surviving - not MY children surviving) we’d have to change literally everything now.

That’s not going to happen, we live in a capitalist world. If only some of us changed and went hippy it would have too little effect. And no ones giving up their 4 bed in the Midlands to go crofting before they’re forced to.

It’s over and the people in power are my age or older and at a very basic level we’ll all be dead.

Porpoises · 15/08/2018 08:47

I am very worried. I've made my career in renewable energy to try to be on the right side, but i struggle not to get depressed about it.

I don't have children and still care, firstly there will be changes within my lifetime and secondly i care about things wider than just my family - i care about the species that will go extinct, the people in developing countries who will have the least resources to adapt and survive disasters.

ClaryFray · 15/08/2018 08:52

There are things you can do to change, shower gels for soap. Shampoo bottles for shampoo bars. Recycle. Cut your waste, both physical and electronically. Walk more when you can, get the kids outside instead of on the TV games.

There is lots of small changes you can make to help. The irony is if everyone did little things it would help but everyone's stance as seen by a few up thread is nothing we can do no use worrying. Which is wrong, so very wrong.

Quietrebel · 15/08/2018 08:56

Trump and all those climate change deniers, "fuck-off-to-experts" idiots and cynics already have blood on their hands. I hope there's an especially hot place in hell for them.

BrainacheBelle · 15/08/2018 09:01

"The irony is if everyone did little things it would help but everyone's stance as seen by a few up thread is nothing we can do no use worrying. Which is wrong, so very wrong."

I thought it was proven that all individual efforts by me or you or xyz do not add up to making significant change, because of corporate energy expenditures?

catstring · 15/08/2018 09:05

This thread hasn't helped. Humanity will end in 150 years. WTF. I have kids, I will feel sick and depressed all day now Sad

OP posts:
Corneliafunk · 15/08/2018 09:11

I am very worried too - I don't want to see a wrecked planet devoid of the plants and animals which make it so amazing. I have heard that for us to live the western lifestyle (which we do) then the world's population should only be 1 billion people otherwise we can't help but use up all the resources. So given that there is over 7 billion then we are in trouble. We will have to depend on technology to avert the crisis. I saw this today:

www.independent.co.uk/news/science/mineral-removes-co2-magnesite-carbon-dioxide-pollution-climate-change-global-warming-a8491746.html.

LaurieFairyCake · 15/08/2018 09:15

Well there’s no point in being depressed about it. Individuals are amazing at taking personal responsibility and will continue to recycle, eat less meat and drive less.

It’s not your personal fault that death of the species can’t now be prevented.

If an environmentalist more persuasive than me, much more versed in research just kept telling people over and over again it was over they would be discredited - thousands have been. They are called nuts/hippies/people with their own agenda.

There are still numpties who don’t believe in climate change!

Tika77 · 15/08/2018 09:18

I worry about this big time. Not just because of the recent heatwave, the rest of Europe has been suffering from riding temperatures and draughts for a long time, it’s hard not to have noticed that. Global warning scares me a lot than Brexit and there’s a lot fewer theads about this... so clearly not on the mind of a lot of people.
We’re incredibly short term thinkers and bloody lazy.
I won’t give upndoing my share of not buying shit I don’t need (like watermelon shaped towel holders etc), recycle, being a ‘meat reducer’ etc.
But I also educate people and say things.
Recently read on a thread about ‘it’d be so hard not to eat blueberries in the winter’. Well... people used to be able to get their vir C from apples etc.
I think if more and more people make a change, manufacturers will end up with a shitload of plastics they couldn’t sell, supermarkets with the overwrapped fruit and veg rotting on them so eventually they’ll find other ways and go out of business. This is all I can do on an everyday level. (Oh, and being a keyboard warrior and signing all sorts of environmental campaigns.)

Dodie66 · 15/08/2018 09:28

You should read this article. It was wrmer in the Middle Ages than it is today www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1426744/Middle-Ages-were-warmer-than-today-say-scientists.html and after that we had a mini ice age. The climate in the world changes whatever man does.

PestymcPestFace · 15/08/2018 09:31

On the plus side, we live in a country with a moat and lots of hills. We will do much better than most.

Clairetree1 · 15/08/2018 09:31

The climate in the world changes whatever man does

thats just a smoke screen. yes it changes, that makes it harder to assess what damage we are doing. Unfortunately, people have used these natural changes to hide from the truth about what unnatural changes are doing

FacelikeaBagofHammers · 15/08/2018 09:35

There is an excellent book about climate change called 6 degrees. It was very well written (and quite terrifying).

It goes through the scenario of the planet's temperature increasing by 1 degree at a time, and what effect that would have on the environment, life, animals and crops.

A great read. If it wasn't true.
www.theguardian.com/books/2007/apr/14/featuresreviews.guardianreview32

KimCheesePickle · 15/08/2018 09:39

Watch this video, adapted from an essay & set to video footage, about how individual actions like taking shorter showers, recycling and driving less are woefully insufficient to deal with the issues we face. Still necessary, but they don't even touch the sides when faced with the damage from industrial activity. We need concerted collective political action, not individualist consumer choices (aka "ethical consumerism" which is an oxymoron).

Sobering Sad

ToeToToe · 15/08/2018 09:50

Not everyone's given up OP.

This is the twitter feed of a group in the Netherlands who have been working to clear the 'plastic soup' in the ocean.

twitter.com/TheOceanCleanup

It's going live next month I think. It's the brain-child of this man.

catstring · 15/08/2018 09:50

How can you not be depressed thinking of your future family dying on a scorched planet, perhaps scared or starving. FFS Hmm

OP posts:
CraftyGin · 15/08/2018 09:51

Concerned but not terrified.

I would only be terrified about something potentially happening within minutes or hours.

LaurieFairyCake · 15/08/2018 09:54

Because if there’s nothing you can do about it apart from the best you can on an individual basis (knowing it has little effect) then you can either choose to be depressed and live the rest of your life miserably or live the only life you get getting happiness from what you can.

Perhaps it’s helpful to think that it’s very like living with a terminal illness ?

It doesn’t mean you don’t despair, it just means it would be hard to live the rest of your life like that.

Tika77 · 15/08/2018 10:20

Dodie There’s never been the same number of humans before as it is now on Earth. Our sheer number is not sustainable and it’s us in the developed parts that screw it up on a global level.

Tika77 · 15/08/2018 10:23

Laurie, I don’t think those are thenonly two choices, really. I know my changes have very little effect but at least I know I’m not making it worse and that I’ve done what I can. (And I’m also lookig for ways to do more.)

SlartiAardvark · 15/08/2018 10:31

How on earth can we sleep at night knowing we are just sleepwalking into the abyss.

Grin

Dramatic much OP??

I think you're massively overthinking it - do what you can regarding recycling, minimising fuel use & whatever you can if think it'll help.

Just don't think about India & China belting crap into the air 24/7!!

Personally I don't stress about things I have no control over.....

And I'm certainly not bothered if some distant descendent I'll never know pops their clogs in 150 years time!!! Grin

SlartiAardvark · 15/08/2018 10:32

How can you not be depressed thinking of your future family dying on a scorched planet, perhaps scared or starving. FFS

Because she's not a hysterical ninny perhaps? Wink

Myrnafoy · 15/08/2018 11:15

Funnily enough I was going to post a similar thread a few weeks ago.
Woke up early hours of the morning, couldn’t get to sleep so ended up listening to the radio - 5 live I think. They were discussing the spate of fires worldwide and the tone was almost end of world like - that we’ve reached a tipping point that we can’t escape from with regards to climate change. They interviewed a firefighter who claimed the fires were behaving differently - fiercer somehow. It wasn’t hyperbolic coverage either just climate scientists talking -found it upsetting particularly because the wildlife etc has no say in the way we are causing this environmental destruction

Shoxfordian · 15/08/2018 11:31

Where's the 150 years come from?