To find it strange no one is talking about this?

[FruminousBandersnatch]

The latest IPCC report - a result of looking at 6000 climate change studies. It’s horrifying. The world as we know it is going to change so quickly and not enough is being done.

Why is this not being discussed here?

I don't understand why more people are not worried. Lots of people worrying about Brexit and saying things like "leavers have ruined our childrens' futures" and yet climate change is going to have far worse consequences.

I agree about over population being one of the biggest problems and yet if you say anything you either get laughed at or verbally attacked.

A while ago I posted on a thread about large families, not in a rude way, but asking why people felt the need to have so many children and did they not worry about the future of the planet.

I was told to mind my own business, people could have as many children as they want etc. Some quite rude comments. There were many posters with 6 or more children, one even with 11. Their excuse is that many women have only 1 or even no children so it is ok for others to make up the shortfall!

Me and DH decided not to have children and one of the reasons was overpopulation. I worry enough about my nieces and nephews. Thank God we didn't have our children to worry about

There are lots of links on the BBC website. I found one on there that hit home for my teen, chocolate will be one of the first things to disappear.

Google and probably every other news source will have lots of info too.

I would imagine it's because climate science has a history of being wrong. Fundamentally it is impossible to say whether these predictions are correct so nobody cares. If they had focused on scientists and testing modles that had is history of fairly accurate result then that would have been more useful. Saying the sea levels will rise by x metres but not providing any real evidence beyond predictions that may or may not be correct is pretty pointless. The vast majority of climate science is nothing more than an educated guess. Those who are on ball with tackling climate change issues are screwing themselves over by not demanding better science.

Urbanbeetler is right - apart from one thing. 'The world' will be just fine in the long run, but humans won't, our greed and selfishness will be the end of us.

As for leaving earth and colonising another planet Helendee - good luck with that! The furthest that humans have ever been from this planet is the moon and we haven't been there since the 1970s. There huge issues with even going to Mars, our nearest neighbouring planet that's even vaguely within the realms of human habitation. These include the conundrums of being able to carry/grow enough food for a 3+ year mission and protecting ourselves from the massive amounts of solar radiation that long space travel would expose us to, that I doubt that's going to happen any time soon - let alone any long-term colonisation plan. There literally is no Plan(et) B. We need to stop treating this one like a rubbish dump and start behaving responsibly, but we won't, because people are selfish and only see things in terms of their own, or possibly their children's lifespans. What happens 100 or 500 years from now is not something that most people dwell on, because they won't be here to be impacted by it.

The main thing is overpopulation.

And for anything to change means it will have massive knock on effect to many industries. People won't want that So nothing will change. Fast fashion for example...People need to just stop fucking buying clothes but if we do that, how many shops will close? People out of jobs, shop workers, fashion designers, models, photographers, hair and make up, advertising, magazines....Just think about how many roles exist because of fashion.

@dottymum yours dotty yourself. The one child rule (now a two child rule) was and is just evil. What a hortoble authoritarian suggestion to make.

mydog my MIL is aghast that we only have 2 DC, twins. Apparently I’m some kind of evil person who has prevented her son from having enough children because I don’t want to have more

It's not just overpopulation, it's over-consumption. A family w 6 children in Chad will use a hell of lot less of the world's resources than a family w 3 children in the UK.

"I was told to mind my own business, people could have as many children as they want etc. Some quite rude comments. There were many posters with 6 or more children, one even with 11. Their excuse is that many women have only 1 or even no children so it is ok for others to make up the shortfall!"

YY. And I've seen threads about eating less meat go the same way.

@Racecardriver predictions and climate change models have tightened up as we move forward. From what I've read the latest report (which is based on reviewing 6000 climate studies) takes a rather conservative stance.

It isn't being discussed because many don't know about it. I will google now. Thanks.

I haven’t read the report but I have been worried for years. But on the other hand isn’t there some thinking that our massive use of fossil fuels staved off mini ice ages? Which would have had their own horrible impacts.

I hate wasting energy/plastics so try to do my bit. Mainly so that my kids won’t blame me too much when things go horrible.

But we are probably the luckiest people that have ever lived (so far) in that we have extremely comfortable lives with plentiful food, heating, holidays, healthcare, entertainment, nice stuff, in one of the best countries of the world to live in. Just look at the DEC website to see how things can go when things go wrong. Will we end up suffering like that due to climate change? Who knows?

The planet will survive and I suspect the human race will survive but a lot less of us.

Stop eating beef and poultry anywhere near as much as now, stop buying fast fashion, don’t drive absolutely everywhere all the time. Reduce plastic waste and look for environmentally friendly alternatives. Go back to shopping locally where possible and reduce the need for shopping delivery vans to doors, or ordering stuff that isn’t needed from Amazon etc. Use reusable nappies and wipes, reusable face pads rather than disposable. Try fixing things that are broken not just buy new.

There are loads that we can do on a personal level, unfortunately the cattle industry, poultry, fast fashion etc are big business that makes a lot of people vast amounts of money. And until there is a change in that then nothing huge will change, but every consumer that cuts down on meat consumption and only makes thoughtful purchases is a step in the right direction.

The main thing isn’t just overpopulation, it’s overpopulation and industrialisation. As countries become more developed their population growth will slow as it has in the uk already; we’re already at below replacement levels. But the thing is that one person living in a developed country is the equivalent of something like ten people living in some parts of Africa, where population is expected to grow the most. So even if they don’t have as many babies per woman they may end up consuming enough that it will be a lot worse for the planet. And nobody wants to prevent poorer countries having good access to things like electricity.

It’s overpopulation but it’s much more than that too.

About population, in geography lessons 35 years ago we were taught aboutS curves and J curves. No idea if this is current thinking, but back then we were on a J curve

No one talks about because everybody hopes someone else is going to do something about it.

It's such a big issue it's easy to get frustrated and to think that there's nothing one person or one household can do.

@FruminousBandersnatch I do agree that scents have got much better at predicting longer term weather patterns etc but public trust has be seriously undermined and without a very long preamble about why the (absolutely massive figure BTW) 6000 studies are all good science people just won't pay attention. It's like the boy crying wolf. There have been too many extreme conclusions drawn, to many sensationalist headlines. If climate scientists want the general public to pay attention to their work being a scientist doesn't count for much anymore, they have to prove that their method is sound (which is in itself very difficult when you consider that a large proportion of the education is sceinitificalky illiterate). Previous generations of claimate scientists have discredited the whole field pretty much. If the scientists and activists want people to listen then they need to realise that their pride is worth nothing and their status as a climate scientist is wort even less immediately bring doubt in their work. Its not enough to churn out the studies, predictions and, papers. There must be a coveted effort to prove the merit of this work if it is going to help anyone. It's a sorry affair but also completely natural and reasonable.

There are so many simplistic ideas on here that will never work. Force people to stop consuming? What in regimes like China, Venezuela? Who is going to force their governments to act?

I’ve just finished watching the Stacey Dooley documentary. When you realise that it takes more water than I would consume in several life times to produced a few pairs of jeans, over population becomes less of an issue.

The problem is, we badly polluted our own country during the industrial revolution and we now have strict regulation to prevent that. Therefore manufacturers have just moved the problem to the third world, where regulation is loose and unenforced.

Realistically, what can be done about that? If the U.K. government brought out legislation banning imports the country would fall over. It needs a 20,30 year plan and I don’t think anyone knows the answer

Need to get the developing world thinking of the environment but they won’t. So we are screwed.

I try to do what I can. I recycle everything including food scraps, we eat 3 or 4 veggie meals a week now that my DD has been a vegetarian for 2 years. We take 4 min showers, turn taps and lights off, stopped buying bottles of water. We do run 2 cars and would love to go down to 1 but jobs are not local. They are low on emissions and we switched from diesel recently.

Following

I was very involved with a climate campaigning organisation before I had children. They were good people with their heads screwed on right but they were stupid and naive. They took on board studies that were poorly constructed because they thought it would help strengthen their argument and they liked to use shock tactics because they were naive enough to think that this would make a difference. I eventually dropped out if this work due to their insistence that wind turbines were a good source of alternative energy (this was about 8 years ago when wind turbines were utterly shit, not sure if they've improved in that time).

@mydogisthebest Brexit could be good for climate change because UK consumption at least is likely to plummet - we will all be worse off for at least a few years!

Hmmm maybe I should have voted out after all

It's not only the developing world as in their governments though, it's us, the consumers here who buy what they produce and who then ship our rubbish there.

Juneau
I didn’t say it would be easy or imminent but this planet has had it!

maids

But actually, I read a slughtly worrying article about Brexit and climate change recently;

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/environment/2018/sep/02/green-watchdog-powerless-climate-change-post-brexit