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 despair when I read posts on here berating others for not showering every day, using towels more than once, wearing clothes more than once between washes, allowing their kids to walk to school. The obsession with super cleanness isn’t helping our planet — or kids health/allergies either

What I find strange is that there is no emphasis on population control in places where there is massive growth because it is politically taboo to be telling places like Africa that they should be trying to reduce their population, yet climate change is going to be catastrophic for them and the population explosion (which could be stopped) will make it so much much worse.

@FruminousBandersnaych haven't kept up on wind turbines so hopefully they have improved. At the time they cost more (both in terms of energy and finacial cost hence the push for government subsidies) than their output. They also didn't last as long as they claimed to in many cases. One particular batch of turbines started falling apart after just five years (not sure whether this was the case everywhere, I only had intimate knowledge of one wind farm). They were also quite dangerous for the people who worked or lived around them (one chap had a heart attack while up one, another was struck by lightening, on a different farm two died when one caught alight while they were working on it). It was also a regular occurance for ice to settle on them when they weary moving then fly off when they started to move. Certainly at the time they were just something that governments did to look like they wear dealing with climate change similar to early generation solar panels but more dangerous. I brought the wind turbines up because they were symbolic of everything wrong with the climate preservation movement. It was too keen to brave bad science and more concerned with the way things looked to the general public than with actually dealing with the problem. Things have move on (a tiny bit) since then but the days gone by have really hit the credibility of climate campaigners hard. And people won't do anything or care at all until the climate world had managed to resurrect its credibility and trustworthiness.

I will be honest ,I know very little about this...

@justwanttoweeinpeace no one was asking for a documentary on pollution by the fashion industry either to be fair, the public can’t really be expected to ask for information about these sorts of things I don’t think? Most of them don’t know they’re happening in the first place

But is Africa over populated? As a continent most of its completely empty isn’t it? It’s nowhere near as densely populated as Europe

@peardropexplodes

The population in Africa is improving because they are having a chance of basic existence through investment. Their kids aren’t dying so much as they did. Most of them consume a tiny fraction of what we do, the bare necessities . Our big companies are selling them stuff to make profit. How can we waste so much in this country on frivolities and tell them they need to change?

The population problem is surely in the west though! We might be at below replacement rates in the UK but if each child in UK consumes 1000* times that of a child in Africa then surely its the UK population that needs to be cut further.

OR we give up our lifestyle! But I think we all know that will never happen.

• entirely made up number.

It’s not just population growth in Africa which is a worry. If the population continued to grow but living standards stayed the same that would be one thing, but as it becomes more developed, consumption will also increase. If they become like the west AND experience huge population growth that’s serious trouble, unless development comes in the form or renewable energy and sustainable consumption.

Obviously, nobody wants to prevent them from having better living standards, so something has to give.

Exactly m3lon. It’s not just population, it’s consumption.

Maidsrus You've just proved my point. They won't have a better quality of life if a rapidly increasing population means that in a few years/decades time they have to compete for more food and water (obviously the larger the population the more stress is put on basic necessities as well as producing more pollution, more building, larger carbon footprint etc).

It would benefit almost every country in the world to reduce population and Africa is the place with the biggest expected population growth.

Capri - but shouldn't the public be educating themselves? Isn't it part of the BBCs remit to educate and inform us?

How far would Fair-trade have got if it was just an unrecognisable image on a box and a load of good ideas that had no traction in the market place?

As long as we don't educate ourselves retailers can keep saying 'but there's no demand for it' and carry on making the problem worse.

Surely one of the things governments could do is invest in public transport? Where we live in the North of England traffic is absolutely diabolical as public transport is virtually non existent and where it does exist it is unreliable and expensive.

Try driving into Manchester or Leeds at commuter time; it will take you 1 hour to drive 5 miles from most commuter areas. It is shocking. The M62 is also a nightmare most times of the day.

I hate driving and would love to take the bus/train but there isn't a viable option where I live.

Buses are every hour and even then sometimes they just don't turn up. Then they are also stuck in the same traffic. There isn't a train option. My friends who do have a train option end up having to rush home and drive at least once a week as it's severely delayed/cancelled and they are paying premium money for rail cards.

Pollution is absolutely horrendous in both cities and the council's answer is introducing more levies for people to enter the city with cars, INSTEAD of investing in trams/buses. Most people I know would much rather take public transport.

And by retailers I mean lazy ones. Quite a few companies now are doing the hard work to improve the situation.

The change needs to start at the top. People reducing their own plastic waste only helps so much, the only real way to stop everyone using for example plastic carrier bags is to stop producing them, big companies need to stop packaging things in so much single use plastic

Its also in our own interests to fund/Support Africas development and birth control because if Climate Change does cause famine etc these billions of people will be heading north.....

Your problem isn't getting people to stop using plastics, it's getting the companies to stop producing them. Say you manage to persuade 5 people to stop buying plastic, fair enough. But the companies are still making it. Until they stop producing, not using it is making zero difference. Because it's still being made, and the process causes pollution in its own way, and then the unused products still end up in landfills.

We've gone too far now to stop this happening. Even if you can convince every company to stop polluting as much, stop producing plastic, only allow families one child etc it's too late. You will never get all of that done in the time it will take to fully ruin the world. Because people are too greedy.

Maybe I'm too pessimistic to some, but I see it as realistic. I'm not going to spend what time I have left in the world as we know it worrying about which bin to use, or not showering for longer than a few mins. Because it's going to make no difference.

The change won’t start at the top, it’s the grassroots that need to push for it.

We need to make a nuisance of ourselves by writing emails to companies and MPs and voting with our money.

A better investment in public transport would help people to drive less.
I used to live in Singapore and they tax car ownership so heavily that many simply can't afford it and have to use public transport- luckily this is fantastic, frequent and subsidised therefore cheap.
In the Uk city I currently live in it costs 4.50 for an adult bus day ticket and £1.30 for a child. As a family it costs us well over £10 to the centre of the city (2 miles away) cheaper to park by a long way.

Agree that if everyone does their bit it's something - we are vegetarians now and trying hard not to waste

This is scary.

People are more environmentally aware, for example most people I know recycle. My recycling is 3 full boxes every fortnight. But it’s not just what we as the small people do, we need big help from the government and proper infrastructure.

I don’t want to buy fruit and veg all packaged up, so supermarkets please stop doing it.

If I buy an electric car (the preserve of the wealthy as they’re very expensive) where the hell do I charge it? I see about 2 points in some car parks. If we all had them what would we do? I’m a lawyer, I drive to courts all over the place. Maybe we do more video link court hearings or something.

My other big bear is the Western world is being told we have to do x, y and z yet I’m told China and India are wiping out any benefit made. If that’s the case why are we bothering FFS?! No pint saying it’s not fair, they got the shitty end if the stick while we were pumping it all out in the industrial revolution. I didn’t think this was about fairness, I thought it was about the planet surviving!

And don’t get me started on population. Again, any personal limits we impose in the Western world we be wiped out in a millisecond by swathes of breeding elsewhere. And too many religious folk are popping them out left, right and centre.

So..... I’m doing the best I can but what is going to be done about everyone else? FA!

Just listening to BBC Feedback who are reporting that as from now BBC Radio will not have Climate Change Deniers in discussions.

racecardriver
until the climate world had managed to resurrect its credibility and trustworthiness

The fact is, regardless of specific details of problems with wind turbines, or similar, we ARE facing a huge climate disaster. so the "climate world" is broadly correct. And is 100% correct that we have a big problem.

Scientific method is rigorous and peer reviewed papers are subjected to rigorous check using the data available ( ice cores, sea temps, weather patterms, species dying out, polution levels, atmospheric composition, surface temps, historic data etc). 6000'papers agreeing on a point is overwhealming evidence that there is a probkem.

Folks not ' believing' the science are frightened and hiding from the truth, at best, or like Trump are self entitled and pig headed.

We as individuals do need help. We need our government to let us know what we can do that is most effective and we need legislation for big business which outlaws poor practice.

Racecardriver your wind turbine knowledge sounds like it has been cut and pasted directly off the Daily Mail. It is so wrong I don't even know where to start.

Be interesting to know how many on this thread have a 100% renewable energy tariff. That seems an easy way to make a difference and encourage more renewables. We have only recently switched after "meaning to do it" for at least a year.

Oh that's good news CD

Reading with interest. But I don’t think a lot of the posters are representative of the presumably vast numbers of consumers out there who just buy stuff. Agree with a lot of what everyone is saying here, but I think the problem is mainly structural. Huge companies routinely over packaging everything, a pack of biscuits in a plastic tray wrapped in cellophane in a card box. Just why? It’s not just about carrier bags, it’s everything that 90% of the uk ‘just buy’ is overpackaged.

Price is also relevant. As a child, we had meat maybe once a week as it was expensive. Now, it seems relatively speaking that it isn’t so expensive, so people buy (and waste) more. Is an (unpopular) answer to tax / price fix it to force people to buy less? Perhaps sliding the tax so ‘ethical’ or free range is basically the same take home price as the factory farmed crap, which will hopefully force the vast majority who just buy on price to simply not buy the crap stuff? But that opens up the debate on pricing poor people out of meat and is that fair? It’s just so complicated...