To change the way I live in view of climate change nightmares

[Butteredghost]

Just wondering if people are doing things differently because of worry about climate change nightmares causing collapse of society.

I'm not talking about changing to a more environmentally friendly lifestyle - hopefully we are all doing that but that is a discussion for another thread.

I'm talking about things like - where you live, amount of/whether to have children, doing certain things now instead of putting them off. Maybe some people have become "preppers" with this in mind.

I've always wanted a dog, my DH wants to wait until retirement, but will there be a "retirement" in the sense we have now in future? I'm also wondering if I should take this in to consideration in financial planning. I contribute to my retirement fund, have savings and some investments. I assumed this would be handy in later life, but if society has basically collapsed obviously it will be pointless. I'm wondering if I should liquidate, use it to pay off our mortgage and work less.

If I hadn't visited a coral reef, I would visit asap as there soon won't be any.

Is tempting to put it out of my mind and continue as if my life in 30 years will look mostly like my parents lives right now. But it won't, will it?

Sigh! And I thought Brexit was all we had to worry about.

Do what works for you and your family. Don't put off having a dog if circumstances mean that it's the right time for having one.
You could plan perfectly for every eventuality and then die from choking on a grape...
Life your life! Stop worrying about the whole world. We can only do things one step at a time.

I think by the time I reach “retirement age” therexwont really be a retirement as such. We have one child, we can help him set up in life then, put savings aside that will make a big difference to him reaching adulthood. We could probably have coped with 2 but obviously wouldn’t have been able to help as much. We have a real fire as I can see a time when gas supply will be interrupted. We have a mix of electric and gas supplied goods so if one supply is interrupted we can still heat food, get hot water and heat the house. We keep iurxfaitly small house as it’s cheeper to heat etc and frees up money to do other things. “Retirement” will probably look like moving to a cheaper area and doing a couple of days minimum wage job. We tend to live a bit for today. Society is getting more fucked up every year

Yes, of course anyone could knock off any time.

I'm not talking about panicking or letting the anxiety consume your life. We still have to live and that wouldn't help anyway.

But it just seems like this is so close to happening.

We tend to live a bit for today.

Yes, exactly, I wonder how many people are doing this. Not in a spend up big now way (urgh), but a work less, live simply and enjoy type way.

I'm not expecting to retire and I don't have a pension as I can't afford one, plus I envisage pensions being one of many things that will magically disappear after Brexit. Instead I have invested (it might not may off) in paying my mortgage off, things I can sell and in improving my skills.

I would like to live near the coast, but the increasing flood risk puts me off doing this. If I move, it will be to higher ground.

I have a store of emergency food and items, but that really came about because of my Brexit fears, rather than environment concerns.

I think everyone is so obsessed with having big expensive things, the latest fashion in clothes, big houses they’ve lost sight of the actual important things in life! It’s killing society and killing the environment, how many of us have clothes we havent worn in years and forgot we had yet still buying a new top to go out rather than spend time looking what we have/mending the seam/zip etc? Buying a new tv to replace a perfectly good one as it has a slightly sharper picture, adding the old one to yet more landfill? Buying massive houses where the mortgage pushes us to the limit, add in insurance, higher utilities bills, need for more furniture etc, costing both economically and environmentally. We spend money on experiences.

Deadbudgie - experiences also use resources - fuel for you and the other people who travel there to work, plus the materials used to clean and maintain the place you have your experiences in.

Yes, I am thinking of this to a certain extent - things like growing our own veg, having good quality things that I know/hope will last, trying to manage with less stuff, making our own things/repairing rather than buying new, spending more time with family and friends.

I don't have stockpiles of food or other useful things, but I might think about doing that at some point, because I have given up hoping that any more than a tiny minority of humans will ever think that preventing or minimising environmental catastrophe is worth giving up their cars, holidays and excessive consumption for.

I don't think we should all be rushing to visit a coral reef before they disappear - isn't that really the last thing we should be doing, unless there's one conveniently close to where we live? Experiences over stuff is all very well, but I think history teaches us that humans will almost certainly want those experiences to get bigger, better and more extreme, and therefore more destructive to the planet, in the same way we've done with the stuff we buy. But it's a good idea if it's more about spending time together than using lots of resources.