AIBU to be terrified by what David Attenborough has said?

[ArcheryAnnie]

He's just said about climate change ""if we don't take action, the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon." He's not the only one saying this - it's now common currency amongst scientists, and indeed anyone paying attention.

www.theage.com.au/world/europe/civilisation-may-collapse-if-climate-change-ignored-attenborough-20181204-p50jzs.html?platform=hootsuite

There's no time left for pissing about. We've got to take radical action now. It isn't something that any of us can ignore.

Yy Lonely. People feel paralysed and baffled by not knowing what is/isn't worth doing. Dare to mention that you're trying to minimise your plastic use, or stop sending Christmas cards, and you will likely be interrogated and accused of hypocrisy about any possible ways you are failing to be environmentally friendly. Even on this thread there are completely conflicting 'facts' about what is/isn't helpful.

unless China, the states and India get on board whatever we do will be useless.

I’d rather go out swinging I think

Sadly I think nature will reduce our numbers by means of a pandemic or mass famine or war. A harsh but effective way of culling us to manageable levels.

But suggest people not reproduce or Logan's run and the pitchforks come out.

Too right! Yet only by (at worst) maintaining present population levels can a reasonable standard of living (and by that I mean a place to live and enough food to eat) be achieved.

I'm all for a maximum of two successful pregnancies and then BOTH parents should be sterilised. However if the second pregnancy results in multiple babies, you can keep your sextuplets or whatever they are (I'm not amonster).

I also think that people shouldn't be kept alive purely because medical science has the skill to do so, and if people with dreadful conditions decide they would like to die at a time of their own choosing, with their family around them, and before they lose the capability to make that choice for themselves, then they should be allowed to do so.

I don't favour an arbitrary "cull at x years", because there are people of 95 whose lives are of more joy and (arguably) value, than many people of 25.

lala - I think China and India would be more amenable to limiting their greenhouse gas emissions if we in the west (particularly the US) would limit ours AND show solidarity by helping them achieve a decent standard of living for their own populations by reducing our own, such as our huge demand for energy and for meat, and the enormous amounts of non-biodegradable waste we produce.

I've decided that at the end of my "health span" ie when I'm beginning to get properly old and frail, I'm going to refuse anti-biotics (if they're still effective by then, which is looking unlikely anyway). Pneumonia used to be called the "old man's friend" for this reason.

As a result of this thread, I've just joined Greenpeace and signed their petition on black plastic. My carbon footprint is terrible and I'm going to start making changes. I'm going to do the no buy 2019 - hopefully there'll be a mumsnet support thread! Yes, the future is terrifying but maybe a good way to deal with the anxiety is to take action and join campaigns. It may not be radical, it may not be enough, but in the words of Helen Keller

"I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do"

Thanks OP for this thread.

Anyone got a good carbon footprint measure?

I did the WWF one and they put me at 82% of my 'share'. I stated no commuting (I walk everywhere), but 3 flights in the past year. Travel was one of my lowest categories.

Re the PP who mentioned the funeral - events like these, as with a lot of business things, are arranged at short notice because people expect others to be able to travel long distances quickly, or to travel to them in the first place.

In the past people wouldn't have necessarily even attended funerals for all relatives abroad - in my family we didn't in the 80s and 90s, it was usually only retired people who travelled, and would be considered to be present on their working children's behalf. And people didn't visit every year anyway. You accepted you'd moved a long way and you got on with life where you'd ended up. Now people with family abroad seem to go and visit several times a year.

Coaches are usually cheaper than flying, and much cheaper than trains, yet they rarely seem to be mentioned in discussions like these. (They seem to be completely off the radar for a lot of middle class people once they've left university.) For train routes that have more than one change, and especially on the various routes these days that have frequent delays and strikes, coaches can take about the same time or less in practice.

Something does need to be done about the price of train tickets in Britain though.

thecats, I can't recommend a carbon footprint app (I don't think they can ever be near accurate) but I do recommend reading "How bad are bananas" by Mike Berners Lee, which goes through the carbon footprint of everything, from walking through a doorway, an email, a banana, a return flight/train to Glasgow, right up to a space shuttle flight, hosting the world cup and a volcano going off. Not that I'm planning on any of the latter ones any time soon

I'm going to do the no buy 2019 - hopefully there'll be a mumsnet support thread!

We have a thread running! Ive not been on it for a couple of weeks since things have been a bit crazy but its ready to go. There are quite a few of us on it.

NoSpend19 where's the no buying thread? I need to be encouraged and somewhere to discuss that sort of thing.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/3417737-No-Spend-19-join-us?watched=1&msgid=83075155#83075155

Here you go

Something else we can all try to do. Sending emails and storing emails on servers uses a massive amount of power. Delete all the junk and sent items and get off those pointless mailing lists.

"a recent study conducted by the French Agency for the Environment and Energy Management (ADEME) suggests that while refraining from printing emails can help to reduce your carbon footprint, it would be best not to send the email at all.

According to the report, which was researched in collaboration with a French firm specializing in life cycle assessment, Bio Intelligence Services, in France, each employee of a company of 100 people receives an average of 58 emails a day and sends 33. At an average size of 1 MB and 220 working days per year, ADEME has calculated sending work related emails generates 13.6 tonnes of CO2, about 13 round-trip flights from Paris to New York. Times that number by four if you copy 10 people into your message. Times it by 2.8 million to find out how much CO2 is released around the world every second through emailing alone (the Radicati Group research company estimates that 294 billion emails are sent every day, 90 trillion every year)."

Apparently a ten percent reduction in the number of emails you send could save up to 1 tonne of CO2 a year.

www.earthtimes.org/scitech/true-impact-email/1147/

In addition to emails, I'd say there are several other ways to reduce your digital footprint:

the biggie is Bitcoin/cryptocurrencies... it takes colossal amounts of power to mine, and with more and more being mined, the value is falling relative to the carbon intensity required to have servers mining it 24/7. Boycott investing in it.

Porn... huge amount of internet traffic is taken up with porn. Means tera watts of power to keep the servers running. Exploitation of women is also an environmental issue.

Youtube... unless it's a highly aesthetic channel like art or landscape videography, don't watch it in HD. If you're mainly listening to it, eg, an interview, click on the little cog icon and set the definition to something lower like 360 or 240.

Social media... be mindful of what you watch and upload. Eg pointless cat videos that are 8 minutes too long

NoSpend and Doodle , that is fascinating!

Whilst DA is a national treasure, he is also just a TV presenter. He is as entitled to his views as anyone else but that is as far as it goes. Anything he says on climate change (or any other topic) is not more or less accurate just because it is said by someone who is a household name.

No, but as demonstrated by this thread and by the change of views on things like plastic straws, he can have an enormous impact people's behaviour across the globe.

@DoodleLab, I'm in the middle of preparing a presentation aimed at lowering email traffic for a client and just wanted to thank you for those stats, which are BRILLIANT and will, I think, have a big impact on the client's young/hipster/environmentally aware staff.

Today, you have done a GOOD THING.

And @NoSpend too, thank you!

Thistle I think you got us the wrong way round... it was NoSpend who gave out the stats

OOps forgot to NC back

Anything other than reducing population is pointless. I'm an antinatalist anyway, so hoping the impending environmental catastrophe will persuade more people of my view point. Please adopt instead of breeding.