To want clarification of what the climate protestors specifically want the government to do

[Mammajay]

What is it exactly that the protestors want. I keep seeing people on TV saying we want the govt to act but apparently our country is ahead of most in action to reduce carbon emissions, but countries like China and Russia do little to help the climate

The most feasible solution being proposed for global scale overpopulation is to make decent good quality contraception available to everyone in the world who needs it (most pregnancies are accidental, it turns out) and decent healthcare to bring down infant mortality worldwide (counter intuitive, but studies have shown that where infant mortality is high, people have more children)

There was a fantastic website that gathered all the evidence for this in one place, but I can’t seem to find it now.

Step one is to face the full scale of the problem. Not a huge vote winner though.

I admit I get annoyed with climate protestors. We have a substantial climate protestor community in my area, but they consistently fail to volunteer for any of the local environmental or conservation projects we run that actually support wildlife and try to reduce waste.

They do a lot more direct good for the environment if they just planted a few pollinators in their back gardens to support the bee population or bought their milk from the milkman.

@NaturtintGoldenChestnut

Yeah, I want a unicorn and my size 8 waist back. I think I'll go with wishing in one hand and shitting in the other and see which one gets full first.

Sorry but this made me LOL

So you're going to buy everyone these panels? They cost money, you know, that's a pretty good excuse why some don't have them, and here's a little newsflash for you, too, since again, you have not stopped to consider: plenty of people rent their home. YES! They can't just put solar panels up! I know.

I know, on Planet Climate Change Protesters, this has not been realised, that a great many people live in substandard housing that they are renting. The first priority for most sound people and policies would be to first ensure housing fit to habitation before coming to faff about with fucking solar panels.

This. ^ I think it's amazing that a pp has parents who haven't paid an electric bill in 10 years because of solar panels. That would be wonderful for many people, and obviously help the planet!

But as has been said, who is going to fund all these solar panels? Which, even though they have been around for DECADES now, are still laughably expensive.

As for these protesters. They're an embarrassment, and are coming across as pathetic. I am all for protecting the environment and doing everything we can to help (use less electric and gas, cycle not walk when you can, use paper straws, flush the loo less often, re-use the same bags for shopping etc,) but this bunch of people in London are coming across as a bunch of over-privileged, jobless, upper-middle class hippies. Some probably don't even know why they're there!

Most ordinary working people wouldn't be able to join in, because they are too busy working, in their minimum pay job, all the hours God sends, so they can pay their fucking bills!

I have no problems (usually) with people protesting about things they are passionate about, or angry about, but this lot in London are a bunch of idiots IMO. They are affecting the lives of many ordinary people, and the Government won't do anything more about the bloody environmental issues than they are already doing.

Plus, as long as China, India, and the USA are chucking out vast amounts more pollution and carbon emissions than us, anything we do is a drop in the (rising) ocean anyway! The USA don't give a fuck, and cause more pollution than any other country - taking into account the size. (So for example they cause half the pollution China does, even though they have only a fifth of the population, something like that!)

Also, as someone said upthread, public transport has to be a LOT better, and improved dramatically before many people could even consider giving up their car. I know many people who drive to work, and it takes 10 to 15 minutes. By public transport, it takes an hour and a half. I'm not kidding.

Finally, as a few people have said, many people want to save the planet, and help the environment, but most people don't want to give anything up to do enable that to happen! I do wonder (sadly) if it really IS too late.

Two of the best things we could do would be mass propagation of nuclear power and GM food. Environmentalists, for some reason, don't like either

Exactly. I won’t listen to anything they say unless they start advocating for both of these things. These protests are just a load of shite. Appeal to nature fallacy 100%

Heard a taxi driver on the radio, who took treble his normal takings due to the disruption to public transport in town.

Smash the system....

What a load of nonsense! No, what's nonsensical is this kind of attitude to a very bad thing happening right now. And people like you not giving a shit to change anything.

OK, so protests and raising awareness is shite and pointless.

Would anything have been done already - anything - if some people had not been raising awareness for the last 60 years?? If scientists had just shut up and not said anything because they weren't all singing the praises of GM and nuclear? No, because as your attitude demonstrates all too easily, for so many people it is just not convenient knowledge, and most people want to shove their hand in the sand and wait for everyone else to do something.

The point about protecting the local wildlife is well made, I agree. I totally disagree about GM - the surest way of destroying the natural genetic bank and biodiversity, and as for nuclear... Come back when you're ready to talk seriously. Nuclear waste problem has never been solved, so however neutral it is on one buzz-word scale it is waaaaaaaaayy off in too many others.

Nuclear waste problem has never been solved

First of all, it’s not a problem. It’s stored at the plant itself, and can usually be reprocessed. Almost 80% of France’s power is generated by nuclear reactors, which means they easily hit carbon targets and per capita have lower carbon footprints than UK or Germany.

In fact, Germany’s carbon footprint has got larger since moving to renewables because they have to fire up coal plants to make up for renewable power’s unreliability! This is absolutely insane.

But this is where green activists have taken us.

It’s not scientists that have led to nuclear’s decline, it’s ignorant voters and spineless governments.

There is no way renewables can power a modern economy. Nuclear can, and it works very well in France and (yes) Japan, where the evacuation from Fukushima cost more lives than the reactor meltdown itself.

In fact, more people are killed falling off a roof whilst installing solar panels than have ever been killed by nuclear failures.

Like I said, until the green movement embraces real solutions like nuclear power and GMOs then I won’t listen to one thing that comes out of their ignorant mouth.

We need government action on the scale of what happened during WW2- a real push, with everyone participating for the common good. The science exists which tells us the terrifying scale of the problem, and the science also exists which could help us solve the part of the problem which we still can solve. But we need an enormous determined effort.

Unfortunately, it takes a bomber flying over London to make us actually work together. We have terrifying destruction on a scale we can hardly imagine lurking just out of sight, but it doesn't seem to be enough to make us act.

The biggest game changer for our planet is reducing the number of people being born. A maximum of two children per family should be imposed asap.

They want us to commit to carbon emissions targets by 2025 which are currently only set for 2050.

And yes, the UK has some of the toughest targets in the world which, on the face of it, make it look like we’re doing our bit. However, we’re so far failing to hit our targets so we’re not taking them very seriously.

We also have extremely high levels of pollution in our cities, especially London.

@twocats335 I used to think that this was true but then I read around the topic and realised it isn’t really. It is the western world that does most of the polluting and we have a falling birthrate of 2 or less children per family.

China is a massive polluter and loves a coal fired power station (they build them at a faster rate than any other country) but they also have a very low birth rate.

There are countries like India with high birth rates and high levels of pollution but, on the whole, the individuals in India are not very polluting. Unlike in the UK or the USA they don’t all have multiple cars per family, they don’t take long haul flights, they don’t have houses full of energy intensive items - washing machines, tumble driers, electric kettles, central heating. Obviously there are millions of very wealthy Indians who will have these things but the middle classes don’t tend to be the ones with high birth rates.

Some of the highest birth rates are in sub Saharan Africa but those people are hardly contributing to global warming at all.

The birth rate argument is really just shifting the blame elsewhere because the UK already has a low birthrate. But our CO2 emissions per head are some of the highest in the world. We need to look at our own lifestyles if anything is going to change. And governments around the world need to ban burning of fossil fuels and impose huge taxes on polluting industry. And stop increasing the capacity of our airport (think 3rd runway at heathrow) and make flying more expensive and less socially acceptable. We need legislation but the government has been historically opposed to making big changes, especially ones that might lose votes - like banning diesel vehicles.

Also, we should talk about reducing immigration rates for environmental reasons. When you bring a third-world immigrant to the UK, suddenly their carbon footprint massively increases. They also tend to have more children for cultural reasons.

It’s a bit un-pc to suggest this, but as Western Europe’s birthrates are naturally (thankfully) declining, we should also think about how high immigration rates can strain our resources.

Nuclear waste storage always causes arguments. I think it's a bit more complicated than 'storing it at the plant', and the more we use it the more there will be. The geology has to be right, and people need to be willing to host the risks for all of us.

I can see a case for saying that we have no choice but nuclear for now, but it would have to be temporary, as temporary as possible. Battery technology for renewables, which is already improving, needs to be funded seriously. I agree that lifestyle, and particularly that of the rich are the issue. Why on earth do our rich and elite groups not realise that they lead from the front? We need an end to the glorification of greed and consumption.

@user1480880826 I do understand that the issue is more complicated than a simple overpopulation = environmental damage, but you are either looking at the wrong data or drawing the wrong conclusions.

The link between birth rate and population is a delayed one, not to mention one affected by things like infant mortality and migration. For example, you cite the low birth rate and high pollution of China, but despite the low birth rate China still has a population density of 145 people per square kilometre with the Chinese territory of Macau having the world's 2nd highest population density at 21,151 per square kilometre. To put this into perspective, London has a population density of just 1,510 people per square kilometre.

Your example of the high birth rate and low pollution is Sub-Saharan Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa currently has a population density of around 41 people per square kilometre. However at its current rate of growth it won’t be long.

Of course this is also an over simplification, because population density doesn’t usually take account of habitable/farmable land and resources. For example, a square kilometre of flat land with good farming and energy generation potential can support more people than a square kilometre of rugged mountain side.

You are correct that, with an average population density of 261, the UK are a big part of the problem. We are able to comfortably maintain these levels in part due to the fact we import around 48% of the total food we consume from other counties plus, as of 2004, are a net importer of energy

We are, in essence, living off the resources of other countries.