To ask you to stop flying

[Walkingthere]

We are facing a climate disaster. Our children will have to live through it. And yet I overheard two women today discussing how many holidays abroad they had been on this year. Both over 60 years of age. Obviously it will not directly impact on them.
This is also very common in my social group, people jetting off 4-5 times a year. Mini-breaks, weekends away, European trips, long haul, hen do's, weddings, birthdays. It's unbelievable how much people are burying their heads in the sand.

We need to stop flying. Urgently. Now. My family have not flown in over 5 years. We used to travel a lot, before we realised the consequences. I am putting this here, to make people think, we all need to urgently reduce (ideally stop) flying now.

The problem with asking us to not fly is that unless you cease ALL flying it doesn’t matter if we fly less. Because there will inevitably be important people who HAVE to fly because they’re so important (see Emma Thompson who had to go to her birthday party in the states and then fly to the UK for the climate protest). Basically, the self-appointed or the state-appointed apparatchiks whose role is to demonstrate true moral behaviour will be given a free pass to keep polluting because it will be deemed that their important work justifies the pollution.

The alternative is to increase the cost of flying to the point that only the very rich can afford it. So basically only wealthy people are allowed holidays abroad/to see their family abroad/etc etc.

You are being entirely unreasonable in asking us not to fly. You would be entirely reasonable to ask people as a whole to consume less. However, if people are convinced that consumption makes them, if not happy, then feel better, until you have proposed a way for people to be happy without consuming then they will consume.

Pope Benedict wrote that the environmental ecology will suffer when the human ecology is disordered. If people are unhappy then the environment (amongst other things) will suffer. Like him or hate him, it makes sense. If consuming makes people feel less unhappy or less alienated, then they will consume. Solve the problem of humans being happy and you will have laid the foundation for environmental problems to be solved.

It would be sad if in 25 years when its too late we all discovered that X or Y changes in behaviour would have made a massive difference but people who were making money out of activities such as flying, eating lots of meat, using pesticides or indeed mobile phones had lulled us all into continuing what amounts to self-harm on a global scale.

Remember smoking... a huge cover-up. Now social attitudes have changed and we frown on it. Attitides to meat and the 'throwaway' culture are changing.

However, we need leadership and global cooperation to make these changes.

It would be sad if in 25 years when its too late

I think 75 years ago was too late. And it's not as if people weren't warning us from the late 60s onwards. Remember we had "The Good Life" for most of the 1970s. Maybe instead of laughing at it, we should have listened to it ? It's not hard to see where Margo and Jerry ended up - mainly on this thread.

So we were being warned about it 45 years ago and did .... fuck all. We are being (re)warned about it now. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to have a guess at what will happen next ...

Remember smoking... a huge cover-up. Now social attitudes have changed and we frown on it.

In hindsight, changes that prolonged life and kept the population high might not be seen as such a Good Thing. Especially if it emerges that the older need more resources than the younger.

And if the true cost of the smoking ban had been allowed to be discussed, no one in their right minds would have paid for it.

I don't think that the average family flying once a year to, e.g., Majorca is the problem.

Climate change makes me depressed and nervous in the same way one would be if diagnosed with a terminal illness.

You need to see a professional. Wow. Mind.blown. I mean, the 'we should all be depressed nervous wrecks' was one thing (I am, very much so, because my life for the past 8 years has been shit due to illnesses beyond my control) but your line of thinking isn't exactly resoundingly rational at all.

I read something, think it was on BBC Business page, of the airlines who do offer the carbon offset only 1% of the passengers agree.

What they do is add a small charge to your flight cost and use that money for environmental projects. I think it said £4 for a short flight between UK and somewhere like Spain.

If it was applied to the cost automatically it could make a difference.

I find this thread very depressing. We are ALL hypocrites when it comes to climate change. I’m including myself here. We are ALL part of the problem and we should be looking at how we might all become part of the solution. That might mean we take different decisions to tread more lightly on this planet. There is a great deal of confusion as to what, as individuals, families and communities, we could and should be doing. In my view, getting some good expert information would assist.

Mbosnz - I’m trying to understand your position. Do you disbelieve that climate change will be causing havoc around the world in the very near future or is it easier for you to pretend this isn’t happening? Have you seen the report saying that catastrophe is only 30 years or so away - by 2050? I’ll be dead by then, but I don’t want my children (and their children, if they have any), to scrape out an existence and face a terrible death. What about the report on the news this morning about the rise of deadly infectious diseases? Does that not concern you?

In all the Brexit discussions on MN, there were many angry comments about how some voters were not thinking of the children. Where are those voices on behalf of the children now? There should be shouts and screams that drown out the noise of a thousand airplanes!

I heard a news item some time ago about future water shortages in the south east of the UK, particularly in and around London. We take it for granted, don’t we, that the water will continue to come out of the tap? But what if it doesn’t?

I’m a keen gardener and I’m celebrating today as it’s raining and this will give my garden a welcome soak as well as fill up my water butts. Maybe you have to have a connection with living plants to notice that we haven’t had a great deal of rain in recent months.

I don’t want to attack mbosnz or anyone else. Sometimes I want to simply ignore it all. What can I do anyway? Nothing on my own, but possibly we can turn this ship around if we can get everyone onboard.

This is where we all live. Everyone that has ever lived, lived here. This is where our children will have no choice but to live. Everyone you know lives here. This is where you went to sleep last night, where you woke up this morning. Where you will sleep tonight, and awake tomorrow. Everyone that you have loved, love, and will love lives here.

You were born here, and one day, you will return to the earth and the dust and the oceans here.

This is not what home "is like". This is home. All of ours rented home. We didn't buy it, and we'll have to give it back one day.

And if you think it's big enough, the second picture is what we look like from further out in space. Nothing special. Nothing remarkable. Hardly visible. And certainly totally dispensable when you look around it.

I think 75 years ago was too late indeed but we can't go back in time, and we can still make changes, even if its preparing for a different future and changing our expectations.

@FallenMadonnawiththeBadBoobies

Mbosnz - I’m trying to understand your position. Do you disbelieve that climate change will be causing havoc around the world in the very near future or is it easier for you to pretend this isn’t happening?

Not at all, and yes, I am very concerned. But I find I react negatively to the sometimes hectoring, and semi-hysterical lecturing and wailings. That won't change things.

I think we can all do better, and all should do better, and some do their bit in one way, and some do their bit in others.

Hahahahaha... Oh wait, you're actually serious.

This thread has shown/confirmed to me is that there are people who will literally watch the world burn as long as they can carry on sticking their head in the sand and doing what the merry fuck they want.

These threads make me laugh. It's always someone saying we should stop doing a certain activity because they want to stop doing it or no longer have a desire to do it.

It's a bit like stamping ones foot and saying if I am stopping then everyone else should.

It's like vegans eating meat all their life, knowing the impact it has, and criticising everyone else because they didn't stop eating meat at the same time as them.

Mbosnz - fair enough. I agree we might all chose to do different things that might make a difference to the overall picture. I was trying to say that - but probably not clear enough

Aquilla, do you think you might be able get beyond what was in the OP in engage? Or will you still be laughing when all choices are removed from you?

AND engage

Yay! Let’s forget about it all and continue to have loads of fun! Let’s all be good consumers and buy loads of shite we don’t need to make ourselves happy! Let’s carry on eating ourselves to death and fuck everyone else!

It’s too simplistic to deman people have fewer children or fly less when there are 100s of ways to make an impact - some people might actually be comfortable with!

• Agree Ethelfleda

It would be nice to have a thread for environmental ideas or something... so people can come on and share things like growing their own veg or whatever, so people might think, 'well that sounds easy enough - I might have a go', rather than, 'You said on another thread that you put BANANAS in your kid's lunchbox you fucking hypocrite!'

You see I agree with doing things to make a difference. But what those things are will be dependant on people's individual set up.

So yes a thread on how can we reduce our impact in various ways is what I would call a sensible thread.

But to start off with a 'ask you to stop flying' isn't one of those. It's someone who has decided that because they don't want to fly anymore then everyone else should stop. It's the same as me demanding no one should have children because I haven't.

It's the arrogance of people bleating about how everyone should change to save their children without even the slightest acknowledgment that their desire to have children is one of the biggest contributing factors. We keep people alive now way beyond their natural lifespan and there are thousands of children who never would survive but for hugely intensive and resource heavy intervention. Add to that the enormous amount of resource spent on things such as IVF and it is no wonder that we are in the state we are in. The idea that humanity is so very very special and therefore we should save the planet for future generations of people rather than for the sake of the planet and all the other life on earth is somewhat sickening IMO. However people all think their own desire for children and in fact their children are soooooo exceptional that it would be inhumane not to do everything to ensure that humans can procreate and live for as long as possible. We fight death and disease and flood and fire and interfere with the planets way of regulating itself so no wonder we are where we are. We don't fight forest fires for any reason other than the benefit of humans, same with flood and disease.

Sorry, flying is one of my biggest pleasures i do it for holidays and to visit family.
In return i do other things for the environment recycle don't use one use plastics if avoidable so ill be keeping flying.

I was proactive. Rising sea levels? Bought a house on a hill😁
-Obviously this was lighthearted.-

Some people in here should go away and think about how they talk to others Shame on some of you.

It's the arrogance of people bleating about how everyone should change to save their children without even the slightest acknowledgment that their desire to have children is one of the biggest contributing factors.

Perhaps 'paradox' rather than arrogance?

I am not a hypocrite. I just don't attach the same importance as others.

consider houses built near the east coast. As the coast erodes, some houses fall into the sea. We don't prevent the erosion at any coast. We just accept it might happen at some point, and take reasonable steps to prevent it.

So let's say the polar ice cap melts, and polar bears die out. We don't agonise over the loss of dodos, elephant birds, great auks, or further back sabre tooth tigers,, marsupial wolves, mammoths and mastodons. Further back still, dinosaurs. We don't bother unduly about the gradual loss of red squirrels, dutch elm disease, or ash die back. Shit happens.

We are fortunate to live in the West, but the rest of the world is not our most important problem, and not our sole problem. (well, not mine). Personally speaking, I don't think John Donne was quite right about "for whom the bell tolls". Avatar was a story. :)