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.

David Attenborough has done more than anyone else on the planet to bring the wonders of biodiversity to the man on the street. If we didn't know about these wonders, there would be even more people who wouldn't give a damn about the loss of polar bears.

Amen. AND PLASTIC ISLAND.

If people want others to change their behavior lecturing them usually isn't the way to achieve it. All it does is make the person doing the lecturing feel more virtuous than the other person.

the trouble is, if EVERYONE did that, you would be back in the 15th century.

Let's hope that doesn't seem to be too high a hope in years to come.

Imagine the 5th century ... BC/BCE ?

@FallenMadonnawiththeBadBoobies
too much hyperbole, I think.

Fallen - on the food front, it’s not necessarily what you’re eating, but how it’s been produced that makes the biggest difference. An organic chicken probably had a better carbon footprint than an intensively/conventionally produced carrot. A lot of modern agriculture, even in this country, erodes topsoil and compacts soil destroying its credentials as a carbon sink, and even releasing carbon into the atmosphere. And the chemicals involved in fertilising and killing pest and weeds certainly doesn’t help either. Not all meat or necessarily bad, if it’s farmed right. In some cases such as some grass-fed animals in well managed systems, they can have a positive carbon impact.

Is it better for the planet to use disposable nappies or to use reusable ones

It's questions like that which underscore the point-missing going on around the subject ....

I just don't see the logic in saying because you don't do everything absolutely perfectly, you can't point out anything wrong that anyone else does.

It's like saying that, because I occasionally raise my voice to my child, I can't tell you that it's wrong to hit yours.

I agree with the idea, haven't flown for about 20 years, and was a teen then so not really in control of the choices! Have been to Europe twice since, by train, but happy to have holidays in this country. Really irritates me though when so many people I know are waxing lyrical about their 2 trips a year to Santorini/Cyprus/New York and looking down their nose at me for not going away somewhere hot.

@LaminateAnecdotes
Well everyone won't do it. It doesn't really matter what we regress to.

I shouldn't think there was much qualitative difference for us peasants any time before the late 20th century.

the trouble is, if EVERYONE did that, you would be back in the 15th century.

Really? Being vegetarian, wearing second hand, recycling, growing some of my own food and not owning a car is akin to living in the 15th century?

Those are TINY changes that many people could make, if they were arsed.

Also quite a lot of point missing re melting of the polar ice caps - the resultant extinction of polar bears would probably be the least of our worries.

I'm flying long-haul this month to get my son urgent medical treatment he cannot get here and see my family, who are supporting me in this. I'm glad it's not prohibited, or I would seen be dead from suicide, that's how bad he is (psychiatric illness) and then, he'd probably be, too, but hey, 2 less folks on the planet!

Some people have to move away from family and their place of birth because there's no choice, they can't find work there enough to feed themselves or shelter themselves, or worse, the ones fleeing war so a fig for 'it's always a choice to move from family and hometown'.

We do holiday. We have UK based holidays which we do in the train. And we have been to France and Italy via train.

It’s better to use washable nappies because children tend to bet potty trained earlier with those, so parents use nappies for a shorter period of time.

I think children now are housetrained my ch later than they used to, because disposable nappies are just so convenient.

Oh shit, potty trained, not house trained.
I have puppies on my mind.

Some people have to move away from family and their place of birth because there's no choice, they can't find work there enough to feed themselves or shelter themselves, or worse, the ones fleeing war so a fig for 'it's always a choice to move from family and hometown'.*

See my post up thread, where I speak about my father who was forcibly ejected from his home country after imprisonment and torture.

His was not a choice. I very much doubt the vast majority of posters on this thread who live away from family do so because they were fleeing war zones.

The ironic thing is, this thread seems to be driving intelligent people to the point where mass suicide looks like an option. Leaving the planet to the ignorant, the greedy and the terminally in denial. Now that's a form of Darwinism Attenborough didn't foresee.

...the meek shall inherit the earth

Gth1234 - happily, ostriches are still aplenty .

tbh if the threat of the literal apocalypse doesn't jolt people into doing something I can't see what will.

I assume because on some level people in the west don't think this kind of thing could ever happen to them. We will still live in our three bedroom semi-detached house in the south east, with our smeg fridge, driving our children around to ballet and football and karate, going on our nice package holiday to Tenerife once a year or whatever. We think we are safe - wars and the like don't happen in this country etc etc.

You see it all the time in brexit chat. People going oh well it won't be THAT bad.

The ironic thing is, this thread seems to be driving intelligent people to the point where mass suicide looks like an option.

Maybe that is what is already happening. I noted upthread how some species can hijack another for their own ends

cosmosmagazine.com/biology/zombie-fungus-enslaves-ants-based-on-climate-conditions

A fungus that turns ants into zombies has survived the global shift from tropical to temperate forests by subtly altering its victims’ behaviour.

(contd)

Imagine an organism that takes hold of humans and makes us warm the planet up for it ? I especially liked the use of the word "subtly" in that report. As in "not easily seen"

We aren't the only species to face climate change - and we have no idea what mechanisms have evolved in nature that allow other species to survive. And survive they must have, since we know the climate is always changing anyway. Maybe we wouldn't be having this discussion if we had never heard of "global warming", but decided to go straight in with "climate change".

By the way, I'm not parading squeaky clean credentials. I fly, I eat meat (although less so nowadays) - mea culpa and all that.

I'd like to do better.

I'd like to do better.

Exactly that - wouldn't we all? That's what I don't get when people are so snitty about it.

We have a collective responsiblity to the planet which is more important than our jolly to bloody Majorca, or our every-day-of-the-week ham sandwich, or wanting a third child, or wanting it to take 15 minutes to the swimming pool in a car rather than 30 minutes walking.

People are even snitty when you suggest TINY changes like meat-free Mondays. Moving away from flying here, but the amount of people who genuinely feel hard done by if they go a day without meat is flabbergasting.

www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/environment/forests-climate-change-co2-greenhouse-gases-trillion-trees-global-warming-a8782071.html%3famp

You see it all the time in brexit chat.
it does sound like Brexit fantasy. Stop everyone from traveling, and instead of holidays or studies abroad, kids can go and pick crops at the farms since migrant workers will be gone. Food shortages? Everyone could just go vegan.