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.

Oh, FFS, Gth, you are seriously deluded and in dire need of history lessons if you think income taxes are a recent thing to prop up the welfare state, feel hard done by them and are relying on bloody Wiki for facts!

500 people on a plane
Versus
500 cars
To do the same journey
Which would affect the environment more ?
Including the cost of manufacture & end of life disposal ?

Surely if you are suggesting to people to stop flying, you have to look at other methods of transport too

Should we be going back to horse drawn transport ?

But before money, they were paying food rents and/or evicted and their families sold into slavery or put to workhouse if they couldn't meet up. Sticking just to Britain, people had weirgilds on their heads. It wasn't money, but anything of value, including one's own person or his/her progeny, so in other words, another term for money. Even to practice some trades, you had to join a guild, a society, and pay up somehow for that protection to trade freely. This is how society works, in essence. If it's a Ponzi scheme, at Gth claims, it's so old it's been carrying on for thousands of years.

Reducing inequality is a far more urgent, important thing to do than wanking on at people to remove as much enjoyment as possible from their lives.
Reducing inequality for women generally means they have fewer children.
Higher taxes for billionaires and big (polluting) corporations means more money to spend on research into renewable energy and/or ways to slow, halt or reverse climate damage.
Reducing the wealth and power of the 1% will slow/.reduce their ability to encourage climate change - bear in mind that some of them actually want to bring it on. Either they are superstitious loons who think that the end of the world is to be desired because it will put them in touch with their imaginary friends, or they quite like the idea of a world without poor, black or brown people, in which they can do whatever the fuck they like.

Should we be going back to horse drawn transport?

No but I do think we should be thinking carefully about car journies which could be completed using other methods of transportation. My neighbour, for instance, frequently drives to sainsburys. It is a 20 minute walk, about 5-10 in the car.

That is not a necessary journey. I walk it, with my three year old. We live in a major city, if she really can't bring herself to walk 20 minutes a bus at the end of our road stops right outside.

People choose convenience every time.

@darjeelingisrank

well what do you think taxes are used for, then? 34% of our GDP (more for some countries). How do you replace that if employment drops. You end up like Greece, cutting old age pensions, and so on.

(Greece is supposed to be 39% of GDP according to that table, but that doesn't sound right to me.

Anyway, look at the trouble with the Gilets in France because Macron is trying to put slightly more sensible economies in place.

The UK economy is worth up to 3trillion dollars, so total tax is up to 1 trillion dollars. Look at the rows about so-called austerity to sort out the crisis, and the shortfalls we have had since 2008. Look at the complaining with any financial measure such as delaying pensions, or the "bedroom tax". If the government don't get that income, they have to cut back elsewhere.

This isn't so much guff. This is real hard economics. Pension age will go up again. There will be a graduated pension in due course. Electric vehicles will be taxed like petrol ones in due course.

I don't feel hard done by taxes - I am just pointing out that reducing the GDP of the UK by reducing consumer activity will have to be balanced by cutting back on public expenditure.

👏👏👏 @ SGB! Anything else is putting the cart before the horse.

I have to say I'm with the people who say not having children (or max 1 per household) is the real answer

But what about the economy?

It's like people who rile against immigration and talk about preserving the host culture.

Surely then you need to have more children to offset the extra labour fulfilled by people from other countries? Especially if you want to remain a great powerhouse i
the world economically?

There's a great deal of dismay about how the birth rate for indigenous western and european (aka white)populations has dropped due to equality. Often used as an anti-feminist argument.

Reading this thread, I see a dystopian future ahead. At the moment there are too many movements with opposite ideologies to be good.

And all this talk of enforcing China like sanctions and deriding of people having children. You can use the Environment to sanction deplorable things and curtail freedom. What will happen? Will people with more than one child have to endure ridicule and censure, will third children?

The way to hell is paved with good intentions.

The goal ought to be to persuade, to work on gradually developing a circular economy

One thing I think would indirectly help is opening up scientific study and research, not wrapping it up in jargon, encouraging all children to study some sort of enviroment science. More equality between the classes so people feel they have an actual stake in the world. And yes to using front and back gardens for wildlife and growing food.

If nothing else, I want to be able to look my son in the eye and tell him I did my best

I think it was dottyboxes who said this upthread. I totally agree. Whatever I personally do to try to reduce my footprint won’t change the ultimate outcome, I know that. But it’s a matter of conscience.

One logic is to reduce population by having a one child policy. Makes sense. Then logic says how are the old folk to be served?

Perhaps one day logic may say, euthanise the old folk as a more sustainable way of ensuring humankind.

Not saying I agree with that of course. But it reminds me of the film Logan’s Run.

Perhaps one day logic may say, euthanise the old folk as a more sustainable way of ensuring humankind.

It absolutely should! NOT forced euthanasia of course, but it should be an option. My Granddad would have chosen it for one, and then he needn't have died such a horrible, painful, long drawn out death. Why are people being forced to stay alive when they'd rather not be when the population is out of control?

Well, as is typical for threads of this type, the OP has disappeared (having set off their incendiary bomb!).

I haven't RTFT in its entirety, but (as I'm sure others have pointed out) some of us live in places here we cannot visit friends, or (much more seriously) access vital medical appointments if we don't fly to them.

Surely, as long as we're not all taking flights for the sake of it, then that's ok? For some of us, the only other option to visit family is to use boats - and they also cause huge amounts of pollution. (I'm waiting to be told that I should be able to 'walk on water' so that I don't pollute the environment... but in reality, that's not going to happen, so flying it is).

One logic is to reduce population by having a one child policy. Makes sense.

They tried that in China. They are now realizing it had major implications and have scrapped it and are encouraging people to have more children.

'one child' had economic impact and was scrapped...the question is whether or not economics can continue to be considered more important the maintaining a life supporting planet....

'Economics are not important' is the sort of wank only trotted out by people who are reasonably comfortable financially. Economic inequality is not only our most pressing problem, but addressing it will also help address climate change.

economics is important...its just not a good enough reason to keep destroying the planet.

exponential growth models can't be sustained in a finite system...

China explicitly reversed one child when it couldn't maintain exponential growth with it in place, but the reality is that its the exponential growth that will kill us.

I'll try to write 'growth economics' every time to be clearer in the future....though I can't think of a country that has any other economic model than 'growth'?

I agree we should all try to fly less, I'm not sure never flying again is very realistic though especially for ppl with family or people with certain jobs. I think someone upthread suggested some kind of credits system? That should be looked at as a possibility I think but it needs to apply to the 1% as well as regular folk otherwise it's not fair.

Maybe we're allowed to fly every 5 years or something and ppl with relatives or special circumstances a bit more.

We wanted to visit America next year but now hit with the guilt. It’s shit! Saw a programme and flying is worse way worse than boats cars etc by some measure

Everyone saying we should have less children, if that’s the case why do we need immigration? Does immigration cause environmental issues?

Everyone saying we should have less children, if that’s the case why do we need immigration? Does immigration cause environmental issues?

Obviously it does. Bringing in migrants from less developed countries will increase their carbon footprint massively, and they tend to have more children in the first gen at least.

In some countries, population growth is solely down to immigration numbers (and their higher fertility), so that would be an easily way to cut numbers. It’s not widely discussed however.

The environmental impact of importing, as it were, a grown up person is smaller that bringing one up from a baby.

It’s the other way round though, immigration is caused by environmental issues. Crops failure, drought, displacement and immigration hand in hand.
Big masses of people put more pressure on resources in their new countries and so the problems grow.

If we slow down global warming we slow down immigration as well.

immigration is caused by environmental issues

Would argue it’s largely economic and political at the moment.

If we slow down global warming we slow down immigration as well

Not if they don’t have access to cheap energy and abundant resources. If combating global warming means we put developing countries at an economic disadvantage, you’ll see even more displacement.