I am terrified of the climate emergency but more terrified by how ambivalent others seem to be about it!

[CopperPatch]

Just that really, I see people sharing things on social media, commenting on threads, talking about climate change etc but actually changing their lives very, very little - or finding ways to justify not taking action.... it is not scaremongering, it is not a fear project, our planet will no longer sustain human life because of us but so, so many people seem to not care, or only care on a surface level - great click bait but changing their lives in any way seems a step to far. Yes we need wide-scale political and economic shifts but we also need every day action from every day people - and that is EVERYONE'S responsibility!!!! AIBU to expect more of everyone?!

It's not just a matter of houses getting built in major cities. Just about every town and city in the country is expanding. But it's the location of the houses and where the work is that adds to car use.

My work is 15mins by car, travelling South to and out of town development. Bus / train would take hour and half!

It's a major planning and pricing issue. Councils want to bring work to an area, so build office, retail and industrial units in hope of luring some companies.

Companies in turn think of themselves (who'd blame them). Out of town is cheaper lease, cheaper rates, free parking, bigger units can combine premises.

So in turn the employee becomes the bad guy for driving to work as it's far quicker than the multiple changes required for out of town.

NHS is also bad for it. Lets merge hospitals to out of town, bigger, less cramped, etc etc 'we'll run a bus' but actually the bus doesn't work for staff who are commutting further and who work odd shifts.
In turn Patients are forced into driving to get to the new hospital.

and all need to remember you do nothing worse fo rthe planet than having a baby so sadly the single childless man with 5 dirty cars is an eco hero compared to loving mothers with children dressed in hemp drinking water from the garden well.

Xenia don't you have five children?

Antihumanism really is a thing, it seems.

I don't consider myself an anti humanist at all. I love humans, we are great (most of the time).

But I don't think we are more important than everything else on the planet.
A cat for example might not be able to understand the concept of France or listen to Bach, but they have capacity for pain and fear and contentment and just because it's not the same as ours doesn't mean it's lesser.

I think the fact that some humans believe that being more 'civilised' means that your life is worth more has created a lot of evil in the world.

Me and my dh have also made the conscious decision not to have children.

Doesn't mean I think less of people who do, I like babies and they're pretty fundamental to society.

However I think we need to reconsider the idea that you just automatically have children. I think lots of people have them without really considering it and just because that's what we do. We need to normalise not having them as a valid choice and look at how we can restructure the family unit so that we share child rearing responsibilities more.
I think this would be good for women as a class anyway and tackle some of the loneliness that women feel.
I think the idea that you need a family of your own to have somewhere where you fully belong is a weird one, we need to bring back more extended families and village type set ups.

we need to bring back more extended families and village type set ups.

Indeed that could be part of the solution. I'm a massive fan of "localism". So much so, that when I started my own business, I purposely waited for a suitable office space in my village rather than renting one of the many available in the nearby town and city. I can now walk to walk (1 mile away from home) so don't have to drive the 5-10 mile per day it would have otherwise been. My son went to the village primary school - again, no need to drive. We use the village hairdressers, garage, petrol station, takeaways and shops. It would be so easy just to say sod it and go to the town regularly instead, but by not driving there, we're reducing emissions and also helping the village businesses to survive. I run my business almost entirely online and really discourage clients coming to my office or me going to theirs - there's usually no need - all these meetings are just habit. I also offer lower fees to clients in the village. By contributing to the future of the village, it's more viable and convenient - parents & neighbours help eachother out with sharing lifts to school and school bus stops and lots of people help with their elderly neighbours' shopping etc. It's a proper community. It has to be the way to go looking forward.

The answer is the opposite - to get people out of the congested cities, reduce commuting, make more use of rural areas with unused infrastructure

Hold on, why return to rural locations? I thought it was greener to urbanise? Surely a apartment block is greener than single-family homes? Not to mention we can start rewinding some of the empty areas in rural areas

*rewilding

Hold on, why return to rural locations? I thought it was greener to urbanise? Surely a apartment block is greener than single-family homes? Not to mention we can start rewinding some of the empty areas in rural areas

Rural doesn't mean remote. There are 9.7 million people living in "rural" areas - 17.6% of the population. That includes towns in predominantly rural areas. Those towns already have infrastructure (roads, power, water and drainage, telecoms, train stations, etc) and many areas have brown field sites or empty properties that can be brought into residential use pretty easily. Why not build apartment blocks in smaller towns where they can be sited close to existing major roads and railway stations? Why do employers have to build new premises in big cities - why aren't they incentivised to build regional offices instead?

If we continue to concentrate on the bigger cities, we'll be forever having to bring in new and better infrastructure like HS2, Crossrail, etc which cost billions and cause massive amounts of congestion, emissions, etc. That's pointless when you have vast areas of the country with barely used railway stations and tracks and adequate power, water, telecoms, and other systems.

Also healthcare and schools. In smaller towns and more rural areas, they're closing down due to lack of use - that's crazy when in other places, they're having to build new ones and suffer over-crowding. How is that environmentally friendly?

Oh, that ol' chestnut 'we' (who's 'we'?) need to go back to the good ol' feudal system of rural life with 'extended family'. Ignoring that fact that this system was host to a load of misery due to this paradigm - Britain isn't exactly the most fertile of lands, famine was not unknown in these rural areas, not to mention lack of education, women forced to perform caring duties in these 'extended families' and lack of services and assistance in these rural settings.

All this bitching and moaning about automobiles. Well, folks, it's been 100 years, the car is here to stay because rural areas aren't great for public transport, and whaddya know, rural people need to get around, too!

If you think the solution is to install Amish life in the British countryside, guess again.

LOL @ this idyll village life. Ours is 2.5 miles away. The teens are bored out of their minds can't wait to get out and go to the city, everything costs a bomb, services are next to nil so we have to travel big time to access them (healthcare is a major issue), drugs are rife, the schools are shit because who wants to drive miles out to go to work when you can get a job teaching in the city where you live when you're single and childfree as many young teachers are.

i do have 5 children and I have no problems with this. if you look at the planet's time line humans are on it for a blink of an eye so it doesn't matter a jot if we are on it for 1 minutes or 55 seconds surely?

Shortstuff99 - I completely disagree with everything you say and you make no sense. Also, this is thread about climate emergency, not about wealth distribution and inequality. Start your own thread about that if you must, but I suspect you don't give a stuff about equality. You are obviously just very bitter about paying taxes.

I think everyone on the planet deserves a home, food and essentials. You obviously don't, otherwise why would you want to take 70% from the poorest in the country? The way to achieve more equality is to take from the richest, not the poorest.

Why are rich people so often greedy, intent on destroying the planet and making life even more miserable for the poorest? Flawed logic and character.

I couldn’t in all conscience have more than two children. Cannot see any justification for it. Planet full to bursting.

if you look at the planet's time line humans are on it for a blink of an eye so it doesn't matter a jot if we are on it for 1 minutes or 55 seconds surely?

Well it matters if, during our 55 seconds or whatever, we manage to damage our planet beyond repair.

And it matters to me if my children, or grandchildren, or great grandchildren live horrible lives.

It is not just climate change but all the problems associated with industrialisation (waste, pollution, land clearing).

And the problem is how we live as humans is all founded upon the idea of growth (population, economic etc) and this really only leads to one inevitable conclusion doesn't it?

I am selfishly sad that I will possibly see the bad fallout of human impact on nature in my lifetime and if not by then, sad for my children and grandchildren as I don't want them to suffer. But I look into my family's history and there are centuries of hardship to be found there! So in my own life I have had it so good, traveled the world (and returned home, previously people set off on journeys knowing they would never return!), spent my days working an interesting job, lived a life of ongoing comfort.

So it is a mixture of feelings; sadness, bittersweet heartbreak, when looking forward to the future.

I agree Wish, we have had absolutely the best of it.

I wonder will our grandchildren be telling their grandchildren around the hearth, how we flew around the world, ate food from every corner of the globe, flicked a switch for light and warmth and there will be disbelief and gradually our way of life will become the stuff of legends.

I think that could sadly be the case and it will rapidly accelerate. It feels to me like a ship that slowly starts to list but then the inevitable complete capsize happens very quickly. I honestly wake up every day feeling really quite scared.

The fires within the artic circle are completely doing my head in - runaway green house affect in action.

The fires within the artic circle are completely doing my head in

Because you don’t understand how snow can catch light?

Shortstuff99 you are a patronising individual with very little to add to this conversation. I imagine the concern is more because of the intensity and unprecedented growth of these fires - don't want to baffle you with science but here is a quote from science alert:
"These are some of the biggest fires on the planet, with a few appearing to be larger than 100,000 hectares (380 square miles),"
"The amount of CO2 (carbon dioxide) emitted from Arctic Circle fires in June 2019 is larger than all of the CO2 released from Arctic Circle fires in the same month from 2010 through to 2018 put together."
If nothing is done to curb our carbon emissions, global warming will only get worse, and these extreme fires could soon become yearly events.

These fires can be seen from space - the world is literally on fire!

These fires can be seen from space - the world is literally on fire!

Fuck me. And you’re saying I’m a patronising person. I don’t think you’re going to be baffling me with science any time soon if you think ‘the world is literally on fire’

shortstuff you really do come across as quite an antagonist, unpleasant sort.

And here come the ad homs....

Xenia: I am not so arrogant to suggest humans are better than dogs or bacteria or worms.

Wow, you think it is arrogance to realise that humans are better than worms or bacteria?

Goodness me, is this the mentality we are dealing with?

answer is the opposite - to get people out of the congested cities, reduce commuting, make more use of rural areas with unused infrastructure, get people working locally again, a return to smaller regional offices, more home-working etc.

The impact on wildlife would be catastrophic. In the overbuilt up south there are plenty of predator /scavengers species - foxes, badgers, squirrels, covids. The human impact on more the vulnerable members of the food chain- hedgehogs, songbirds, small mammals. etc is appalling.

lightening I disagree that shortstuff has little to add. She is pretty much the only person talking sense.