To wonder how the general public would actually react if the government took drastic climate change measures?

[tequilasunrises]

I’m talking about measures that would severely restrict people’s ability to live how they choose. For example, implanting a one/two child policy, heavy restrictions on animal products and car and air travel mileage.

From reading threads on here and talking to people in real life it is clear that many people agree something needs to be done to stop climate change but aren’t willing to make the bigger sacrifices.

So, who thinks there would be uproar and who thinks the public would be behind extreme measures?

I’d be very sad to have my travel opportunities limited but would be behind it for the greater good.

I think something drastic has to happen now and would be supportive and I think most people would. (The one / two child policy is not a sensible one but there are many drastic actions that should and could be taken).

I think we should be careful not to think of this as all or nothing. Anything you can do (however small it may seem) will help a bit. Of course we do need drastic international government and industry action as well, but even if you can only buy a bit less/find second-hand options sometimes, cycle or take a train/bus sometimes, or eat more locally/less meat sometimes, it'll help, and will at least be better than not doing that. For everyone's sake, and especially for future generations.

If you fancy a child, you have allowance for it. If you don't you use your allowance on other things.
Otherwise it would be greatly unfair that someone who already produces 58 tons, so 29 tons per parent per year, could go and still have all other allowances like childfree. IYKWIM.

Children are actually needed for the future economy. You won't see them as a luxury when in later years their taxes are paying for the NHS services that you use in old age.

It's utterly ridiculous this 'children are a luxury' nonsense, most people have 1 or 2 as the statistics show, fewer than are needed for replacement of the population.

And children would then be entitled to their own carbon allowance.

"There would of course be ‘losers’ with any policy designed to reduce carbon emissions. In this case though the family could change to a lower emission car, or maybe think about relocating somewhere that didn’t require a long personal car journey to reach."

I don't see how this will work, alongside wanting food with fewer airmiles, @BlueSkiesLies. Basically - if all the farmers move to the towns and cities, who is going to farm the land and produce the food in our country? No-one is going to commute from the towns to the farms - and farms are 24 hour a day, 7 day a week jobs - you need to be on site, not miles away. Or do we stop farming altogether, and import all our food, thus massively increasing the carbon footprint of our diet?

Farming is a labour intensive job too - less so in agriculture IF you use intensive farming methods, which are incredibly destructive of the countryside and biodiversity - big machines need big, open fields, which means mature hedgerows, with all their different species of plants and animals, are destroyed, so there is less habitat for essential species like the bees, and fewer bushes and trees absorbing carbon.

Factory farming methods for livestock require less manpower too - but that also has a big impact on animal welfare, and again, the big buildings required may well mean the destruction of the countryside as it is basically being turned into big, industrial style, animal factories - so more harm to the countryside as it is, with all the ecological benefits we get from it.

I would fully support such measures. I think they are absolutely necessary.

I suspect other people would moan like hell and there would be gigantic wailing and gnashing of teeth on the part of the spoiled middle classes at things that are relatively minor sacrifices in the grand scheme of things.

implanting a one/two child policy

Hmmn, probably support the International Court of Justice in bringing them to account for crimes against humanity? And in civil law, for multiple breaches of the ECHR, including the right to family life and the right to bodily autonomy?

heavy restrictions on animal products and car and air travel mileage

You know that's not going to happen in the UK because they haven't put in place the infrastructure to enable it. So for instance, other countries have a lot of proper cycle paths as a real alternative to driving. All that will happen in the UK is that tax will be used to make their use more expensive, so for those who do work, they will get even less take home pay and for those who don't, it will make no difference.

And we will still export live cattle, sheep, pigs and horses long distances to slaughter abroad.

In this case though the family could change to a lower emission car, or maybe think about relocating somewhere that didn’t require a long personal car journey to reach.

And the money for this comes from where? I live in a rural area. Most people live here because they could not afford the rents and property prices in the nearest city. I'd like to move myself, cannot afford it. Care to sponsor people like this?

Ditto a lower-emission car.

And what is this latest anti-farmer rhetoric that seems to be keeping the urban lefties pre-occupied? So you have people commuting and holidaying, causing massive carbon emissions, shopping in supermarkets with all the food delivered and processed to them, trying to tell the people that actually manage the countryside how it should work?

I can't see that going well. Probably we would have a countryside overrun with wild foxes, any animals for meat who were previously grazed outdoors would have to be kept indoors as on the Continent because meat would become a luxury product for the rich, with other people bulking up on sugary junk food due to the lack of availability of meat based products.

I live in an area of the countryside where the land is so valuably fertile is it all arable. Its like living in a desert (literally - at this time of year its all yellow due to ripe crops). There are no natural features, no trees and no paths or tracks if you want to walk. There are no cattle or sheep grazing because there is no permanent pasture. The land is farmed all year round for crops - in winter, its winter barley, peas or oats. Fertilisers and pesticides are added. Its all farmed by independent contractors now - the independent farmers just own the land but pay the contractors and they all chip in to buy massive machinery to improve yield. Its very efficient.

So that's what it would be like I guess.

I'd welcome some sort of "carbon rationing", but that's easy for me to say.

We don't have children, I haven't flown yet this century, if you disregard my work mileage (essential car user with a patch covering 2 counties, not commuting mileage) I doubt if we do more than 8,000 miles a year between us, our energy bills are low, we only buy things when the old ones break, we eat seasonal stuff and keep an eye on our food miles.

If I was one of a family with children, doing school runs and a commute that's impossible by public transport, in the habit of flying abroad for 2 holidays a year, running a tumble drier daily and getting a new car/phone/latest gadget every 5 minutes, I think I'd feel very differently.

I think people would be pretty pissed off when their Range Rover plummeted in value because it's a gas guzzler and they had to get a ferry to France rather than fly to the Seychelles for their holiday.

Carbon "ration" would have to be non-transferable, too, to or rich people would just buy their way out of it, and it would have to be international. Given that the poorest countries have the lowest carbon footprints, they hopefully wouldn't be too affected.

Exactly, Qual, it all amounts to making the poor poorer.

A necklace of jet from Whitby was found in a sarcophagus thousands of years old in Kilmartin, Western Scotland, literally 300 miles away.

People were traveling to trade goods even then. That's what they do, travel to trade, carry goods to sell to other lands. That's not going to stop any time soon.

Haven’t RTFT but it’s not easily done.

I work in a customer-facing role, absolutely no way to do it from home. It’s 30 miles from home, I live in an area of high unemployment and that was the only job I was successful in getting after over a year of searching. It’s shift work and public transport doesn’t run to get me there for my early (0630) start, or get me home from an afternoon shift without a load of changing trains and it taking three times as long as it does in a car. Even on Sundays I start a lot later but the first train from my town doesn’t get there until 20 minutes after my shift starts. I have no choice but to drive. I don’t live rurally either; a medium-large town about 20 miles from 2 cities.

When I worked in offices there was still very much a 9-5 culture and WFH was really frowned upon and questioned to the nth degree. It’s the reason I stay away from office work as the more junior you are (I’d be very junior, no particular skills) the less flexibility you have.

We don’t live in an area with lots of independent greengrocers/farmers markets and the like either. Again, unless we drive to them.

timshelthechoice People were traveling to trade goods even then. That's what they do, travel to trade, carry goods to sell to other lands. That's not going to stop any time soon.

But imagine how convenient it would be for government if people could have no higher expectation in life than to travel 15 miles from their place of birth without a special permit! How easy the population would then be to control.

I think town planning needs to take this into account. Where my DM works they keep building these housing estates each in the middle of nowhere with no shops or amenities walkable, no train station and limited busses. It just keeps adding more and more cars on to the roads.

I agree with this, at least in principle, but how do you balance this with people's need for somewhere to live? A stat flew through my inbox the other day - 40 people a day become homeless in the UK. (Ok, some of them will have been evicted, freeing up a home for someone else, but not all - relationship/family breakdown account for quite a lot).

I'd hate to see homelessness rise for the sake of the planet.

I live in a national park, where planning presumes against ANY development unless there overwhelming arguments in favour. Yet more and more homes are shoehorned into towns, leading to massive pressure on services, schools and roads. And the minute you stray over the national park boundary, there are housing estates popping up on greenfield sites every couple of miles. These houses all sell, despite the absurd prices (SE).

Maybe housing should be allocated according to need, and not be a commodity. If fewer households lived in places much bigger than they need, or had 2nd homes, there might be enough to go round.

Exactly, Qual!

"I agree with this, at least in principle, but how do you balance this with people's need for somewhere to live?"

You rebalance the national economy away from the south-east.

IBut imagine how convenient it would be for government if people could have no higher expectation in life than to travel 15 miles from their place of birth without a special permit! How easy the population would then be to control.*

The role of expectations in this is really interesting. My DHs family has always had very low (to me) expectations. They didn’t aspire to any particular careers, certainly not anything that involved travel, a move or - god forbid - working abroad. Neither of their children were expected to go to uni or to do anything other than get a job and live in the same town as their parents / grandparents - preferably just down the road from them. No interest in food beyond meat and two veg - pasta and rice (except rice pudding) were considered exotic - and no expectation that food should be exciting or a treat or anything other than fuel. Holidays... no expectations there either. A week in a static caravan somewhere on the UK coast, no expectations that holidays should involve luxury or treats etc.

And there’s my parents, with their expectations that their children would go to uni, get good jobs / careers and travel for work and pleasure; that food from other cultures was fun, interesting and worth exploring; that saving up for a holiday home in the sun and flying to it 3/4 times a year were all good things to do and reasonable expectations to have? Turns out they were the bad guys and my MILs small-town, small-world, thrifty ways were the right way to go.

I'd hate to see homelessness rise for the sake of the planet

Lol what do you think 7m of rising sea levels are going to result in? Homelessness on a massive scale - just not necessarily in your back yard.

Certainly interesting stuff. I might become more interested if you start your changes with Russia, China, India and the USA.

I urge you all to read or just watch Professor Jem Bendell. He’s part of the advisory team to the UN.
Incidentally I hope many of you realise the UN has declared we have only 11 years left to mitigate the effects of climate change and save the planet. And the view of the UN is considered conservative and euphemistic and certainly not radical.

It is stupid that the likes of dfs will sell you a easten European made sofa for less than the cost of a British made one.

It's also absurd that you can buy a new sofa for less than the cost of having the old one reupholstered. I'd far rather keep the old one and have it recovered.

Well we are just going to have to suck it up.

They implemented rationing and such like during WW2. The problem with the climate is it’s not so immediately obviously a crisis to us as a bomb on a house or a child fighting overseas-we can just pretend it doesn’t exist. The government needs to treat climate change like the catastrophe it is.

It’s not going to just be rationing and not importing stuff though. There’s are going to be millions and millions of people migrating from places that have become uninhabitable. How on earth are we going to either morally or physically stop those people from coming to places like Europe that have caused these problems in the first place?

It is stupid that the likes of dfs will sell you a easten European made sofa for less than the cost of a British made one.

What do you mean? I thought they were british made. Doncaster and such?

Here's my tuppence...

For every 'What about doing XYZ?' there are always multiple people who answer 'But what about the disabled...the poor...those of us who live rurally...etc'.

The truth of the matter is because we are used to a certain amount of equality we would find it difficult to bring in measures that increase inequality. Politicians don't want to alienate huge groups of people, there won't be the political will to do it.

However at some point - 2040? 2050? 2060? the shit will fit the fan in a big way and we will see increasingly authoritarian Govts bring in these kind of laws.

At that point the shit will be hitting the fan enough that ideas of 'equality' will be rolled back. I'm afraid that those of us who are disabled, poor, live rurally, whatever will suffer. Prices will rise massively. Poor people will start to die of malnutrition again. Disabled people won't get the care they need.

From 1949 to whenever the shit hits the fan will be the historical blip where there was at least an attempt to bring in equality. We'll go back to what has been the natural unequal ways of being a society.

Harsh, but I believe this is where we will be heading.

@AngelasAshes

Can you give any sources for your optimism?

At the moment we are in a climate crisis. The improvements made in recent decades haven't even slowed the growth of greenhouse gas emissions let alone reversed them...

Have you read the latest IPCC report or a summary of it?