To wonder what it would look like if we all took radical steps to tackle climate change.

[RHTawneyonabus]

Was pondering this when stuck in yet another traffic jam on Friday. It’s a journey I happily do on my bike but not safe to do that when I have my kids with me because of all the traffic. Drastically better cycle lane provision would make my life so much easier! I was looking at the amount of traffic and thinking it’s clear we can’t go on like this.

Then this morning someone on the radio saying that Greta et al would have more impact on the environment if they gave up beef for a month rather than going on school strikes.

So if we do everything we need to do over then next 20 years what does that look like?

• city centres with no traffic and vastly improved cycle and public transport provision.
• we all hire electric cars when needed rather than owning one.
• we eat high quality meet once or twice a week and we are veggie rest of the time.
• we can’t waste water on our gardens so Mediterranean planting is in.
• we reduce travelling for work so no flights, Video conferencing work from home more, holiday in UK or France.
• May have to have a cap on number of kids?
• houses have to be much more energy efficient and may need drastic alterations

What else?

This was on R4 tonight

The concentration of climate-heating greenhouse gases has hit a record high, according to a report from the UN’s World Meteorological Organization.
“It is worth recalling that the last time the Earth experienced a comparable concentration of carbon dioxide was 3-5m years ago.“

What sticks out to me is that if we are to achieve this massive change it's going to have to be government led. It's too difficult to expect people to make these changes themselves especially when sometimes the impact isn't clear. Governments have to incentivise companies to allow remote working and cut down on business travel. We need a frequent flyer tax. And why on earth are we still air freighting fruit and vegetables.

Fewer people living rurally and commuting to a big city

Their carbon footprint is much bigger on transport and housing

Living rurally (properly rurally) will be limited to people who work locally.

Everyone else lives in either in a small dense community with a train station they can walk/bike to or lives in the big city themselves.

Frees up more land for planting trees and rewilding as well as growing food.

it is only a lack of people that drives automation

What does that have to do with this discussion?

You originally brought up automation in your reply to someone who was saying that if we dismantled many industries, there would be a problem of a lot of people whose employment had been taken away.

How is automation going to solve that?

Too many corporations have made fortunes for very few people by exploiting natural resources without thinking of the consequences

Corporations make fortunes because we buy their products - we want fancy phones using rare minerals the mining of which leaves huge open mines in third world countries. We also buy lots of fuel for our cars and heating.And we want everything cheap! If companies rewilded land they damaged prices would go up by a lot.
There is nothing stopping anyone buying a few shares in a big company or stopping you biking everywhere instead of driving or giving up your phone.
It's easy to blame others for these problems.

People living near their place of work and schools would help

Costing the earth on radio4 is discussing whether grass fields trap CO2 in the earth. Switching from animal rearing to arable will release CO2 so is not the way to go - someone's theory. Interesting.

I'm not sure it's necessarily a drop in lifestyle, but we certainly need a change in lifestyle. My dd has an electric car (although they use public transport for getting to work etc.) It's great for necessary journeys around town but when they have to travel further to visit family they need to re-charge it part way. She says it just requires a different way of thinking and planning. Instead of putting the kids in the car and zooming off as fast as they can, they plan in a break at a charging point getting the dc out of the car for a run around, or stopping at a supermarket on the return journey (and re-charging while they're there).

I try not to drive where I can avoid it, so instead of taking the car to the supermarket for a big shop, I put a rucksack on my back and walk (and use smaller local shops too). It all takes a bit more time, but for me it is possible. I don't have a garden to grow veg, but I use a local organic box scheme. It costs more but that's less money to spend on 'things'.

There are lots of things I can't do - my house is old and draughty, short of knocking it down and starting again there's not much more we can do to insulate it. Who knows, perhaps knocking it down will eventually become something we do - there's not much point in me moving to an energy efficient house and leaving this one for someone else, it only passes on the problem.

But all of doing something small is better than doing nothing.

Such a good non-hysterical thread.

Good political leadership is what is so tragically missing here. We are rudderless, it keeps me awake at night . We need a passionate environmentalist as POTUS. Not happening...

Nuclear power plants are a doddle ........ right

Right. Nuclear waste is not a problem. It can be safely stored onsite and even reprocessed for fuel. The real problem is political will. South Koreans can build a plant in 5 years; why does it take us so long?

Also, agriculture needs a tremendous amount of fossil fuels, from chemical fertiliser to diesel-powered heavy machinery like plows and combines. We cannot feed the planet without these, so moving to nuclear for other energy needs makes sense to me

More farms like AeroFarms that use significantly less land and water than traditional farms.

Better leadership on using and producing less. I don't think those in power are progressive enough to drive enough change on this, but we need top-down change rather than just the odd person going vegan and mending their clothes.

Global commitment. We're over here reducing plastic while in China they're literally throwing it into their rivers. The US is one of the worst culprits for plastic use –it's everywhere.

A huge leap forward in green travel. I read somewhere that eco planes could be flying in the next decade running off biofuel or green power. I can't recall the specifics, but I think this is essential. I don't believe people will stop travelling for pleasure.

Carbon detectors attached to lampposts outside schools and in traffic-heavy areas. My friend has one in her her house, the reading shoots up when parents arrive to drop or collect their kids from the school opposite. I'd hope it would make more people stop and think whether they a) need to drive and b) keep their engine running.

Cannycat, if we want to get involved together with the developing world and jointly discuss how we need to do all this, then we need to take up the offer they are giving us as they send their children to schools opening up true international education by teaching Esperanto, giving accessible fluency in a year, while their children are still at school, because they can't afford with English. This is possible now that our government has ok'ed Esperanto use in our schools for our children. So to internationalise this discussion, we need to take that decision for our children asap, and then we will start to hear what they actually think, and not what some western commentator thinks they think or should think.

I don't think those in power are progressive enough to drive enough change on this, but we need top-down change rather than just the odd person going vegan and mending their clothes

It sounds like we could do with both at this stage!

It's great for necessary journeys around town but when they have to travel further to visit family they need to re-charge it part way. She says it just requires a different way of thinking and planning

I think this has a bit of a parallel with going plant based - I always see people on the Vegan groups on Social Media who are on their first week breezily asking 'which vegan cheese/milk/cream/egg(?!) is best. Thanks!'. The truth is, after eating real cheese, it all tastes like garbage at first. I think you largely speaking get used to the changes and there are some good replacements out there for when you fancy one but you do just have to accept that life isn't going to taste the same as it used to - there is sacrifice involved but it's fine.

Firstly it’s not clear whether humans are actually the cause of climate change

CAN this be true, after everything we've been told by scientists?? I know a Climate Change scientist - he says there's more consensus amongst scientists that humans cause climate change than there is for smoking causing lung cancer.

People living near their place of work and schools would help

Yes, but how do we make this happen when people don't have jobs for life, households have multiple workers, housing costs vary by area...

Here’s a sobering article about trying to mitigate climate change from an IPCC contributor: www.forbes.com/sites/rogerpielke/2019/10/27/the-world-is-not-going-to-reduce-carbon-dioxide-emissions-by-50-by-2030-now-what

the magnitude of the net-zero by 2050 challenge is equivalent to the deployment of a new nuclear plant every day for the next 30 years, while retiring an equivalent amount of fossil fuel energy every day

It’s sobering. But we should be realistic about what is possible

That is sobering. How bad will it get I wonder.

I went to a photographic exhibition today which had the line bears have stopped sleeping in winter which I found sad.

It's just awful..i have no words that haven't already been said a million times. Nature is bearing the brunt of it.

we are part of nature
accepting that makes the changes saner

I think another interesting part was that renewables tended to add to the overall energy production, not replacing fossil fuels as is oft thought.

Great thread showing that we really could do something if we tried.
I think a major shift in attitude needs to take place. Not condemning people for wearing old clothes or their 80s house decor. Not being seen as cheap if you give a small gift in reused paper. Maybe we need to focus more on the positives of 'green' behaviour - going on the bus or sharing a lift is much more sociable, staying at home in the holidays makes it easier to meet up with (local) friends, cooking from scratch with homegrown ingredients is much more satisfying. I also think we need to slow down. As a PP said parents drive in order to rush off to work. I do catch myself thinking I haven't got time to catch the bus, but perhaps I should be thinking I need to do a bit less. With all the press coverage recently I've certainly started to think about the carbon footprint of everything I do, so let's hope there's enough awareness out there to bring about a change in politics and policies pretty soon.

@kidsfuture It's an interesting idea, although I must confess to being a little ambivalent personally about Esperanto, having tried to learn it years ago when my dad first mentioned it to me.

I think the principle of a universal language is an excellent one but I'm not entirely sure that a synthetic language is the answer in the short-term. Apart from anything else, by the time you have enough teachers trained to teach it, won't many of those children have moved on? (Disclosure - I'm a trained modern foreign languages teacher, though I chose not to go into teaching as such at the end of the course, so I have some understanding of how difficult it is to communicate in a language not your own, even when the root languages are related.)

My other languages are a bit rusty these days round the spoken word; for now, thanks to history, English remains the main language of science, medicine, technology, and airline travel, amongst other subject areas. If America had gone down a different path or two, of course, or hadn't become the most powerful country on the planet, the international language could equally have been French or Spanish or Dutch or German or several others....

As English is such a "Heinz 57" language, with such a hotchpotch of influences, I've often found if I'm in a country where I don't speak the main language and the Roman alphabet is used, if I write down what I need to know or buy, between us we can usually work it out. Does Esperanto currently have the terms required to discuss environmental issues, not just loan words from the English, or the French, or the Kiswahili, just throwing them in there as examples?

I'm genuinely interested, as my understanding was that the Esperanto movement ground to a halt some time in the 1970s. So using it as a discussion medium may mean that all parties are then having to discuss serious issues in a second (or third, or fourth) language that may or may not have the vocabulary required. I'm not sure that would get the message across as clearly as it needs to be communicated either, but I don't know what the answer is.

We will have food made in factories than from the land. Theres a reason citrus crops grow in Spain and root veg in the UK. It will devestate wildlife. The countryside will be managed for tourism, building or left to rot ( and no, it won’t become wild and beautiful - think what happens to untended gardens).

An excellent peice on R4 about the massive waste eating vegtables occurs. So soya/oat milk only uses one bit of the plant. The rest goes to feed livestock. Vegetables have a very poor waste ratio compared to meat. Assuming we all go vegan there won’t be a good use left off vegetable bits. Livestock waste ( poo) fertilisers the soil for arable crops which will then need to be chemical. It will be easier to just manufacturer food in controlled environments with artificial heat and light.
Horrible.

Good point Leflic.
I expect much of the flat land in the country will be covered by polytunnels or greenhouses to increase yield.

But rewilding will return parts to oak forest or whatever tree forest - eventually as the trees grow up through the scrub their canopy makes the scrub die off.
Rewilding can be done with ruminants grazing under and between the trees. Deer, or sheep and cattle. The amount of fodder would control numbers if they were left to find for themselves. As there are no wolves humans would use some for food.

I'm guessing most of you live in surburban or urban areas. It's hard to be an electric car user when you live rurally. My nearest charging point is 20 miles away, and there's a grand total of 2 of them! My village is still off mains and on oil. There is no public transport.

But the farms need to work and the kids in school need to be taught ( that's my job). The previous poster who suggested that peopleshould only live rurally if they work there clearly doesn't live in a rural economy. My husband provides services to over 10 rural villages, but he needs to drive to do it. People here rely on cars because not everyone can work on a farm - the kids needs taking to college, the shopping needs to be done. 10 years ago we at least had buses. Without massive investment in public transport or electric cars ( and making them really affordable - the average wage here is worse than in cities and the deprivation here just as bad) really rural people are a bit stuck.

@phlebasconsidered

Sounds like you - or your husband - do work rurally then.
My point was around the resources spent by daily commuters into a big city which is often stated as a reason why they can't drive less etc but then there is no reason they need to be so far away anyway. If we are serious about climate change, it requires considerable change to all aspects of our life including whether a daily commute from Hampshire to London or wherever is a viable use of finite global resources. No one was doing that journey daily two generations ago.

EVs continue to get cheaper and in five years time, will be competitive with internal combustion engines. At the moment, EVs hold their value better as second hand vehicles so that does make it more expensive if you aren't buying new and this may continue for a while

And you don't need a special charging point. You can charge off a normal plug, just slowly and overnight. Rural homes are much more likely to have off street parking as well so EVs are easier than in a big city.