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?

Phlebas - agree. I live in an urban neighbourhood but my car is essential for work. It's simply not possible to do my job without driving and the amount of miles I do, means that an electric car is a non-starter.

I think it's about trying to make the adjustments that you reasonably can. I don't fly long-haul. I eat a plant-based diet. I recycle.

Cannycat20, yes Esperanto has all the words for a modern ecological discussion as it is in use on every continent. It has never died out and has been expanding in user numbers, but the English media hardly report on it so we remain ignorant of its advances in schools in Africa and elsewhere. As it takes 7 to 10 years for non English children to gain English fluency, they have left school before then, so losing any access to international education for dealing with Climate Change. So their only choice in the developing world to access any affordable international education is by learning Esperanto, giving fluency in about a year. It can only achieve this because all the complications of national languages like irregular verbs, spelling, grammar etc were designed out when it was invented in 1887, enabling children to have fluency so quickly. So the developing world without access to the industrial world education budget levels, has to use what it can afford and is in effect showing us the way. Because of its efficiency of design any competent language teacher can fairly quickly manage to teach it, so there should not be any shortage of teachers and most learners are using computer courses at present like Duo Lingvo and Lernu.net.

@kidsfuture, that's very interesting, I will have to go and investigate further as things have evidently moved on since I last attempted Esperanto, which was several years before I completed teacher training. With that extra training behind me I'd be surprised if I didn't find it a different experience entirely. I always thought it was an excellent idea to have a universal language, I just was never sure of the incentives, globally, for using it in a world where English is currently the main language of our money-making societies...

I definitely hear you on the issue of the English-language media in the UK not reporting on much that happens beyond the UK and the USA, with a bit of Europe, and very occasionally Australasia.

England gets rid of its coal/gas fired power stations relying on solar, wind, imported wood pellets to burn , claims electric cars will save the environment/planet where the electric coming from ?? oh yeah power stations that we havent got. while china continues to build dozens of coal fired power stations every year belching out shit loads of 'greenhouse gasses'

I haven’t read the whole thread (don’t shoot me!), but I think the following.

Public transport, unless you live in a big city it’s normally crap. I used to live in Nottinghamshire when I was growing up, our town only had a college that did btecs etc and I wanted to study a-level. I had to cycle for 15 minutes to get to the right bus stop, I then took two buses, the first around 15 minutes and the second 40 minutes, I then had a ten minute cycle the other end. It shouldn’t take that long just to get to your nearest suitable college.

Housing, why is it still mainly houses? Flats take up less room, cheaper to build and cheaper to insulate well. I live in a flat thats in an ex commercial building, it isn’t huge but it’s certainly big enough for me and my son. We do not need to live in houses.

Food, if you buy it, eat it! There was a recent thread where people were purposely over stocking their cupboards. I make a list on a Friday night, order it and it arrives Monday evening, we eat virtually everything apart from the odd bit that my son leaves on his plate. I don’t have a supermarket in walking distance of my flat, we do have a little sainsburys local but virtually every fruit and veg item in there comes in a plastic bag.

Diet as well as not throwing food etc. We can be more seasonal, I’m an almost vegan (I do eat eggs, but no meat or dairy), I mainly eat british grown in season fruit and veg. I know for a lot of people cooking can be a scary thing, so we could provide decent access to cooking lessons for all.

On the topic of food (again, I know) I would personally be a fan of all animal products being highly taxed. No one needs to eat meat on a daily basis, roasting one chicken a week would give a family a decent amount of meat.

Clothing I hate the primark effect and disposable fashion. My son is four and wearing a top that would have been about £30 new, but he’s the third child to own it, it isn’t misshapen, faded etc. I do buy him some new clothes, but generally I go second hand. Clothing shouldn’t be cheap, the UK used to make clothes but people want huge wardrobes full of cheap tat now, rather than a small number of good quality items. I don’t have a great deal of clothes, but what I have is decent quality so it lasts me a long time.

Reducing the population is the biggest one. There should be a two child policy worldwide, maximum. Replacement rate should suffice.

I'm very pessimistic.
Having fewer kids isn't going to cut it, the majority of people need to stop having children. The number of people the planet and our agricultural systems can sustain has been drastically reduced by the amount of damage that's been done. Future generations will need to work to undo as much of it as they can.
For this to happen its going to need a revolution in the way the human race thinks and behaves, and it just isn't going to happen as far as I can see, because it will depend on the majority being able to co-operate - we cant even stop being violent towards each other, let alone learn to share.

as always, take a look at the gridwatch meters:

www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

As I type it is a cold windless afternoon. Surprisingly we seem to be getting over 14% of our power from wind turbines. These of course have a short lifetime, a colossal building and transport footprint and need diesel backup - I don't know if that is running at the moment.

Biomass is at 7%, as the site points out these stations use imported wood (so very far from 'green') or sawmill waste which is a little better. Without gas turbines and nuclear we'd be stuffed. The interconnectors are also contributing a little although the Irish are taking from us.

if you aren't worried you should be. WE, not just the government, WE, need to turn things off and use less.

don't use shops that leave doors open or lights on. Make sure you turn stuff off when you leave home or work. Buy stuff that needs less charging. No idea how we'll charge all these electric cars, although at over 10 times what I've just paid for my replacement car I'll never own one.

Reducing the population is the biggest one. There should be a two child policy worldwide, maximum. Replacement rate should suffice.
Isn't it lucky that Europe, North America, South America, Australia and Asia have birth rates below two children per family already.

But as an American child consumes 10,000 times the resources of an African child, look closer to home than raw numbers of babies

ListeningQuietly - Change has to happen in the west - Yes we agree and it can only happen when the west adapt their education to include an international language - Esperanto- that is affordable by those in the developing world, so all of our children can learn together about climate change and how to co-operate in overcoming it. This is a new experience for us in the west, as expecting others to all learn English is a hangover from our colonial past, designed to give us the advantage, decidedly undiplomatic and not going to help all our children's future at all. Even non linguists can learn Esperanto because all the difficulties of learning national languages have been designed out.

The problem is listeningquietly is that birth rate in somewhere in Australia is nearly meaningless as the government here just keeps bringing in high numbers of immigrants. If the immigrant comes from a developing country then their ecological footprint immediately increases once they come to live here.

It’s the problem with an economic model built on never ending growth on a planet with finite resources.

Parts of Ireland still have populations below what they were in the 1820s

the world population will start to decline in the next few years

the west is reaching peak stuff

if everybody makes small changes and suggests positive mall changes to the people next to them

we still have time

but the biggest changes have to come from folks in the first world realising that they took the wrong step years ago
and suggesting a better path to those who follow

My only positive thought right now is that the topic is being discussed pretty much everywhere. I've been reading about climate change for 40 years and it feels for the first time as though the world is at least taking a bit of notice. Whether it's too late or not is an entirely different matter 😪