Is anyone really making any actual sacrifices to combat climate change?

[Cam77]

Saw a news article about a well known celebrity who is very outspoken on climate issues having another child, which is of course literally the worst thing you can do in terms of your climate footprint. But anyway it got me thinking: Does anyone make any actual sacrifices/significant life style compromises for climate change? Or do we instead merely big up choices that we would have made for different reasons anyway?

For example, I'm vegetarian and when people ask the reason I'll cite the effect of beef and pork farming on the environment as one reason. But the truth is I wouldn't eat them anyway, as I hate the idea of inflicting suffering on other intelligent mammals. Or sometimes I tell myself not owning a car is me "doing my bit" but the truth is I don't really enjoy driving and don't need a car for work. Anyway, it often seems when you scratch the surface, there are nearly always reasons of immediate self-interest attached.

Of course, people are good at spending a few minutes to sort and separate their rubbish now, and we take more care to turn off lights we're not using. All good. But how many people are really making significant life style compromises for purely altruistic reasons. 1 in 100? 1 in 1000?

Of course every individual should do their bit but realistically having another child is a drop in the ocean of what is happening to our planet. I agree that making systemic changes mandated by governments and pressuring big businesses is the way to drive real change.

I know it is selfish but I am not prepared to change my lifestyle to help people who will be around after I am dead. I don’t think there will be any significant impact on me within my lifetime so I just struggle to care. I’d rather not recycle because it requires effort. Plastic packaging g is convenient etc

I won’t be paying the price of my choices so it’s hard to feel any motivation.

I also dislike how people make disapproving noises when I say this but there they are having kids and taking flights on holiday, at least I don’t do that. It’s a bit hypocritical

The idea of desperately wanting a child

But not having one because of the impact on the planet

Is unfathomable to me

@PinkyParrot

We need to go back to the 50s 60s in some ways. But most people would be horrified at the 'limitations' . We lived rurally, bag of potatoes from the farm, other food from vans which came round. Pre supermarket. Long walk to bus stop for trip to town. No car. But work needs to be local or could be online wfh.

I think in previous generations (i might be wrong) but there were less households where both parents were working full time, and a lot of women either worked pt or not at all. My MIL hasn't worked since about 1962! Household chores would have taken longer but there would have been someone at home to walk to town each day to buy fruit from the market, bread from the baker, meat from the butcher etc. Foreign holidays would have probably been too expensive for most people so it wasn't exactly a choice (or even sacrifice) not to go. There weren't as many tech items (probably only a tv) so it wasn't a sacrifice not to have them because they hadn't been invented. In some ways the current WFH would have an impact because less people are driving, or using any sort of transport...but then the need for tech and electricity consumption goes up. If I chose not to use the supermarket for anything (i'm not sure that I could, as not sure where to get some items without it) I would probably spend my whole saturday trundling about various towns to get things.

"I think actually just going back to the 80s would make a huge difference. Emissions and wildlife have gone off cliff edge since even the year 2000. I don't think i would miss anything. Maybe my smart phone which I have a love hate thing going on with."

To an extent I think you are right there. Most people had their basic needs met pretty well - as much as today at any rate - and most people could afford to do the occasional nice thing for themselves and their families and had presents and holidays, it just wasn't so turbo-charged. So maybe a tent to France or a caravan by the sea
(though not necessarily every year) but definitely not 2 -3 city breaks plus a family holiday to a far-flung destination. So yes to one family car but not to two - and very few SVUs. And less miles covered anyway because there seemed to be less dashing about. And yes we were eating fruit and some veg from other countries but also almost certainly more vegetables (especially root vegetables) and meat grown in our own countries. And we got a few nice outfits a year and some basics but nothing like the mounds of now. These are just some of the examples. Of course there were mounting problems with pollution, the Ozone layer etc but things do really seem to have gone out of control on all fronts in the last 30 years - in headline figures like emissions rising but also in things like river quality, sea pollution, biodiversity loss, habitat loss.

@PinkyParrot

We need to go back to the 50s 60s in some ways. But most people would be horrified at the 'limitations' . We lived rurally, bag of potatoes from the farm, other food from vans which came round. Pre supermarket. Long walk to bus stop for trip to town. No car. But work needs to be local or could be online wfh.

no way, sounds horrid. I like choice and variety with my shopping 50s and 60s has nothing id wish to recreate, especially as the "lifestyle" was made able cos women were chained to the sink and washboard

@PinkyParrot

We need to go back to the 50s 60s in some ways. But most people would be horrified at the 'limitations' . We lived rurally, bag of potatoes from the farm, other food from vans which came round. Pre supermarket. Long walk to bus stop for trip to town. No car. But work needs to be local or could be online wfh.

Yes, in many ways. There are some areas where that is not true - pollution standards might be an example.

But absolutely in terms of consumerism.

This is where IMO you see what people really believe. They'll but green brands and such, but they aren't willing to consider a diet that doesn't include a huge variety of foods available in all seasons, because that would be uncivilised.

50s and 60s has nothing id wish to recreate, especially as the "lifestyle" was made able cos women were chained to the sink and washboard

We wouldn't uninvent polytunnels for growing own veg. No reason for women to be tied to anything. There isn't going to be enough work for everyone due to automation and AI - veg growing , walking instead of driving everywhere takes time that we will have or should we all just watch Netflix 6 hours a day and continue consuming as we are.

@Chewit2022

The idea of desperately wanting a child

But not having one because of the impact on the planet

Is unfathomable to me

There was a popular book by Paul Ehrlich called the Population Bomb published in the late 60s. It predicted mass starvation, like hundreds of millions dead, and that this would happen in the 1970s. It advocated a rapid drop in population, even negative growth by proposing things like paying to sterilise men and sex-selective abortions (this on the premise that families have girls until they get the boy, so it’s better to just let them have boys — bonus for him is that less girls lead to less children).

None of what he wrote about actually happened, and he even ended up having a child.

But his ideas were very influential. Imagine listening to this in the 60s and limiting or not having kids because you feared them living in a world suffering from mass starvation.

In fact, your kids would have been born at the best time in humanity, with plentiful food and effective medicine.

We need to go back to the 50s 60s in some ways

There isn't going to be enough work for everyone due to automation and AI

🤔

I completely agree with you OP.

Nowhere near enough.
Mainly my attempts to be minimalist and frugal serve two purposes. My life is simpler and hopefully trying to buy into less consumerist crap helps save the planet.

We have one car, it's a ball ache, but I can't guarantee we won't go back to two when I work further away. We live rurally.
I haven't flown since 2009, but was due to last year. I think it will be prohibitively expensive for some time. The primary reason was not environmental, but it was a big consideration. We always said we'd take the DC on one fly abroad holiday. We regularly holiday in the UK though and find a lot of the adventure is in the journey.

Realistically the best way to save the planet is to cut consumerism.
It is not popular - with government's (less taxes coming in) or individuals, so is unlikely to happen.
But no inbuilt obsolescence would help. I think the EU were bringing something in about that. The technology exists to make things that last (things were built to last decades ago) - but manufacturing choses not to.

The carbon footprint for the internet is, unfortunately, vast. Again that's not going anywhere, but something could be done, maybe an improvement in technology.

I wish manufacturers were encouraged to make alternative container options - so plastic wrapped veg versus loose ( they do in some cases,) waxed cardboard containers for yoghurts and butter, the old tetrapaks (which I think were waxed cardboard ) for cream. They are more fragile but I'd still pay for that option - we are going to drown in single use plastic eventually. Even if they recycle some of it the recycle process probably takes quite a bit of energy so it's not really without consequences.

I've not RTFT ...but there was a thread on here recently (and I think is relevant) how a lot of manufacturers (especially tech) produce items to have a defined and fairly short lifespan, thus forcing a customer to replace the item after x years when previously they might have repaired it or kept for longer.
So while customers are urged to reduce, reuse recycle....somethings are not repairable or need replacing, when could manufacturers make them last longer or repair them at a lower cost.
Example - our dishwasher drawers/shelves broke, although the dishwasher itself was still functioning. It was out of warantee but not all that old. It was almost impossible to find replacement shelves, and when we did find some they were so expensive it wasn't worth it. We ended up buying a second hand dishwasher!
Another example was a fridge we had. It broke twice and we had someone out to fix it at £80-100 per visit. when it broke a third time in less than a year we thought it was time to buy a new one. I'm sure when I was a kid my parents fridge lasted 10 years without having to call someone out to fix it every 6 months!
And in the thread I'm talking about people are mentioning phones and tablets that are obsolete or unusable after a certian period of time.

We need to go back to the 50s 60s in some ways. But most people would be horrified at the 'limitations' . We lived rurally, bag of potatoes from the farm, other food from vans which came round. Pre supermarket. Long walk to bus stop for trip to town. No car. But work needs to be local or could be online wfh

Produced huge amounts of pollution in the 50s and 60s, by the time we got to the 70s, we were known as the dirty man of europe.

cars were very uneconomical, burnt leaded fuel and their production was done in energy inefficient factories.

what was better was that we didn't use all this plastic, which we seem to just throw into the sea :(