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?

@derxa

The current industrialised food model does little for soil quality, with many animals spending most of their lives indoors. Animal manure is of course a part of creating good soil fertility, but what would be better for animal welfare, soil health and human health incidentally would be fewer farm animals but treated well and allowed to spend more time outside but not in such quantities that over-grazing, soil poaching etc becomes a problem. Grazing animals and particularly some species and breeds within species can absolutely be a vital part of a living and sustainable eco-system as described in this Project for example burrenprogramme.com/the-programme/. All of this is predicated on consumers willingness to pay a price for meat that reflects all of this. This is a vastly complicated area, I'm not sure if I've answered your question. That was interesting to read about the Burren Programme. www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/30/uk-farmers-reform-subsidies-british-agriculture English farmers face a period of upheaval and implementation of environmental improvements. Yes people are going to have to face up to higher food prices. Especially milk. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33777075 My sheep are outside 52 weeks of the year apart from lambing time spreading their valuable manure.

That's great about the sheep and no doubt this is relatively marginal land which might not be good for much else - although certain cattle breeds do much better on land often used for sheep. My 10 year old daughter is mad keen to be vegetarian but is thinking of just giving up red meat, the complicating thing (as I tell her) is that lamb and much beef produced in Ireland is probably 'better' or more ethical all round than chicken or pork when you take everything into account. That is if you want to get your protein from meat sources. It's years since I read it but Colin Tudge's book So Shall we Reap is very good at setting out what I consider to be a sane and balanced approach to these issues around agriculture and which also includes the human livelihoods perspective which is often missing from these discussions.

Washable nappies and wipes
Ethical/secondhand clothing where we can.
Mooncup
Bamboo loo rolls in compostable wrap
Bamboo toothbrushes
Bar soap and shampoo
Organic/chemical free/natural body/skin care & cleaning products
Local organic veg bag (no plastic)
Compost peelings/waste/cardboard
Recycle as much as possible
Meat free meals 2-3 times per week (organic free range meat/wild caught fish other days)
Walk as much as possible BUT got a nasty diesel car on the drive (next time will go for an electric)
On a ‘super green’ 100% renewable gas & electric tariff.
The area I struggle most with is food packaging. I try to vote with my feet and buy things in glass jars/bottles or pasta/porridge/flour etc in cardboard boxes but it’s not always possible. And as we get a weekly delivery I have no choice but to receive fruit etc in plastic wrap.

The sacrifice is that a lot of that costs money or time. A lot of the above costs more or is a faff (nappies and moon cup!)

Like others have said, is it really making any difference?? I don’t know but at least we’re trying to reduce/reuse/recycle I guess.

Individual actions scaled up is the stuff change is made of!

Household consumption is responsible for 60% of greenhouse gas emissions. Our individual actions and choices do matter! Putting your money where your mouth is when it comes to your own decisions on what to buy, who to use etc, and then sharing good thinking with others is vitally important.

I follow sustainable-ish on Instagram and have been on her 'knackered mums eco bus' this week. They've been using giki to capture the carbon reductions from actions taken by group members. In 1 day, 10 tonnes of CO2 was saved by people doing simple actions like changing electricity provider, changing banks, deleting emails, having one vegan meal, and so on. OK you could say mah, what's 10 tonnes compared to China. But simple things add up to changes in the way we think and act as a society.

Brilliant and bought porcoking question OP
Thank you

Small sacrifice here (understatement). I am very tidy and house proud but I have an ugly recycling bin in front hall and always rammed with daily (empty daily) recycling.

I avoid buying plastic bottles of water

And that’s it

The not having kids agreement doesn’t wash with me. That unborn baby could invent something that would massively improve the environment

There are absolutely loads of climate and environmental actions I've taken as an individual and as a family, but I don't think I would describe any of them as sacrifices! I've skipped buying things for sure. I've brought second hand when I could have had new. I felt a bit funny about giving the kids second hand playmobil and hotwheels for Christmas when we could have got new. But nothing worse than that. Everything is a choice but not a sacrifice. Many of the choices are positive. Shopping local. My greengrocer. Reducing meat and dairy. Shampoo bars. Walking and cycling when possible. I like them all.

"The not having kids agreement doesn’t wash with me. That unborn baby could invent something that would massively improve the environment."

Ah now seriously, is that your idea of an argument? By that criteria we should have all have 10, 15 children to increase the chances of having this genius saviour be born. First of all, scientific and technological development and progress is more often the product of thousands of diligent and well-educated people working on different things some of which may or may not bring incremental improvements to fruition, sometimes going two steps forward and one step back. These people rarely come of the womb ready to change the world - the few who do are the absolute exceptions and that's why we laud them - most are ordinary people who with the benefit of curious minds and good education and opportunities get to contribute to making our world better. We absolutely definitely should focus more on developing and supporting these kind of people - including our own children if that's their kind of thing - not just having more babies in the hope that one of them will be so super-special the rest of us don't have to do the hard work of making the changes we need to. What a cop out. Funny how people seem to think their own children are so special and likely to effect this massive change. They might but the odds are they will be just ordinary consumers like the rest of us, using rather than contributing to the worlds resources. I have a daughter who is fantastic at science and maths, extremely passionate about the environment, very articulate etc but I know the chances of her being that anything 'special' in the way you mean are tiny.

It is, yes

I'm old enough that I have seen a vast change in approach within the environmental movement. So a lot of the things that get touted as doing something are IMO a kind of greenwashing.

Many moons ago when I was young, a lot of the focus was on the kids of lifestyles required of people, on a global scale, to live sustainably. Including but not confined to climate change - it would also include things like sustainable agriculture and soil health, use of resources, etc.

What was required was straightforward in a way. People would need to live locally - work and live in close proximity, either in rural or urban communities. (So not just public transport in various guises, but having appropriate housing within walking distance of various types of employment.)

Agriculture would need to be small scale and locally sustainable, integrated, appropriate to the local environment, and not fossil fuel dependent (which means not vegan or vegetarian but certainly with less meat than most of us are used to.)

Consumerism as we know it would not be viable - people would have far fewer possessions and replace them less often. More local production of what manufactured goods we have.

Little travel - that does not mean taking the car to visit family at Christmas rather than a plane or on holiday, but mostly not traveling in that way at all. Reducing energy use to a tiny fraction of what it is now, including in industry (see consumerism.)

Buying an electric car and eating an industrially produced vegetarian diet and taking the train on holiday twice a year doesn't cut it, and I fid it difficult to be anything but cynical about it.

@SmokedDuck. You are right - it has shifted more to us becoming ethical consumers rather than just not consuming or consuming in a way that meets basic needs - food, shelter, water, any kind of travel being self-propelled or rare, living substantially more simple lives based largely on what's proximate (work, food, entertainment etc).

But theres very little money to be made in that model of living more sustainably, quite the opposite in fact as people rely on themselves and small circles to meet their needs - swapping, bartering, providing their own entertainment, growing their own food...

It depends on what you mean by sacrifices. I don’t fly, don’t drive, use public transport if I have to go somewhere further than walking distance. I buy local, don’t spend excessively on items that can’t be reused and mainly buy clothes and furniture second hand. However I don’t recycle, there’s no provisions locally to do this.

Agriculture would need to be small scale and locally sustainable, integrated, appropriate to the local environment, and not fossil fuel dependent (which means not vegan or vegetarian but certainly with less meat than most of us are used to.)

We couldn’t feed ourselves without the economy of scale provided by big agro-businesses. Most fertilizer, for instance, is actually produced with natural gas.

So that right there could never happen. I think the UK imports nearly half its food currently.....

@UsedUpUsername

Agriculture would need to be small scale and locally sustainable, integrated, appropriate to the local environment, and not fossil fuel dependent (which means not vegan or vegetarian but certainly with less meat than most of us are used to.)

We couldn’t feed ourselves without the economy of scale provided by big agro-businesses. Most fertilizer, for instance, is actually produced with natural gas.

So that right there could never happen. I think the UK imports nearly half its food currently.....

Yes, most fertiliser is produced that way. It's also really really bad for soil sustainability, not to mention that it is pretty crazy to put all that focus on getting electric cars when you are turning fossil fuels into fertiliser.

Big agro-business, aside from directly destroying agricultural land which is seriously problematic, is not more efficient in terms of actually feeding people. It is more efficient in terms of big business making a profit on an industrial, mechanised basis.

Those are not the same things, as much as big ag would like you to think they are. The UK could produce far more food than it does now, and in a way that is better for soil health than it is now. But it would not be easily amenable to large scale mechanised production or integrated distribution networks.

Luckily those things aren't necessary.

@theleafandnotthetree

But theres very little money to be made in that model of living more sustainably, quite the opposite in fact as people rely on themselves and small circles to meet their needs - swapping, bartering, providing their own entertainment, growing their own food...

I am sure this is the main reason it's not talked about much. It's been actively suppressed, I think.

Along with the fact that many people don't seem to be able to imagine what that might look like. They are convinced that without modern consumerism and all that it entails, life would be horrible.

In a way, this reveals where the error lies around this business of having fewer kids, too. The fact is, as industrialised nations have had fewer children, they have not reduced consumption. Quite the opposite, on a per capita basis they consume far far more. And the people that do this consuming expect that level of consumption is natural and necessary.

So we have raised the bar, by a lot, on what people expect their lifestyle to include. This is now seen as what we ought to export to all countries of the world. Even if these places go on to reduce their own birthrates, offering the western lifestyle to all the people in the world is an an environmental disaster, even if every one of them drives an electric car.

Population growth slows when people have security. The focus has to be on a model that has that without a consumerist, energy heavy, resource-hogging lifestyle that we've come to expect.

I’m not sure it works for individuals to blame “big business”. We are their customers! The reason they ship all the shit in from China is because we (or enough of us anyway) buy it! The two are not entirely separate....

Big agro-business, aside from directly destroying agricultural land which is seriously problematic, is not more efficient in terms of actually feeding people

I’m quite skeptical of this, tbh. Green Revolution is largely responsible for increasing crop yields through chemical fertilizers and high-yield crop variants. I don’t think anything else compares. Boutique farming is fine if you can afford it but not really in a position to replace current practice

@UsedUpUsername

Big agro-business, aside from directly destroying agricultural land which is seriously problematic, is not more efficient in terms of actually feeding people

I’m quite skeptical of this, tbh. Green Revolution is largely responsible for increasing crop yields through chemical fertilizers and high-yield crop variants. I don’t think anything else compares. Boutique farming is fine if you can afford it but not really in a position to replace current practice

You have to remember though that the Green Revolution was predicated on a lot of scientific information, which we haven't lost. Sustainable agriculture today still produces more than it did 500 years ago.

But the techniques of the green revolution were largely put to use in an industrial context, so that's where we have seen them work.

Chemical fertilisers have not been a good thing overall though - they work in the short term but they degrade the soil which is required for agriculture. And fossil fuels aren't renewable. A system that uses up non-renewable resources is going to have to be replaces, one way or another.

There is little doubt that sustainable farming will involve lots more people working in the agricultural sector in some way, while industrialised farming has tried to go in the opposite direction. But a sustainable economy generally will have workers coming out of other areas anyway.

@SmokedDuck. You are really knowledgeable about a lot of what's being discussed here, you are saying a lot of what I would say if I had the patience. I was very immersed in reading about the food and ag system about 10 years ago due to my job at the time, but what you are saying very much chimes with my conclusions having done research up to PhD level. Just to come back to one of your points, I think I referenced Tudge earlier - he would argue that there is an optimum number of farmers/farm workers needed for a more sustainable agriculture and a healthy/balanced system overall. In some developing countries for example, there are arguably too many people still involved just in feeding people (in those countries and otherwise) while in our countries in the West people are arguably too far removed from and don't value enough the systems which give us life and that there are too few people employed in it. A more sustainable agriculture simply is more labour intensive but it doesn't just have to be back-breaking work of yore, it can be a combination of science, labour, native knowledge (which is specific to each farm, even each field within a farm), knowledge which have better access to now due to technology, etc. etc. As I said earlier, the human livelihoods aspect of environmental change has to be got right too - any shifts have to also respect the dignity of work and put an appropriate price on ways of doing things which we have relied in the last 70 years or so on cheap and abundant oil and its by-products (like fertiliser)

What boggles me is people with children who do the nothing - are you not terrified for their future?

No
Cos i dont live my life going "doom gloom disaster everywhere' "we all fucked'
Thats a terrible way to live for mental health and truth be told, since i completely stopped watching the news, im much better mental health wise, which i will always place above the environment for me and family. If that means a less eco path, so be it

I actually think my dd future is bright, she smart, happy, has an idea of the path she wants to take in life, we moving to a stunning part of Aus

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.

@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 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.

We got rid of our wood burner when we realised how damaging they are on a local pollution level. Not going to make much difference to CC I know but it was a genuine sacrifice for us as we love a fire. Hearing a relative, who works for DEFRA, talk about the health consequences of particulates being chucked into the environment sealed the deal for us. Friends think we're nuts but hey ho.

I used to do shit loads - cloth nappies, buying from refil shops, composting, walking everywhere etc. What I realised was that I was making a lot of extra work for myself for no good reason. It makes no impact in the grand scheme of things. It's the massive corporations that are destroying the climate not individual acts. I actually find it's a far better use of my time to focus on actions that hold those companies to account than walking into town for a refil on some chemical free fabric conditioner. Other people make different choices to me but that is fine.

I've found recently that people like to use climate change as a way to feel superior and as a stick to beat people with. It's my belief that society needs less divisions not more and if you're looking at Susan's third kid or Bob's easy jet flight to Marbs you're looking in the wrong direction.

@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, sounds awful

Stopped at two children, I would have liked three or four. I shared a car with dh for many years but had to relent and get my own for work purposes. We also only travel abroad every second year for holidays, I think that's enough really but I am still worried about the environment for the future generations. Sometimes my effort seems like turning up at an earthquake with a dustpan and brush