Destroying the Planet? I'm sure AIBU and I don't care

[Ivebeeninlockdowntoolong]

Inspired by another thread.

Live as a couple. Have no children and one 6 year old car. Have a 4 bed house which we love. Modest holidays (pre-covid would go abroad twice a year). We try not to be wasteful and recycle.

But please stop telling me we are destroying the planet! Just because we eat red meat and like nice clothes. I'm fed up of people coming out with the "go vegetarian / go vegan" lines. Just go away.

I think not having children trumps most people who are eco-warriors (with children) so on a comparison basis I think we would score quite well re our environmental credentials.

Apart from that, I'm not really bothered by environmental issues as there is naff all I can do to influence the behaviours of other people and especially big powerful conglomerates and governments. We quietly do our "bit" when we're happy to do so as long as it doesn't inconvenience us. I also accept that the Earth has changed a lot in its very long history and inevitably will keep on changing. If the ultimate result is that it changes to become completely hostile for supporting human life, well, so be it. But hey that's probably thousands and thousands of years off and mumsnet will be a dim and distant memory by then.

To be truly environmentally friendly and low / no carbon footprint you'd need to be self sufficient, living somewhere in the sticks. Only take what you need to eat and wear from your natural surroundings. And preferably living in a cave.

So, I don't think it's possible. I also believe that if we truly want to make a difference, it would have to be from the top down. The things we need in our every day life (food, clothes & housing) are the worst offenders. But they are also the only things available to us.
I'm all for reducing waste and do ensue to reduce it where I can. And yet plastic & packaging seem to be unavoidable.

"I do my bit as long as it doesn't involve giving up cheeseburgers".

@HugeAckmansWife

acorn no they are very sincere and genuine. Hence (in my opinion) being very adversely affected by worry about it. I have enough concerns very close to home that I really don't feel taking on the weight of the world would be helpful. There's an interesting bit in a tv show (I won't say which) which points out its virtually impossible to live an environmentally harmless life, even when you really really try just because of the way global industry works. Short of going completely off grid or Tom and Barbara Goode style, most aspects of our lives will, somewhere along the way, be causing harm.

Sincere and genuine as in really doing all they can?

My feeling is that sincere and genuine wouldn't be on social media, they might need devices for work but using devices for other reasons increases use of precious resources, from their point of view.

OP YANBU,
Most annoying person in my village is the preachy eco warrior with 5 kids

2nd most annoying is the equally preachy judgy person with 3 kids who drives them to school in her diesel car rather than go to the school within walking distance because it’s “naicer” 🙄

I'm fairly sure this is only true because of the ridiculous amount of resources your average Westerner will consume in their lifetime. It's not that having a child in itself is intrinsically bad for the environment.

It's to do with wealth a wealthy African living in luxury will have a high co2 footprint too. Nothing to do with being western. Realistically the environment needs there to be lots of poverty as it cannot sustain 7 billion people living Western lifestyles. as seen in China when people are raised out of poverty their carbon footprint increases.

YANBU OP

We try to be thrifty and are against animal cruelty.

But I will not be told what I can and cannot eat (I will not be pushed into malnourishment)

I'm also fed up of hypocritical 'green' sermonisers who fly round the world under the pretext of convincing others to reduce their carbon footprint!

I do my bit - recycle, don’t fly much, walk most places, grow things, etc etc.

But I must admit my heart sinks these days when I see ol’ David Attenborough wagging his finger at me from the telly yet again.

Didn’t mind flying too much when he was off bothering gorillas in Rwanda, did he? Or did he get there on his bike?

@RuggeryBuggery

OP YANBU, Most annoying person in my village is the preachy eco warrior with 5 kids

2nd most annoying is the equally preachy judgy person with 3 kids who drives them to school in her diesel car rather than go to the school within walking distance because it’s “naicer” 🙄

How the ones with so many kids have the gall to do that?!

@Cannotgarden

I'm pinning all my hopes on them genetically engineering a massive tree that sucks in tons of whatever gases it is that we don't want (it's not co2 from what I recall) and chucks out loads of oxygen. Plant one in each continent (it's a big tree) and bobs your uncle. And perhaps genetically modifying other plants so we can burn them as fuel but they don't release bad stuff. Yes, behold my scientific knowledge.

@Cannotgarden this is gold 😀

I do as much as I can that is within my power to do but when you're very poor, eco friendly alternatives and the like are just too expensive and you can't justify the cost. I've done one of those calculator things and my carbon footprint is well below average.

I fly very infrequently
I don't drive a car
I don't have a tumble dryer
I recycle/reuse/buy second hand as often as I can (mainly because it's cheaper!)
I grow some of my food
I buy my eggs locally
I rarely shop for clothes and when I do they're often from the charity shop

What I am not prepared to give up:

Eating meat/dairy
Certain disposable cleaning products (antibac wipes for example)
Disposable san-pro - I don't actually have periods at the moment but if I ever do again I won't be using a cup or washable pads/pants etc.

I work in the food industry and the amount of cleaning and plastic waste produced is unreal. Everything has to be disposable for hygiene. There's also usually little to no recycling because there just isn't the facilities or space in a lot of places. Not saying that's unchangeable but it's difficult to be eco friendly when everything HAS to be single use. Same in medical settings.

@WeAreAllCompletelyFine

I am less bothered about me - I've had 36 pretty great years of life on a beautiful planet so far - but my children and the beloved children of others deserve more than people just saying fuck it, what it will be will be.

That said I don't know what to do about it. I do the normal stuff, recycling, glass milk bottles, reusing clothes etc but I don't know how to go about making the huge-scale changes that are required?

One thing to be aware of with recycling plastic is that with quite a few councils it is a bit of a con. It's shipped out to the developing world for "recycling" by dodgy companies who just dump it. Then there's the stuff that isn't recyclable anyway. To make a difference, try to eliminate the packaging from things. Buy fruit and veg loose and use reusable containers for meat/fish. Buy bread from bakeries who wrap in paper instead of plastic bags. There are now a growing number of plastic-free shops around the country who supply bulk stuff such as oats, sugar, raisins, cooking oil and so on for decanting into your own containers.

You ask for other things that you could do. How do you get about? Is there anything in your transport arrangements which could change? Cycling might mean setting off for work a bit earlier but you don't then need to spend time in the gym and save money on car/gym expenses. I always laugh when I see people driving to a gym - surely they're being ripped off! When something seems difficult ("got to drop the kids off", "have to get a mountain of groceries"...) don't just look at the problems, see the solutions too (kids can cycle too, food can go in the panniers little and often...).

Holidays - sure there's that once in a lifetime trip to Australia you've always dreamed of. Nothing wrong with a rare treat. Three trips to the Caribbean per year would be wildly excessive on the other hand. Instead, jump on a Eurostar to the continent and then get a sleeper to somewhere fantastic.

Watch what you buy your kids (and what relatives buy). Some people get themselves into all sorts of debt buying a mountain of tat at Christmas when most of the presents last about 10 seconds before their child gets bored and moves on to the next one. So buy fewer things but more thoughtful ones, don't just buy for the sake of doing so.

It all might seem like a daunting task to change an entire culture of buy-throw-buy so pick one thing at a time to change.

As a previous poster pointed out, your time line is wrong, OP. The impact of the climate emergency is being felt across the globe now; displacing millions, bringing about the extinction of species, causing coastal erosion and flooding resulting in the loss of habitable land on all but one continent, altering weather systems resulting in crop failure, famine and rendering parts of the planet uninhabitable -the list goes on. Happening now.
When I read that people say things along the lines of "I'm OK with humanity being turfed off the planet!" I am always disturbed by the fact that a) they seem to think it's OK to wish away the lives of others in the process, and b), I also wonder how they believe this demise is likely to occur; like a sudden flick of a switch, rendering us extinct in the easy, painless twinkling of an eye, catching us blissfully unawares? Instead of living through a hideously protracted process of universal degredation and reactive damage limiting measures, irreversible feedback loops, scarcity and disease, impossible and dehumanising societal and individual dilemmas, loss upon inevitable loss. If you're truly OK with the latter, for yourself as well as the children in the global south who have not had any hand in contributing to such a bleak outlook, then I'll leave you in peace with your "...so fuck it!" frame of mind.
And NeilBuchanan, I hear you and respect your choices immensely

@woodhill

If everywhere is used to plant vegetables then there wouldn't be enough room for bio fuels and other things. I don't think it is realistic

But this is what is happening now? It's the reason people argue we should eat the vegetables ourselves rather than feed to the cattle to eat their flesh.

Soya is the primary feed for cows, pigs, chicken and farmed fish.

75% of all soya grown globally is used as animal feed. 6% is eaten by humans.

(Source: grow your own magazine, April edition)

Stop blaming big business and conglomerates - it's not them it's us

They are providing oil , if they're a huge oil company, which makes plastic ie all those single use containers for veg, all the plastic toys for your dc and all the polyester in the many clothes you buy - it's YOU, not them.

Individuals can do very, very little on a personal lifestyle level to impact on climate change. To get us out of the oncoming disaster we need a huge overhaul of the way most of our society works, and the mat change has to come from the top. I have massive anxiety about climate change but to finger point at individuals about them eating meat is ridiculous n

Also, enjoy not having to worry about your kids future. And I mean that seriously. I am really worried for the life my children will have when they're in late adulthood.

People always tend to concentrate their green crudentials on the things they find easiest so it is easy shopping little and often without a car if you live in the city with 3 supermarkets the butchers bakers and grocers all within 10 minute walk so they use these to justify a flying holiday and replacing decor and fashion frequently and think they are doing better than the rural dweller that has a car and drives 20 miles to the supermarket and eats meat but they justify it by the fact they use and repair everything until worn out and grow own veggies and have hens.

Many talk about recycling but lots of stuff in recycling is not actually worn out or unusable it's just old fashioned or the personnow hasa newer version or it needs a small repair or something,the mantra is actually reduce, reuse or repair then only recycle afterwards but from what I see the "reduce" of consumption and avoidance of buying the unnecessary and the reuse or repair of items doesn't get a look in often it's just straight to recycle. How many people actually keep their smart phones 5 years or more but instead kid themselves it needs replacing because the programmes take nanoseconds longer to load, fast fashion is twice as polluting as all the flying and shipping in the world per year at pre pandemic levels of transport. Most clothing is recycled long long before it is worn out

Ultimately buying less in the first place is way better than even immaculate recycling
L

@Sundances - so I am going to work today:
-I wear made from cotton clothes they still have a % of elastane which is plastic.
-The shoes are leather and rubber but have liners and some stitching made from plastic.

• half my breakfast of yoghurt and frozen berries most was wrapped in plastic, same applies to my homemade lunch.
• my work bag is made from... yes you gess it plastic.
• I currently cycle to work, my bike has some elements of plastic. (I could walk or drive...)
• at work, everything I touch from floor to keyboard is plastic.
• the £5 I pay into Annies 50th birthday collection is plastic.
• I have a smartphone for work, it's plastic.

So at what point can I say no to plastic?
It has to be from the top down, how things are produced. It's big business, and it's not going to change until it's to late.

@Karmakarmachameleon

Perhaps you'd like to share an example? I would not conflate the equality issues I'm thinking of with environmental ones.

Well, the massive and obvious one is that poorer people, women, and people of colour will be the worst affected by climate change, which is brought about by capitalism and the lifestyles of wealthy white people.

Huge issue and ongoing debate. Loads written about it.

Poorer women and people of colour are adversely affected by the gender pay gap (still!) and other matters such as age discrimination and zero hour contracts. These things are having more direct impact on our day-to-day lives than the environment.

Tell someone who is living from day-to-day, is worried about paying for food and heating, scratching a living from a minimum wage zero hours contract, that they should be concerned about the environment.

[quote DisappearingGirl]I know what you mean OP. I care about the planet, but with a busy job and young fussy children, some of the changes are hard to make (if we went vegan the kids would starve rather than live on veg and beans) and I end up just feeling depressed and guilty which doesn't help anyone.

Your post also made me think of this:

[/quote] Thanks that did make me chuckle!

@Kishkashta

So you didn’t have children because of the planet? Or is it the case that you just didn’t have children for some other reason and now feel that you are exempt from conscious consumption? Not that anyone cares really, it’s mostly just empty talk for people to feel superior to others...I just find it ridiculous that you use the circumstantial fact that you are childless to absolve yourself from the responsibility.

Why is it relevant as to how I came to having no children of my own? As I've mentioned earlier, I'm a big supporter of people having children if they have the capacity to bring them up well and financially support them (yes I am aware that circumstances can change before anyone piles into me). So to anyone here who is expecting an "unexpected" 3rd child, congratulations

But what I cannot tolerate is people who have children lecturing anyone on their lifestyle choices whilst on the eco hobby horse. And those people, once they start, instantly lose all credibility as far as I'm concerned.

@Ylvamoon
Yes, I don't think I meant you in particular, more YOU the public - there have been many complaints about big business on this thread which are misplaced imv. Either we don't buy the produce contained in single use plastic or demand change from the Gov regulations.
Telling big business to change on it's own won't work.
AT my local Tesco I would say there are fewer shelves of yoghurts, I am hoping that's because people don't want the plastic containers. And there are more unpacked veg. Small changes but better than nothing.

In 1798 Reverend Thomas Malthus published “An Essay on the Principle of Population.” He wrote that overpopulation was the root of many problems European society suffered and that poverty, malnutrition, and disease could all be attributed to overpopulation.

Still contentious today but this academic was ahead of his time.

@HeckyPeck

Yes, rubbish! I couldn't agree more - why don't people take it home or dispose of it properly? What mentality have they got that it doesn't occur to them how unpleasant discarded rubbish is for everyone else (but will happily bang on about climate change)

Just a tad hypocritical of you to "rubbish shame" people..

Eh? So are you saying that because of my post, I'm not allowed to be offended by people discarding rubbish? I've never heard of it being called "shaming" when you dare to criticise people dropping litter - I thought this was just unreasonable behaviour, end of.

I take care not to leave rubbish around and I also pick up other people's litter. I think this is a reasonable and thoughtful thing to do, incumbent on anyone who considers them self to be a responsible human being. And it's something we can do without whinging about the end of the planet.

But what I cannot tolerate is people who have children lecturing anyone on their lifestyle choices whilst on the eco hobby horse. And those people, once they start, instantly lose all credibility as far as I'm concerned.

This is just more of the same, demanding people are perfect themselves before they have a right to talk about what can be done about climate change.

It’s a way of shutting down conversation, because we raise the bar for ‘credibility’ so high that no one clears it. Virtually no one is living the kind of life we all need to to tackle this.