AIBU to be really scared of Climate Change

[MagnificentDelurker]

Everything seems to have accelerated with heat dome in pacific causing 1 billion creatures dying to the floods in Germany, etc.
We are running out of time and stuck with politicians that will not lead.

www.motherjones.com/environment/2021/07/heres-what-climate-scientists-are-really-saying-about-this-catastrophic-summer/

We raise tax rates (as I said in my very first post, it won't be pretty or fun).

What taxes would you rise?

@MagnificentDelurker

Fairyliz

We definitely deserve it although I do genuinely love humans. We are magnificent animals and not because of our current tech.
I love how we love to play and tell amazing stories. We are worth saving but we have to change. Unfortunately I don’t think it will happen soon enough. Let’s hope enough of us survive and not just billionaires

Do you think that's why all the billionaires are so determined to head into space?

Your logic would have us continually having more and more children in order to prop up older generations, which is unsustainable.

People aren't going to stop having children completely or are you suggesting sterilisation?
And again I'm not saying people should have dozens of children. I have simply pointed out that birth rates have rapidly declined & there are impacts of this which we need to plan for.

China and India have a right to bring their people out of poverty. Earth is not there for the sole consumption of western countries.
But the fact is, the planet simply cannot sustain 8bn people living at the same standard of living that Western societies have had in recent years. Or even 3bn people (the population of China and India). The US has approx 330m people and they create a third of the planet’s pollution. Now times that by 9 to see how much pollution China and India will create if they try to reach the same standard of living as the US.

It's terrifying...and inevitable.
I agree with PP that individual actions are important - eat less meat, use less plastic etc. But I winced today with the irony of buying my plant based sausages all wrapped up in a plastic tray and film...

YANBU at all, but all the small things we can do (eat less meat, recycle more) feel like a drop in the ocean when you look at the pollution levels of places like China and consider all the people globally who are regularly flying on private jets and taking long haul flights. It’s disheartening to say the least.

Earth is not there for the sole consumption of western countries.

What a horrible phrase. Earth shouldn’t be here for the “consumption” of anybody.

Actually I'm not too worried about China they are rapidly cleaning up their environmental act. Any my god when they decide to do something it damn well happens.

@Ooodlesofboodles do you have any reputable links to back up this information? Because it’s the first I’ve heard of it!

What is going to happen if we continue how we are going and when will
It happen? Excuse my ignorance.

YANBU, but i try not to think about it as it does my anxiety no favours. We do what we can as a family, and I keep an eye politically when deciding who to vote for, I would support pushing for action is it would help, but yeah I don't let it consume me.

@properg

We raise tax rates (as I said in my very first post, it won't be pretty or fun).

What taxes would you rise?

From a UK perspective, corporation, VAT, income, IHT, CGT...

You know, all of them.

People won't like it.

This is a good group if you want like minded people who are trying to agitate for structural change: mothersriseup.org.uk/

@properg

Your logic would have us continually having more and more children in order to prop up older generations, which is unsustainable.

People aren't going to stop having children completely or are you suggesting sterilisation?
And again I'm not saying people should have dozens of children. I have simply pointed out that birth rates have rapidly declined & there are impacts of this which we need to plan for.

No, you said if we wanted to reduce the population then birth rates weren't the only thing we should be looking at.

The implication of which is that we should somehow be trying to prune those who already exist.

Not on here necessarily but hear a lot of younger people complaining about the older generation, but most grew up with hand me downs, reusable glass bottles for milk as standard, hardly any international travel, plastic not covering everything, toys and other items were made to last. A lot I know carry on with stuff like that, they don't have the same attitude to throwing stuff away and consuming because adverts or peer pressure tells us too. I know that's not always the case at all and I'm talking about a time well past, but we could learn a lot.

Go on, how do you reduce the population without tackling birth rates in any way

I think this is where you are confused. Birth rates have already being tackled hence why they are falling. I'm not arguing to increase them, soon they will be below replacement levels anyway so unless your goal is no children I don't see what's left to tackle.

@womaninatightspot

I thought billionaires had designated New Zealand as the safe spot and were buying land there till they changed the laws. Don’t quote me as I have forgotten where I have read this so it might just be a conspiracy theory.

No, you said if we wanted to reduce the population then birth rates weren't the only thing we should be looking at.

Because it isn't unless you are aiming for zero children? Or to put it another way despite falling birth rates the population is yet to peak.

The implication of which is that we should somehow be trying to prune those who already exist.

Saying that the population is growing because we have more old people doesn't mean I'm

saying kill old people. It's just a fact that people are living longer.

@MagnificentDelurker I read that it's the safest place for surviving an apocalypse.

Yanbu, this weather is an awful reminder of it. I’ve been donating to Cool Earth for ages but it doesn’t seem to be helping much with the Amazon being destroyed every which way I’m thinking about changing one of my other donations to Climeworks which is carbon capture and storage which will hopefully take off on a bigger scale.

From a UK perspective, corporation, VAT, income, IHT, CGT...

People won't like it.

Tbh I'm not so sure about income tax as the youth of today have such a burden already & have been disproportionately affected by covid.

CGT, corporation etc yes but people won't vote for it or not enough anyway.

But the fact is, the planet simply cannot sustain 8bn people living at the same standard of living that Western societies have had in recent years. Or even 3bn people (the population of China and India). The US has approx 330m people and they create a third of the planet’s pollution. Now times that by 9 to see how much pollution China and India will create if they try to reach the same standard of living as the US.

My geography teacher told me yrs ago that the emerging (then) developing countries would come to dominate the West impacting on our living standards.

I have been feeling like this too. It's not really fear for me, it's fear for what my children's future is going to look like.

I don't think there's ever enough focus on what a positive future could look like. Our lives are going to have to change radically, so we have a choice about whether to do that positively, or get forced into it through disasters - the kind of thing we are now seeing on the news every year.

The stuff that needs doing and makes us more resilient for the future that is coming would improve our lives in lots of ways.

To take one example, rivers that meander and have beavers creating dams to slow them down, and trees in their upper catchments instead of grouse moors and industrial farm units generating nitrate pollution, are rivers that are clean enough to swim in that flood less. I want rivers clean enough to swim in. Why do we accept that they get polluted?

I want to live in a world where public transport is funded so well I only need a car for special journeys, where I don't have to commute as far and I can flexibly work from home, where the natural and cost effective choice is to eat food grown locally, seasonally and organically, where everything that comes wrapped in 'plastic' can be thrown in my compost bin (Riverford have managed it so why can't others?), where houses are built or retrofitted to a standard where they are as comfortable in -10 as they are in 35 degree temperatures with minimal energy uptake, where the focus is on public luxury rather than private luxury and there's less inequality in society, where every child has the opportunity to learn about biodiversity and the natural world at school (forest schools are fab).

In every area it feels like we know what the solutions are but the people articulating them aren't being heard or listened to and there's so much structural inequality built in. Politics these days is so much about fear and division. We need a hopeful message and story - the kind of thing AOC was talking about in America - and one that people can genuinely grasp is for them.

I don't want all of the above to sound like the idealistic pie in the sky dreamworld thinking of a middle class middle aged white woman.

I’m surprised so many people mentioning that China is cleaning up their act and that China isn’t the “biggest” bad anymore. Erm, yeah. They still are. And most people think not only do their domestic initiatives not work together, but they’re cancelling them out with pollution through the Belt and Road Initiative abroad. However you slice it, “in the past ten years, China has emitted more greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, per year than any other country in the world.” This really covers all of it (why them signing the Paris Agreement might not be enough, and so on):
www.cfr.org/backgrounder/china-climate-change-policies-environmental-degradation

The fact is the biggest effect on China’s air pollution was COVID. It dropped some levels to the lowest they’d been since 2014 and let people suddenly see blue sky. (And they returned to pre-COVID levels within a few short months.)
asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Coronavirus/Blue-skies-return-to-China-as-coronavirus-cuts-coal-consumption

I’ve attached the satellite image of China right before COVID and during. That’s the output of one greenhouse gas that disappeared during COVID’s peak. In one month, gone.

While China is still one of the worst, yes, every nation has pollution problems, I agree, and most of them showed vast improvement during COVID (lots of articles, photos, maps, etc).

So… my real concern would be that Mother Nature’s answer will be “more” COVIDs with even higher death rates.

YADNBU.
We literally have a decade for countries to implement major changes, in order to avoid a tipping point where it will be out of control. I'm not optimistic. If the number and severity of weather events (like German floods, US/canada heat explosion) carry on and increase, in 10 years time the public may be more prepared to make some more significant changes but it'll be too late. In the UK we will be more fortunate than other countries, but crop failures and climate migrants will be serious challenges.