If it’s that bad, why aren’t we panicking more??

[Nightgardenisodd]

Climate change.
I keep reading posts about it and it’s scaring the crap out of me for my DD’s future.
How bad is it? Anyone have any positivity about it?

@lannistunut

I think the benefits will not be felt by the displaced.

One you reduce living humans to a cost/benefit spreadsheet, you're in dangerous territory ethically. The costs will fall on people living today. It is only possible to discuss cost/benefit like this because you yourself are not in the group going to be displaced.

Many things in this world are decided according to a cost-benefit spreadsheet. Even when the NHS decides whether to give a life saving treatment to a sick child. Otherwise it makes it impossible to implement in practice, emotional decisions rarely work. A demonstration of rational humanism here, in my opinion, would be to invest directly into local mitigating measures for the developing nations affected. All technology is already there. The Dutch live below the sea level. Israel has space age yields in kibbutzes in what was effectively proper desert under extreme water stress already. Mitigate the downside, harvest the upside.

How do you lobby powerful corps or govs who only have a short term view easy vote with your spend. Do your research as the wolf in sheep’s clothing can be multi layered. But our power as a mass is our consumerist habits in spending or active change because if we didn’t support them they would be forced to fail for not moving with the current consumer trend. So don’t buy into gimmicks or greenwash but do make your choices educated ones and use common sense. Buy from a greengrocer , walk , cycle etc it actually saves your environment, your budget and your health.

@Lapsidasicle - those are interesting examples. Its good to hear all this is going on. It is reassuring. Thank you

The reason i was left with the impression nothing was happening is the new housing developments around here. I dont mind new housing but one is literally called Water Meadows! The developers build the same houses in the same way. I dont get why it isnt compulsory to orietate the site around maximum solar panels, make sure there are communal areas designed to flood, things to stop it becoming extra hot like not masses of concrete parking but a different surface, planting trees to shade the roads. Im sure there is loads of things i havent thought of.

Food waste we are overfishing, over culling. We are literally filling the aisles with surplus supplies of perishable goods that get thrown away. The animals that gave their lives are already not being given dignity but to then also just bin it is insane I feel. We need to look at oversupply and foodwaste as much as consumer dietary trends.

This thread is a paradigm of why things are fucked.

Pages and pages of discussing this car vs. that car, with no one stopping to think "you know what ? Maybe we should do without cars altogether ?"

I now predict a slew of posts explaining to me - in painful detail - why this poster absolutely has to have a car.

The biggest obstacle to change is the (mistaken) belief by the many that "it's all about me". Because it isn't. It really isn't. If Covid has taught you anything, it should have taught you that. But some people are - let's be honest - a tad dim.

Bitcoin production is a huge electrical demand
'Electricity needed to mine bitcoin is more than used by 'entire countries'
www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/feb/27/bitcoin-mining-electricity-use-environmental-impact

The manufacturers offset it but the offset could be used on something more vital

Iusedtobesoooomuchfun

I completely agree industrialisation of food is what has produced mass over production and food waste. That model only works with waste plus it has changed our diets to become processed foods packaged to look more animated than fresh food.

A demonstration of rational humanism here, in my opinion, would be to invest directly into local mitigating measures for the developing nations affected. All technology is already there. The Dutch live below the sea level. Israel has space age yields in kibbutzes in what was effectively proper desert under extreme water stress already.
Mitigate the downside, harvest the upside.

If you apply health economics approach, how are you valuing the land/people of e.g. Bangladesh vs the land/people of USA? That is my point, if you use a 'rational' (your word, not accepted by me) approach, the investment needed to mitigate will not be justified.

We need an ethical approach (although I have little hope of this) if we are to avoid the disgusting spectacle of millions of people simply being collateral damage.

The NHS uses health economics but also has underlying ethical principles. We fund hugely expensive individual treatment plans for this reason (rightly imo). It is not pure rationalism driving NHS decision-making.

What a load of doom mongers. Throughout my life, environmental problems have been identified and fixed.

Lead in petrol, fixed
Holes in the ozone layer, fixed
Rivers, dead due to industrial and municipal discharges, fixed

In this country, our CO2 emissions, both total and per capita have been falling consistently since the 1980s and are now back where they were in the Victorian period.

Scotland regularly generates all of its electricity from zero carbon sources.

There is still more in be done, but what had been done already showed that governments, companies and individuals are all willing and able to solve these problems.

@lannistunut

A demonstration of rational humanism here, in my opinion, would be to invest directly into local mitigating measures for the developing nations affected. All technology is already there. The Dutch live below the sea level. Israel has space age yields in kibbutzes in what was effectively proper desert under extreme water stress already. Mitigate the downside, harvest the upside.

If you apply health economics approach, how are you valuing the land/people of e.g. Bangladesh vs the land/people of USA? That is my point, if you use a 'rational' (your word, not accepted by me) approach, the investment needed to mitigate will not be justified.

We need an ethical approach (although I have little hope of this) if we are to avoid the disgusting spectacle of millions of people simply being collateral damage.

The NHS uses health economics but also has underlying ethical principles. We fund hugely expensive individual treatment plans for this reason (rightly imo). It is not pure rationalism driving NHS decision-making.

I said rational humanism, not just "rational" as in coldly calculating how much Banglandeshi population are worth to me / the US / whoever personally. Ethics is all good in theory, but quite toothless unless armed with some rationality behind it. And yes, medical ethics does have an economic dimension to it - resources spent on a hugely expensive treatment for Peter today are resources not spent on Paul tomorrow.

Otherwise we will see what we see on this thread, people thinking that switching to paper cotton buds will suddenly save Bangladesh and frothing at the mouth about why not everyone grows organic tomatoes on their windowsill.

TwigTheWonderKid

Another major problem is that people have become so conditioned into believing that they need to buy things to solve problems that they probably can't get their heads around a situation that they can't buy themselves out of..

This makes me laugh because it’s so true. It’s sell the solution to the problem we are creating….

@impier if this country is the UK then might those reductions have been achieved by exporting our CO2 by de-industrialising and importing manufactured goods?

I’m waiting for the ippc report with baited breath today. I don’t think it will be pretty.

@Impier

Your optimistic post shows why nothing will change.

Our rivers are polluted as are our seas, sewage and industrial waste.
Lead in petrol replaced by particulates, Ozone issues still alive and kicking!

UKs CO2 output is lower only by ignoring the manufacturing emissions incurred by other countries and not counting the cost of the raw materials used or the waste when no longer needed.

I think most people can appreciate that a govt that is dead keen on airport expansion, isn't really serious on climate change.

Since a couple of posters have (predictably) mentioned the Dutch as an example of the technological marvels that could be done, please realise that the Dutch are seriously worried. With a long history of reclaiming land from the sea and protecting themselves by sheer will, they know that there are practical limits beyond which they cannot go. The Netherlands is on course to vanish beneath the waves in the next 50 years.

As I said upthread, that might - might - wake people up in Britain. I will believe it when I see it. Too much belief in large scale centralisation, large scale energy production, to feed large scale profiteering, instead of looking after the bread-and-butter.

www.politico.eu/article/when-will-the-netherlands-disappear-climate-change/

Since a couple of posters have (predictably) mentioned the Dutch as an example of the technological marvels that could be done, please realise that the Dutch are seriously worried. With a long history of reclaiming land from the sea and protecting themselves by sheer will, they know that there are practical limits beyond which they cannot go.
As far as I understand, quite the opposite - engineering expertise in flood defence becomes a very profitable export sector. I think Big-U in Manhattan was projected by a Dutch team (but may be incorrect about this, was a few years ago that I read it).

To really bring the masses with you requires an understanding of people’s circumstances- put yourself in the average family’s shoes and they only care about getting by until the end of the week, not the next decade. They are not selfish, rather many of the people on this thread exist in middle class bubbles with the luxury to make eco decisions.

I totally agree this is a big factor. Impoverishing working families has definitely all fed into this - starting with their finances, going on to demolish their opportunities as social contacts and hereditary nepotism becomes more important, but also treating their minds with contempt and feeding a daily diet of inadequate entertainment “news” and reality TV, telling them how shit they are whenever they point out the realities of life at the bottom in modern Britain and how little room they have for ‘choices’ and ‘flexibility’.

It makes it more important than ever that all the middle income groups become aware of their wealth and relative power and become responsible for their actions and choices, but they have, under the same cultural trends, become more selfish, complacent and arrogant than ever.

I really couldn’t imagine a worse set of cultural, social and economic trends coming together.

A ‘profitable export sector’ will mean nothing when they have no land left.

Going back to biodiversity, we are one of the most nature depleted countries in the world, LemonSwan - look up the State of Nature reports from 2016 and 2019. We've seen really bad falls (c.30 - 40%) in abundance and range of wildlife since the 1970s. Insect decline is really really scary.

And we might have managed to clean up our rivers but they have been getting worse again over the last 10 years - see the chicken shit pollution of the River Wye this year.

@PickUpAPepper

A ‘profitable export sector’ will mean nothing when they have no land left.

I would be interested in looking at some sources for that. I genuinely mean it, I am trying to discipline myself into reading original studies and evidence-based predictions, and prepared to changed my mind. So far I could find that the Dutch are provisionally planning for up to 2.5m future increase in the sea levels. And yes, there will be areas that would be abandoned in a controlled way under most extreme scenarios.

I really couldn’t imagine a worse set of cultural, social and economic trends coming together.
Fascism and the Second World War?
Slavery?
The Black Death?

50% child mortality?

Maybe let's keep a sense of proportion of how bad things actually are for the humanity these days.

I think growing more food at home, if you can is definitely the way forward. Even if each household with outdoor space grew some fruit or salad/ herbs, it would make a huge difference to having to move those items across the country or world.

My mother is a terrible gardener. She lives in a typical terrace house with small garden. She accidentally planted 5 courgette plants this year for the first time 🤣, and is now supplying half the street with surplus. Yes I’m aware this is only for maybe 2 months of the year. But it’s a small start. She said neighbours are already talking about trying to grow a few different things each and then swapping between each other excess.

Global Warming is worse than any of those.

There are solutions but they are expensive
Free Or really cheap public transport. When its cheaPer to drive your car than jump on a bus then thats exactly what people will do
Again grants for poorer people to buy electric cars or solar panels, community crofting, farming and growing.
Communal living.
Going back to the basics.
But nothing will ever change while we are so consumed by consumerism.
And people saying oh these small changes wont make any difference then oh well we might as well just give up.