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?

While you’re all here, I’ve been asked to design a campaign to give the clear message from businesses the world over that countries need to increase the ambition of their climate change commitments ahead of the big conference in November (cop26). I have a plan already but if you have any ideas for clever influencing tactics or stunts etc let me know, I’m sure there are lots of great ideas out there and I really want this one to go with a bang… (it’s a business audience so can’t go too wacky probably)

Governments need to see the votes and the potential tax revenues to change. Im not sure how you counter all those big 'donations' from particular industries
Business need to see the profit

It’s terrifying but all the posts making it about personal responsibility are wrong. What we need is to make it clear to the government there is significant support for drastic action. Similar to the emergency measures for the pandemic. So banning flying for business reasons, forcing companies to take responsibility for product lifecycle, frequent flyer tax, meat rationing, massive investment in active travel and rewilding, financial incentives to discourage driving and encourage use of public transport, massive investment in renewables for energy, universal basic income.

The idea that this is pointless because of Russia and China is nonsense. Look at how lockdowns spread through the world. Britain still has a lot of cultural influence. If we get on a war footing with climate change, others will follow. Politicians are cowards though and I don’t know if they will have the guts to do it and I think the British population is still not supportive of this. It is very telling that we took unthinkable measures for covid but we won’t do this for our children. Have less children is also wrong IMO large families in current climate irresponsible but birth rate in Britain is already below replacement and if people can’t have much wanted children who are we saving the planet for? I

@Itsprobablynotcominghome that was wise. I e had kids nowso feel forced to worry.

Tbh @pollyglot that lifestyle sounds bloody idyllic the way you describe it, please write some cosy fiction and I’m all yours (aware I’m viewing it through rose-tinted cottagecore spectacles), but it would be hard to go back to just on housing costs alone – most houses with a garden for all that home-grown food now need two adult wages to maintain, which leaves less time for all the cold-tea window washing and knitting.

More and more I’m wondering if the future lies in communal living.

Yes communal living would solve a lot of societal problems!

@ChainJane

Don't worry about it. Humans always predict the worst. 60 years ago people were genuinely scared that there might be an atomic war at any moment. 40 years ago we were told that AIDS would kill off huge numbers of people. 25 years ago I remember BBC news telling us that mad cow disease might decimate the population within a decade. Then it was terrorism, now it's climate change.

Humans need something to worry about, it is in our nature. It's also convenient for the powers that be because they can use whatever fear people have as an excuse to raise taxes and cut services.

The world is hotter than a century ago, certainly. But before industrialisation temperatures were already rising, ever since the peak of the "mini ice age" where the Thames regularly froze solid to the point they held fairs on the ice. Go back a thousand years and temperatures were about the same as they are now.

The point is temperatures have always fluctuated and the world has adapted to the new conditions. Yes, people die off and populations rise and fall. We are due a correction in population figures because there are too many people for the planet to support. Natural disasters such as floods and famine will help bring about the necessary reduction (because obviously politicians can't actively promote sterilisation or genocide). But that's always been the case, that's how we evolve - the people who adapt best to the prevailing conditions are the ones who survive.

The problem with those who shout that we need to stop climate change are misguided. It's the height of arrogance to think humans have the power to change nature.

Excellent post. We all need to do our bit but perspective is important. We will all die at some point. The Earth will survive as it already has for billions of years.

Scottie

Totally agree

Have less children is also wrong IMO large families in current climate irresponsible but birth rate in Britain is already below replacement and if people can’t have much wanted children who are we saving the planet for?

The one or two kids you do have plus everyone else's? The impact of a British kid will be far more than that of a kid living in a subsistence farming community in a developing country, so we need to have fewer kids to compensate for that.

I think you've summed up the problem here really well. We know what needs to be done, but no one wants to stop doing the things they see as necessary for their lifestyle to continue. So, you are all for climate change action, but not if it stops you having your four or five kids. Barbara down the road is also all for climate change action, but not if it stops her having her three or four long-haul holidays a year.

And so on it goes. No one cares enough about the future to make sufficient compromises in the present.

It’s the height of arrogance to say that humans have the power to change nature eh @chainjane? Are you serious? Have you actually looked at any of the science? There is a reason it’s called man made climate change. Wheeling out the ‘oh but the temperature has always changed’ argument is incredibly stupid. What makes you think you know better than pretty much the entire global scientific community?

I agree with Scotdoc except the last paragraph. No one should have more than 2 children it’s utterly unjustifiable at the current time.

What pisses me off. Is that we knew about this when I was a child 40 pdd years ago. We could have made small changes.
But no.
Just look at the ridiculous new developments and concreting over everything and complete denial that it is playing a huge part in the flooding.

We need a “we’re all in this together” war time mindset like we had with Covid. You get one flight a year. No business travel use zoom. Utterly rethink supermarkets so it’s all refillables. The whole economy would need to adjust so it’s not based on acquisition. Humans are smart we need to do this. Our old life (1960s-to 2019) was amazing but we can’t have whole populations living like Roman emperors. Planet can’t sustain that.

We have the tools and brains to do this

Essentially it's up to governments to enforce the change

1.Amazon and the rainforest destruction needs to stop NOW

1. We need to step away from fast fashion
2. We need to step away from overseas food
3. We need to grow Sea grass to absorb co2
4. We need to build wind farms. Huge ones. Fuck the look of them. They need to happen
5. We need to use more solar power
6. Electric cars and bicycles
7. State funded cheap and reliable public transport
8. Other countries will have there own free energy. Sea wind solar. 3rd world countries need to be encouraged and supported to use it.

10. I would go as far as a one child family but no more than two. 11. We need to accept some uncomfortable changes until We get used to it we did it for covid. This is the hardest part

Ultimately the earth will
Move on and be fine if we do or if we don't

What we need is to make it clear to the government there is significant support for drastic action

Someone needs to tell Steve Baker MP. The euro sceptics have turned into climate sceptics. Only happy when they are destroying things.

Absolutely agree whenwill. Our expectations need to change as they did with Covid.

@Pollyglot that sounds idyllic but simply isn’t possible any more. Small shops have been replaced with big supermarkets so we can’t cycle to them. That’s also why we need tamper proof plastic packaging - because selling food in brown paper requires it to be kept behind the counter under someone’s supervision. Houses are so expensive, few people could afford one with a garden big enough to grow food. Not that they’d have time to grow food, or cycle to the shop, or knit sweaters - because high house prices mean that both parents have to work full time. And local industries have gone so people need cars to travel to work far away.

Accommodating all of these things requires massive social change and a return to small local shops and businesses, more gardens and allotments without a 10 year waiting list to get one, more leisure time and shorter working hours. Can you see the government telling the big supermarkets to sling their hook and switching us all to a 4 day work week? I can’t.

www.wwf.org.uk/what-we-do/planting-hope-how-seagrass-can-tackle-climate-change

These the are sort of initiatives that give me hope

I feel extremely panicky about it. It's to the point more than one of my friends has said they're not having kids because the planet will be in such a bad state by then.

But what can we do. I feel like all the billionaires and corporations won't change, they'll escape the effects and leave the rest of us to suffer.

But yes. It's really bad.

I have said multiple times climate change exists. It has always existed. It cannot be stopped. Look at the geology of the planet. Seas move. Continents move. Weather changes. The planet was warmer during the fucking Bronze Age than it is now. You are all panicking over a completely natural phenomenon and are brainwashed into thinking humans have caused climate change. We haven’t. We’ve only barely nudged it. Not enough to kill us or all life as the doomsayers and fear mongers would have you believe.

Wow, please stop commenting on subjects you clearly have absolutely no understanding on.

The natural process of climate change is measured over geological time periods. Anthropogenic climate change is being measured over decades, maybe centuries.

There's no doubting atmospheric co2 and global mean surface temperatures have been higher previously. The problem is the speed in which we are changing things. Previously a rise in atmospheric co2 from 400ppm (currently) to 1200ppm (late cretaceous high) took anywhere between 5 and 20 million years to occur. At current rates we will do it in 400 years or so. We've absolutely no idea how such a rapid change will impact on the planet, but it's not going to be sunshine and roses for those of us living here.

The difference between natural climate change and anthropogenic climate change on the planet is the same difference as drinking a bottle of vodka over a year and downing one in 30 seconds would have on an average person.

Atmospheric Co2 is rising faster than it has done in over 66 million years. Guess what the cause of that spike 66 million years ago was? That's right the asteroid that helped wipe out the fucking dinosaurs.
Over the last 100 years or so we've released more than 5 times the volume of stored co2 than that asteroid impact did and people have the fucking idiocy to say "oh it's all completely normal, natural and fine". Fucking wombats the lot.

But whilst they are growing sea grass giving themselves a pat on the back. Governments are also chopping down ancient woodlands for shit like hs2. I drove past a site they are developing recently. Took 20 minutes to get through, that’s 20 minutes extra of traffic jams. They’ve decimated the site and have to pump water away in tankers due to no grass and trees soaking it up.

But back to the ancient forests only now are we beginning to look at what makes up soil and the fungus and bacteria that help sustain life, those forests hold a lot of answers to questions we don’t know we need to ask.

The race for the super Rich to get up to Mars etc. Rats fleeing a sinking ship

Personal responsibility is extremely important, but the big change needs to come from goverment action.
Flights, the industry has just shrunk to freight at the moment, due to covid. So they could just leave it so, and forget about flying to the other end of the world for just one week holiday. But.... so many will not like this. They even want to do so in the middle of the pandemic! Actually, there are some private companies working on sending people to space for a tour! That is
a hell of a lot of pollution, just for a trip.

For any change to happen, we need strong goverments (we have no options for this!) that would be prepared to take unpopular actions like this.
Then subsidise renewable energy sources. And electric cars. And improve public transport, with electric options.
And a simpler way of life.

Biodegradable strong plastics are available. But we know that is not a solution for it all. Burgers do not degrade for years and years in a landfill. So the same will happen to the bag. No more landfilling domestic waste. We need to use it in energy production (it will release CO2, but if this does not come from fossil fuels, and deforestation stops and reverse, then it will be locked back, and the balance maintained. That is the trick). At least now the bags that make it to rivers and forest will degrade.
I love windmills, I think they look really pretty.
I would love to change my car by an electric one. It is the price, at present. Also, apparently we need to improve our grid to cope with it.
I do use my clothes till they are trully and well done. Eat less meat, almost none at present.
I try to keep plants in my house, and garden. No fake grass! That is something we all can do.
I need a kick on the ass to remember my life bag when going shopping every time. I tend to forget!.
I am ok with using local produce. I think UK could use greenhouses to produce quite a bit of veg and fruits here. I have spotted quite a few going up lately, which filled my heart with happiness.

I do quite a lot to minimise my personal carbon footprint and that of my family. We’ve recently been out litter picking to try help further. I’ve read a lot of literature and watched more than enough documentaries to know this is an emergency, it has been for years. People aren’t panicking because they’re apathetic about it, they just think it won’t happen to them. If the floods and wildfires are in a different country or even a different county it’s someone else’s problem. They’ll only be arsed when it’s directly affecting them.

Life gets in the way sometimes. There is so much going on in life that Climate change is something that I never think about. I have so many other things to worry about. I recycle because we have recycle bins. I don't do anything else. Reading everyone's concern is actually quite surprising to me.