To think we’ve already f****d it up when it comes to the environment.

[MynameisWa]

Am I being unreasonable in thinking we’ve already passed the point of no return when it comes to the environment and that it’s just no one in power or in the know wants to be the one to admit it?

PlanDeRaccordement

Consume of what? There is enough, air, water, food, land to live on. Consumption is not the problem, the problem is waste products and the fact we need to continue to improve in reducing and treating waste so that it doesn’t poison the environment.

Sometimes you sound like you have a certain level of understanding and knowledge, Plan, but the above just confirms to me that you are extremely ill informed, biased and in denial.

The above is absolute BS. Yes we need to deal with waste. But... Everything we consume has an impact. We eat too much, buy too much, travel too much. Each of those things releases CO2. The facts are very very clear and have been for some time.

You talk with huge amounts of certainty to deny the information that world leading experts have provide the world with. I’m more inclined to believe the scientists that have dedicated decades to researching this than some random who talks with such certainty but has no credentials.

I am interested in my future and my child's future not the abstract future of the human race or planet earth

It's not too late but only if the big players make the right changes very soon.

COP26 is proving itself to be a complete waste of time, just look at the headline saying lots of countries have committed to phasing out coal, except India, the US and the Chinese. The three countries that have the biggest impact won't do it.

We need to address the real problem which is overpopulation. The trouble is there is no particular will to do this because campaigners fear they will be called racists or worse for promoting it. They prefer to say "it's not the number of people, it's the disproportionate use of resources" that's the problem.

Bull-fucking-shit. More people use more resources, end of. Maybe ten Americans use the same resources as a hundred Ethiopians (I'm making that number up by the way). So what? Ten Americans and a hundred Ethiopians use more resources combined than five Americans and fifty Ethiopians would. It's so obviously true, it's rather insulting to the intelligence to argue otherwise.

We need drastic population control, now. This means limiting the number of children people have to one per person (i.e. a father can have one child with one woman and vice-versa). If you have a second, you are imprisoned and sterilised. Obviously with exceptions for twins etc.

The trouble with a reasonable policy like this is that it could never be enacted. Even if one country agrees, the biggest countries won't. Maybe the answer is to impose sanctions on countries that don't comply - if we could get the UN to enforce this it might just work. End aid to India, prevent China exporting goods, things that would damage their economies in the same way we do for North Korea.

Actually, the OP's right - it is too late. It was always "too late" because humans can't adopt policies as a whole species. We're brought up to accept and celebrate our differences and what makes us unique. What is rational to one group is highly offensive and unfathomable to another.

"Let the world burn" seems like the most sensible advice. Enjoy what time we've got left, live for today, after all 2100 is well beyond most of our lifetimes.

Biological adaptation is under severe stress with the pace of global heating

Well yes climate change is a stressor. But evolution isn’t always gradual, it can also be punctuated. Adaptation is changes in behaviour...so for plants as they can’t really adapt, it would be humans building drainage and water catchments to counter heavy rain and dry spells. Then there is always migration, which even plants do by seeds spreading and growing or humans carrying them to better locales. In climate change there are winners and losers. The Sahara desert used to be fertile plains the size of Europe full of plants and animals and humans....climate change has made the Sahara a loser and humans migrated to Europe and Asia and S Africa as a result to land that used to be too cold, but was now warm enough to live on.

Tree lines on mountains have moved up to higher altitudes in past twenty years for example. The types of trees in forests have changed with the climate, evergreens becoming mixed with deciduous.

All sorts of species have been migrating as the climate changes. They don’t just stay in one spot and die. The same with humans. Low lying pacific islands are being abandoned as sea levels rise, just like Doggerland was abandoned tens of thousands of years ago due to sea levels rising at the end of the Ice Age.

You talk with huge amounts of certainty to deny the information that world leading experts have provide the world with

I haven’t denied any information from climate scientists at all. I am denying the appropriate interpretation of or reaction to that information is to say “we are fucked, there is no hope, we are all going to die”.

Indeed we are not yet ducked

We will all die but as yet we may not yet die from climate related causes

Further this is within our power to ensure

We need to make the changes ourselves and within society

In cases anyone doesn't know. A good start for ourselves is
Reduce meat consumption to once or twice a week
Reduce transport - one flight every two years, 5000 miles or less driving
Insulate your home

Then society also needs to change-that's led by government snd business

So mail your MP and explain how important it is to you, how it may affect your vote

Buy less stuff, make things last , duck out of capitalism as it is today , try to make green purchases choices ( email your favourite suppliers , ask for the scope 1 2 and 3 emissions of anything you want to buy . Buy the stuff with the lowest total ) which will help force business to change

I was in Greece recently. Plastic straws in all the drinks, plastic stuff blowing into the sea and no one cared. They are part of the Eu yet these things aren’t banned.

@Squeezita

Yes, so what? Just move away from the coasts as humans have done for thousands of years. The ancient capital, of Egypt has been at the bottom of the sea for a thousand years. What did the people of Alexandria do? They moved. More people die of the cold than due to heat globally. So far, the warmth has saved more lives than it has taken.

I’m not saying it isn’t bad, it’s just not so bad that we are all going to die in the next fifty years or whatever.

@PlanDeRaccordement

You talk with huge amounts of certainty to deny the information that world leading experts have provide the world with

I haven’t denied any information from climate scientists at all. I am denying the appropriate interpretation of or reaction to that information is to say “we are fucked, there is no hope, we are all going to die”.

I'm not really sure what you want to achieve by denying the impact of climate change and consumption.

Literally every single thing you see in your house had a carbon footprint during production and is made up of what was natural resources. Every item you see in the shops and online. Even the flowers you buy at Tesco contain water which is causing scarcity in other countries

Even if it was worse 100 years ago with air pollution, so what? We've now got like 3 times the world population so it doesn't make much difference

[quote PlanDeRaccordement]@Squeezita

Yes, so what? Just move away from the coasts as humans have done for thousands of years. The ancient capital, of Egypt has been at the bottom of the sea for a thousand years. What did the people of Alexandria do? They moved. More people die of the cold than due to heat globally. So far, the warmth has saved more lives than it has taken.

I’m not saying it isn’t bad, it’s just not so bad that we are all going to die in the next fifty years or whatever.[/quote]

Desertification is pretty much permanent, or takes a long time to reverse. There's more to the world than human beings-

Although, actually, our survival depends on other species, so even if you're completely self interested- the health of the planet still impacts you

Also, all these people moving from coast have to live somewhere, and it's going to most likely be more congestion in cities

Actually, the OP's right - it is too late. It was always "too late" because humans can't adopt policies as a whole species.

Well if it were not for the 1987 worldwide ban on CFCs, then we’d already be 2C warmer than we are today. So this is not correct. Humans have adopted policies as a whole species that havf successfully reduced global warming.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-58248725

In regards to overpopulation, women’s reproductive rights are the primary driver behind birth rate declines to replacement (or lower) level in countries. Global population growth rate is already the lowest it has been since the 1950s. And the countries with high birth rates are those whose women do not have full reproductive rights.

Oh god, the overpopulation nonsense is here.

The birth rate is already below replacement level in a growing number of Western nations. So talk of population control is very much focused on those countries who, per capita, contribute much much less to unsustainable consumption.

The best way to stabilise populations?

Educate women. Grow economies, and reduce reliance on subsistence farming. Make contraception freely available.

But most of all educate women.

No need to sterilise anyone.

Look at my list if hoe to personally make a real impact

Plastic straws are a distraction

A flight to Greece is equivalent to around 30,000 plastic straws

@bbgxd
I don’t buy flowers.
To answer your question. Pollution was worse forty years ago and yes the population is maybe triple what it was...but my point is that more people doesn’t always mean more pollution in the absolute sense. By living greener and cleaner, we consume less per capita and produce less waste per capita.

Population growth is slowing which is good news because that means we can have more gains in protecting the environment with every bit of green technology we develop and every environmental law we pass.

@Thefartingsofaofdenmarkstreet

I don't think most people are willing to make the lifestyle changes needed for this.

I mean, look on Mumsnet on any given day. Threads about how it's 'minging' not to wash towels after every single use or not shower twice a day, threads about fucking beauty advent calendars which are full of tat half of which the recipient won't even use because they never wanted it in the first place, threads about how disgusting tap water is, about how they want their next brand new car which is replacing their current 3 year old car to be electric 'because of the environment', endless threads about buying stuff a lot of which is shipped halfway across the world, about holidays abroad.

I just don't know if people are willing to give it all up?

Yep.

How it’s sad for the child to give siblings hand me down clothes, everything should be new. How small babies need tat for Christmas and you’re an awful parent if you don’t. And at the - we don’t wash pillows or duvets, we just buy new once a year - brigade.

I think humankind will survive in some form. We are resilient and some of the earth will be inhabitable. But a lot of people will be forced to flee uninhabitable areas and I assume there will be a lot of violence and war because of it.

Once humans die out the earth will heal. We are massive selfish parasites.

@PlanDeRaccordement

You talk with huge amounts of certainty to deny the information that world leading experts have provide the world with

I haven’t denied any information from climate scientists at all. I am denying the appropriate interpretation of or reaction to that information is to say “we are fucked, there is no hope, we are all going to die”.

Your wasting your time on here. Fretters central and yet their indulging in the completely pointless and CO2 heavy activity of using an anonymous social media platform to pontificate. Pound to penny that none of them have actually bothered ploughing through the latest IPCC reports to get a grip on what they actually say and not what they've been told that they say.

Commercial atmospheric CO2 capture is already happening and if this is the cause of all our 'trouble' throwing £ at CO2 capture (during energy production) and atmospheric recapture would be a far better spend than these ludicrous 'green' initiatives.

PlanDeRaccordement

I won't lie, your stance on climate change used to completely incense me. I've been obsessed with green issues since the 1980's and getting increasingly more depressed as the decades have gone by. For some reason reading your responses today have given me a bit more hope! Thank you for that

Carbon capture may help

But we would be highly foolish to put all eggs on one basket

And leave things too late , even if you then remove all co2 you could have collapse

[quote PlanDeRaccordement]@LemonSwan
Soil degradation is important and something vegans fail to understand with their utopia of no livestock. They don’t understand that to preserve the soil you have to rotate crops which includes fields also being used as pasture so the animal dung can revitalise the soil. There are sustainable modern farming methods that maintain soil quality...many places just need to start using these methods.[/quote]
Don't pretend that the vegans are to blame for soil degradation, what percentage of animals farmed in the Western world are actually farmed this way?!

I doubt very much that this platform has a footprint t make it a pressing concern

We don't all have to live Neolithic sack cloth snd ashes lifestyles to save the planet

We do need to do something

Although "balance" isn't something social media is good at

One problem is, many ‘green’ alternatives are not that green. The colbolt needed for electric cat batteries is mined in the Congo, where it is causing all kinds of problems, polluting rivers, killing plants, causing birth defects.
Becoming vegan and drinking almond milk, how much energy does that take, how many miles does it have to travel?
Tones of stuff, including vegan contains palm oil, which they chop rain forests down to plant. The processing and packaging of some vegan foods must be astronomical.
Back to electric cars, only a small amount of people in the uk live in houses with off road parking. Far more people live in terraced house, flats, bed sits or shared houses, where are they supposed to charge the car.
Above all though is the population. Ok so only 10% of the uk is built on or whatever it is, look how much damage that has done, loss of wet land , loss of habitat for lots of plants and animals. Flash floods because there is no soak away.
Maybe the increase in population has slowed down, but 7 billion can still produce why more kids than 1 billion.
We keep people alive for no good reason, just because we can. A child is in nappy’s for 18 months- 2years, an adult can be in them for years.
The insane amount of single use ppe that is used every day, it’s not going anywhere, it’s just going to sit in the ground wrapped in plastic for ever tell something splits it open.

Growing for animal feed is a huge proportion of land use , if we could reduce that we could use less intensive methods that would help protect soil

Cobalt is green in that It doesn't have a huge carbon footprint

Yes it has lots of long term sustainability and human rights problems but they are not what is causing the planet to heat up

Focus is needed
We need to tackle those problems , but if we don't tackle climate change those problems are irrelevant

Distraction and ah buttery serve no one but the oil industry and the super rich

Planet earth will be fine. Humans won’t.