To think people are going to have to be inconvenienced to actually stop climate change?

[Confrontayshunme]

A road near our home was closed to create a Low Traffic Neighbourhood during the first lockdown. Children at the local junior and high schools have benefitted hugely in road safety, the cycle and scooter racks were overflowing and the pollution was measured recently as 40% less (in an area with 3 schools).

And yet they reopened the road because enough drivers wanted to save 10 minutes in the morning. The day after it reopened, half of the bikes and scooters were gone due to safety concerns. Even my coworker who said it made her cycle to work easier and safer was hugely relieved that she doesn't have to go an extra 10 minutes out of her way when driving.

Anyway, I just despair for the planet if adults and people riding in heated, air conditioned, comfortable, waterproof music players can't possibly leave the house 10 minutes earlier to allow our community's children just one intersection's worth of safety and convenience. Plus, the level of pollution driving our children all these miles (when they could be exercising or improving their mental health) inside a car shortens their lives so there isn't any time saved overall anyway!

And before the pile on commences, I realise many people are not able to use alternate transport or active travel due to physical disability or huge distances and I wouldn't include them in this.

It depends, I’m in your excluded group as I need a car to get to work (shift worker and no public transport for my times). They tried similar in Stockport and it delays paramedics so needs much better planning/thinking through.

www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/mp-calls-urgent-review-low-22274857

Yes of course people are going to have to be inconvenienced. And most people will keep right on doing the convenient but polluting thing in any given situation. If driving was restricted where I live, I could cycle to work in 40 minutes, rather than driving 25 minutes. But it is too dangerous to cycle now (no dedicated lanes). I can't make the better choice and cycle, even though I would prefer the 'incovenient' bike ride.

This is an issue where government needs to lead. And they won't.

Have you removed your central heating and stopped eating anything not grown without air miles?

The inconvenience will be huge. Starvation, mass exodus from lands due to flooding fire and pestilence. Followed by wars over water and food.
It will indeed be the end of days.

I don't think people are wrong to carry on and ignore it all.

COP26 is just one in a long list of annoyances where the rich tell the poor how to live but refuse to change their own behaviour.

Why are you afraid? There are only 2 ways to stop climate change. Either

1. the Earth loses it's atmosphere or

2. the sun goes nova.

The climate will change because it's a natural process that has absolutely nothing to do with carbon or human activity. Which is why all the computer-modeled predictions have failed. None of the hysteria has anything to do with science.

@CliantheLang

Why are you afraid? There are only 2 ways to stop climate change. Either

1. the Earth loses it's atmosphere or

2. the sun goes nova.

The climate will change because it's a natural process that has absolutely nothing to do with carbon or human activity. Which is why all the computer-modeled predictions have failed. None of the hysteria has anything to do with science.

Are there really still people who think like this? Nothing to do with science apart from literally all but a handful of scientists saying it is exactly to do with it and evidence all around us as plants and animal species die at a rate not seen since the asteroid killed the dinosaurs.

And yes, of course the climate changes naturally - stop pretending that is what op meant, when it’s clear she was talking about man-made climate change.

How do you manage to breathe with your head buried that deeply in the sand?

OP, we are doomed I’m afraid, as this shows. Too many people wilfully blind or utterly selfish and will never give up any of their comforts. I hope to god my kids don’t have children themselves.

So were drivers needing to travel an extra 10 minutes in their cars because the road was blocked off?

Or buy a new phone when their current one works perfectly well.

Yanbu op, and the amount of inconvenience may not be ours to dictate once the impact of climate change takes a real hold.

In my experience people are much more likely to tell others to inconvenience themselves tp prevent climate change than inconveniencing themselves.

[quote ChrissyPlummer]It depends, I’m in your excluded group as I need a car to get to work (shift worker and no public transport for my times). They tried similar in Stockport and it delays paramedics so needs much better planning/thinking through.

www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/mp-calls-urgent-review-low-22274857[/quote]
Could you cycle if the roads were made safer? I'm a shift worker (there can't be public transport for my start/finish times, when I'm operating the first/last public transport of the day) and I cycle.

Presumably the ambulance problem can be solved by opting for signage alone instead of physical barriers.

I agree op

I don't drive. I'm lucky to live in London so there is good public transport, but driving would still make my life easier.

I despair when I see how people use their cars so much. I see people I know driving instead of a 10 min walk, or driving when there's an easy public transport connection. People just jump in their cars without instead of putting themselves out ever so slightly.

And yet they reopened the road because enough drivers wanted to save 10 minutes in the morning.

That's exactly what the government has pushed ahead with - in the face of huge opposition and hardly a groundswell of public support - with HS2. Carve up miles and miles of countryside for the sake of saving people half an hour (or whatever) when travelling between London and Birmingham.

Occasional travellers have no real need to be bothered about an extra half hour every now and then. Anybody living in one city and working in the other - and commuting in every day - really must see the futility and massive waste (of time, money and resources) in not moving home nearer work or getting a job nearer their home. Meanwhile, millions of us who are now in the position to do so (especially those in the kind of job where it's financially viable to live so far away from where you work) now work remotely from home (or somewhere else nearby).... so what on earth is the desperate, urgent need for it all in the first place?

Yup, we are doomed. Every thread on this goes the same way.

I can't answer because I think the inconvenience will go well beyond the kind of thing you describe.

It will be much more like few people having cars at all, most people staying very close to home through their life, having one sweter and two outfits and probably no electronic gadgets. Something much closer to the expectations in terms of travel and property ownership that people had pre-1950.

Our lives are set up to be busy busy. Changing the shape of that isn't just about leaving 10 minutes early, it's about getting to be a half hour earlier. in the evening and getting home from activities earlier for their kids and supper on the table earlier and so on. People don't feel able to control this kind of thing so they try and ignore things that make them feel like they should.

We were debating this back in the 70s when I was young (then it was more the energy crisis). I remember saying to my class: 'so how many if you are happy to stop using your hairdryers'? Didn't go down well. And this was way before mobile phones or computers which require mining for rare minerals. People are more aware now, but there are also billions more people on the planet using that energy.

Unless and until jobs are available where you live people will still need to use transport I've always needed to travel 20 miles plus to get to work there was no public transport in that area no other way of getting there

People hate working from home and actively fight against it without seeing it could solve a lot of our problems my school is within walking distance work is not shopping is not cut the travel to work aspect out and I've reduced my car time to once a fortnight instead of daily

It won’t happen. Climate change won’t be stopped

And no I can't fucking cycle I have to get children from one side of town to the other to childcare then travel to work from there apart from the fact that the children can't actually ride bikes im dyspraxic my knees are bad my heart is bad the list is endless basically it would kill me

@Whatiswrongwithmyknee

In my experience people are much more likely to tell others to inconvenience themselves tp prevent climate change than inconveniencing themselves.

Yep

If people were having to drive longer distances because of the road closure, isn't that worse for the environment as a whole, not better? Maybe fewer people were driving their children to school, but how many were driving an extra ten minutes each way due to the detour?

Totally agree climate change is coming but on channel 4 yesterday even the government are backing off.

Totally agree. That's why laws need to be changed. So many people seem to be ignorant to the fact there is an alternative to neoliberalism.

YANBU to be concerned about climate change, but YANBU to think closing some roads to cars will solve much. Also, scooters are causing massive problems in urban areas, because many of them are riden on the pavements, which causes issues for pedestrians. On many roads there is no room for cycle lanes, let alone scooter lanes and disability scooters - it's getting quite perilous just walking these days.

I think our transport system needs a massive rethink and car ownership probably needs to reduce by at least a third to get things back to a point where things will improve. Also, every country needs to grow as much of its own food as possible, and we need to have more wind farms and solar farms, to become less reliant on imported gas. We have got to use the earth's reources more wisely, to reduce climate change as far as possible, although I don't think we can stop it completely. Things are going to get a lot worse before people really start to change their behaviour, and there will be many parts of the world where humans lose their homes due to rising sea levels, but eventually I think humans will find ways to adapt to the new world. It's a pity we have to learn the hard way, but that's the way humans are.

I think the response to covid restrictions shows a lot of people just don't care one bit and will not change their behaviour in any significant way. It's even harder with something as huge as climate change because we see it less day to day.