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.

They introduced an LTN in the area around a school near my office.

It meant that everyone who travelled to work by car from one direction had a 0.75 mile detour to get to the underground car park. It also meant that they had to go via the same narrow streets as people coming from the other direction, and drive past the drop-off zone by the station, which is always congested.

The congestion it caused in the surrounding streets was massive, and local residents were really kicking off about getting it changed back, but then Covid happened and hardly anyone is in the office now.

These things are great in principle, but some of them are really badly thought out.

I do completely agree that we need better public transport - cheaper and more available. We used to have it. I can remember back when a child could travel for 10p!

That is all about cultural choice - or rather, the cultural choices that have been forced on us in order to prop up what was a failing capitalist system. One that stresses individual consumption to force up sales and therefore dividends. Those who say that people are naturally selfish and will never change need to try to understand the mechanisms of how culture works and how social engineering can work - for the right wing capitalists. The BBC had an accessible documentary about how consumerism and the necessary ethics for it to spread were deliberately created, called “The Century of the Self”. www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p00ghx6g/the-century-of-the-self

Ultimately this is something many of us are not going to give up on, because millions of lives, including our own children and their children’s children, are at stake. (Which is why women, especially mothers, should be ruling the world, but that’s another story).

@ChardonnaysPetDragon

Not everyone, that's the problem. We're not all in it together.

We are. It's the way of life of the whole human race. if you think you are somehow insulated think again, when droughts and extreme weather hits, crops fail and migration increases many fold. No one will be able to escape it.

Eventually, but the very wealthy will be largely protected from this for as long as possible, and continue to behave as they like and watch their wealth increase while everyone else's falls, and scrabble acround sorting out your recycling while they take multiple flights a year and drive massive cars.

It's not only the very wealthy that are the problem. Yes, they are big consumers, but the most damage is done by mass tourisms, cheap food and cheap consumables. Just statistically, think about it, how many are very wealthy and how many more are the rest of us. Look at Mumsnet, it's middle and working class and everybody is talking about their multiple holidays. Usually, if course, not in this COVID stricken times.

It's a very defeatist point of view, to make it a problem that only the wealthy cause. We all do.

But the very wealthy have massively more influence and could make so much more difference. It's incrediblly naïve to think people will just do the right thing and that will solve everything. I've been trying to do the right thing for the last 30 years and it has made no difference whatsoever, in fact things have just got worse.

It's a good point about holidays. When I was at the beautician's, they were talking about a hen weekend they'd planned to Dubai.
These are young women, at a local beauty salon, not on high wages.
When I was young we had hen nights at a local trattoria, or a friends weekend would be in Skegness. It just made me think how things have changed in just a short time.

It might be a defeatist attitude but it's because I feel completely defeated. Unless there is massive global action at government and organisational level, now, then it's too late. It doesn't matter how many lentils you knit, you will not be spared.

@Maireas

It's a good point about holidays. When I was at the beautician's, they were talking about a hen weekend they'd planned to Dubai. These are young women, at a local beauty salon, not on high wages. When I was young we had hen nights at a local trattoria, or a friends weekend would be in Skegness. It just made me think how things have changed in just a short time.

It doesn't make you superior to them. You were doing what is normal to you at the time, they are doing what is normal for them.

@ElftonWednesday

It might be a defeatist attitude but it's because I feel completely defeated. Unless there is massive global action at government and organisational level, now, then it's too late. It doesn't matter how many lentils you knit, you will not be spared.

Ask for it.

Get involved, write letters.

Whinging about knitting lentils is really insulting to people who are trying and won't get you anywhere.

Write letters? Jesus wept.

@ElftonWednesday.
I never claimed to be superior to them.
I've travelled all over the place in the past, probably more air miles than them.
Read my post.
Things have changed significantly, in terms of things like foreign travel.
Expectations have changed too, so it'll be hard to go back to what it was.

@ElftonWednesday

Write letters? Jesus wept.

OK, so you're not happy with my suggestions.

Keep whinging into your knitted lentils then.

I honestly don't understand your train of thoughts.

@Momicrone

Alaya, it's not just about saving the planet, less cars on the road makes an area nicer for everyone, especially non car drivers

It’s not fewer cars on the road and nicer for everyone. It’s more cars on the road for people not fortunate enough to live on the side streets that have been closed. It’s less pleasant and worse air quality for them. Why do you think that’s ok?

@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.

Seriously? Do you also think the Earth is flat?

@ChardonnaysPetDragon

It's not only the very wealthy that are the problem. Yes, they are big consumers, but the most damage is done by mass tourisms, cheap food and cheap consumables. Just statistically, think about it, how many are very wealthy and how many more are the rest of us. Look at Mumsnet, it's middle and working class and everybody is talking about their multiple holidays. Usually, if course, not in this COVID stricken times.

It's a very defeatist point of view, to make it a problem that only the wealthy cause. We all do.

It’s not what they do with their wealth, it’s the damage they do while accumulating it. Who do you think profits from all of the consumerism and over-consumption?

Who causes it? Our demand. Stop buying rubbish and they won't be accumulating wealth.

Stop travelling and feeding the aviation shareholders.

We don't have to buy what they are selling. Why are doing it?

@ChardonnaysPetDragon

Who causes it? Our demand. Stop buying rubbish and they won't be accumulating wealth.

Stop travelling and feeding the aviation shareholders.

We don't have to buy what they are selling. Why are doing it?

And who do you think creates the demand? Who spends billions on advertising and other marketing? Who does their best to appeal to the basic human instinct to gather and accumulate? Who builds in planned obsolescence into their prodcuts, lobbies governments to subsidise their products to make them cheaper and more appealing?

Blaming consumers rather than the big companies and the people who own them is like blaming the beaten wife for not leaving while ignoring the abusive partner.

Keep blaming everyone but yourself.

You don't have to fall for advertising, you don't have to buy the newest thing. You don't have to keep feeding it. You chose to.

Blaming consumers rather than the big companies and the people who own them is like blaming the beaten wife for not leaving while ignoring the abusive partner.

It most definitely is not. You chose where to spend your money.

We need slowing climate change to be worth more money to large corporations than letting it continue. Until that happens nothing will change. It will need to be Monsanto with GM crops that drive the change, not Sandra doing 10 miles less a week on the school run.

@ChardonnaysPetDragon

Keep blaming everyone but yourself.

You don't have to fall for advertising, you don't have to buy the newest thing. You don't have to keep feeding it. You chose to.

And you keep deluding yourself that this can be fixed by everyone suddenly showing a bit more self-restraint despite being bombarded since birth with the message that more stuff will make you happier\thinner\better looking\wealthier\etc.

Or that an economic system, which is basically built on driving ever-increasing demand for the benefit of an increasing minority of people, isn't the actual problem.

And you are deluding yourself by thinking nothing is ever our fault, that of the consumers, and by trying to find excuses for keeping up the ever increasing demand.

No one makes you spend your money chasing advertising promises.

@ChardonnaysPetDragon

And you are deluding yourself by thinking nothing is ever our fault, that of the consumers, and by trying to find excuses for keeping up the ever increasing demand.

No one makes you spend your money chasing advertising promises.

I agree with you. Advertising obviously has an effect, or companies wouldn't do it, but people aren't passive sheep with no choice other than to follow and comply with companies' marketing.

Try reading a few books about how advertising works. I found it fascinating to see the techniques they use, and once you can spot them you become much more cynical and reluctant to fall for them.

@ChardonnaysPetDragon

Not everyone, that's the problem. We're not all in it together.

We are. It's the way of life of the whole human race. if you think you are somehow insulated think again, when droughts and extreme weather hits, crops fail and migration increases many fold. No one will be able to escape it.

You missed their point. They mean that all 7 billion people on the planet need to accept changes to stop this. They will not. You'd be lucky to get 1billion to agree.

Your optimism is good, and I hope that you're right. But ultimately I know you're wrong. This cannot be stopped. It will happen, people will die. Nothing can stop it.

I'm surprised you have seen optimism in my post. I think you are the one missing the point.