Climate change: just how f***ed are we?

[obsessedwithsleep]

Obviously it's on my mind at the moment and it seems that nothing of any significance is being done. Like we're just watching those juggernaut come down the road and not even trying to the move the car.

Anyway, as the title says: how awful will the future be? What is the most likely degree rise by 2100? What does this actually mean in reality?

Would love to hear people's thoughts and wisdom.

I've got books on my shelf from the 1980's about climate change. Yet here we are. We are honestly completely screwed, it's so bleak the future unless we can suddenly find ways of capturing carbon. I wish every govt in the world were to spend every day planting trees, putting up turbines and solar panels bit of course the selfish fuckers aren't.

I've tried so hard to feel positive but am so worried about my kids futures. I really can see us with guns trained off the white cliffs in a few years time as so many areas of the planet become totally uninhabitable. We are so lucky to live in the UK as I think it will be slightly delayed but the catastrophe will engulf us all eventually.

Humans, we could have been so good 😓

I'm at that stage. My children are adults and it isn't looking likely that they will have any children. I used to long to be a grandparent but I'm increasingly feeling it may be for the best not to bring children into this increasingly fucked up world.

Meanwhile, @Hatsoff5 thinks it's all a great laugh.

@Hatsoff5

Yes, I'm hoping those laughing emojis were a mistake but horrible feeling that person is yet another in complete denial

I didn't have any children, thank goodness, I won't be here too much longer as I am over 60, well I hope not

Overpopulation absolutely is not a racist myth. There are 7billion people consuming decreasing resources, putting increasing and unsustainable pressure on ecosystems and animal species. We are poisoning the seas, the soil and the earth because there are too many of us. The UK has a population of 65 million and can't feed its own even if every centimeter of land was ploughed up and planted. And how fucking selfish anyway that would be. Humans are not some demigod species that should be granted special rights over everything else. From a planetary perspective we are a plague.

Is the racist myth thing because so many people focus on the size of the population in poorer countries and ignore the fact that smaller populations in rich countries have a far more damaging effect? The USA is the prime example.

Overpopulation absolutely is a racist myth. Look at the disgusting private jets and super yachts and the immense damage they do in comparison.

I don't think anything can be done at this point. Action with meaningful impact would require developed countries to give up creature comforts immediately, including air travel for leisure, meat every day, air conditioning everywhere, computers and smartphones everywhere etc. People will not do this out of their own initiative, and on a population level it would be a very unpopular message from any politician, so it will never even get proposed, never mind done. Just look at the current Tory leadership contest: all the candidates are backing away from climate pledges, while the Labour leader is also only talking about economic growth (as if anything can grow indefinitely without destroying its environment/host).

There will be crop failures, an avalanche of climate refugees, rich countries digging their heels in with anti-immigration and racism to protect the remains of what we have now, violence, far-right politics will get worse etc. It won't be nice, but I'm already half-way through my life and I hope things won't get too bad before the end of my natural lifetime. Anything after that, I try not to think about it, it won't make a difference to me anyway.

It's dropping rapidly. The fertility rate in this country is 1.6 children. It's 2.2 for India overall (in some states, it's lower than the UK!), whilst China is just 1.7. The USA is under replacement rate levels, too. By the end of the century, over half the world will have a shrinking population.

The problem is not too many humans, but too much consumption. ON top of that, our supply chains are very inefficient - over half of the world's shipping, for example, is devoted to moving around fossil fuels!

The good news is that it's a lot easier to sort out our habits than cull a few billion humans.

The west would not have to give up all its comforts

Yes less foreign travel - but the standard family holiday isn't as much problem as the small Percentage of the population who have multiple trips each year

Meat - less not none

However if you carry on regardless and won't make small changes expect catastrophic disaster in your or your children lifetime

People do what they can within their monetary limits. I recycle, haven’t flown for over 10 years, get my milk from the farm next door, most of my kids clothes are hand me downs, we don’t go mental at christmas or birthdays but living rurally and working in rural
community nursing means I rely heavily on my car and that isn’t going to change, unfortunately I can’t afford electric currently and the infrastructure isn’t there anyway, yet those who make decisions will tar those of us who have little choice to use our cars who live rurally or actually need them for our jobs in with those who probably don’t need to use cars all the time.

It also makes me so angry when they continue to build 1000s of houses on green space, that same green space we need to help with climate. It seems those in charge are only interested when it’s making those beneath them change our ways of life without looking at their own. In the main most people are just trying to get by

The myth of overpopulation has been created to make a scapegoat of the global South. Europe (and the USA) has throughout history colonised and stolen resources and wealth from the global south, plunging countries into poverty. We then use up those resources at a rate that our planet cannot cope with. And who feels the effects of climate change first? The global South. And then we have the Royals and others banging on about overpopulation in Africa etc. Climate change, poverty and racism are linked and will be the end of humans.

Every summit ends with meaningless pledges that lack specificity and accountability. Pledges to ‘try’ to ‘reduce’ by X time in the future, which won’t be met, and then new pledges will be made and ignored.

i'm more worried about the ageing population. There are now more over 65s than under 15 yr olds. How are we going to fund it all when the NHS is already at breaking point.

I agree with the problematic overpopulation angle. In most of the west it's due to people living longer & we consume far more than poorer countries who have more dc.

@frazzledmess this is a huge concern of mine that a lot of people don’t realise which is only going to get worse. The amount of bed blocking in my nearest hospital is crazy at the minute. It doesn’t help that the area I live in has far more elderly than young people now due to the amount moving here to retire when the younger people leave here for the cities and for jobs

Perhaps someone will be clever enough to work out that money doesn't need to work yeh way it does today

Instead of loads of people working to make others rich we work to look after each other

Money at its heart is simply a way to reward effort without needing lots of bilateral arrangements

Denial like this isn't helpful. I think people stick their head in the sand because they can't bear the thought of giving up their SUVs or making an effort to recycle.

I agree with this. Remember the clear skies during lockdown? Pollution was drastically curbed and the planet benefitted.

But profit and people 's 'need' for a holiday trumped all that. Nobody actually needs a holiday, it's something they want.

We are majorly fucked and it's too late for us to make a difference. It's part of human arrogance to think that we can control nature in any significant way.

I think people stick their head in the sand because they can't bear the thought of giving up their SUVs or making an effort to recycle

We're well past the point where giving up a certain make of car or recycling yoghurt pots is going to make any difference.

That’s really sad isn’t it? I think the same. I only have boys and my advice to them will be to have fun but not to procreate. What a time to be alive!!!

Thank you to everyone who has responded so far. I've read everyone's replies and it's as I thought I guess but unspeakably bleak.

Yet I also think: is there another point in history (other than the very recent past) when I would have preferred to have lived and I'm not sure there is.

I really hope my kids don't have kids, a friend of mine just cannot understand where I'm coming from

@AlaskaThunderfuckHiiiiiiiii yes it doesn't seem to get much traction but taxes are going to have to go up, up, up

@JanisMoplin At the point where I am looking at Prince William jetting over the world and preaching to brown people like me about climate change

Unfortunately it is the countries of Africa & Asia etc. where the biggest change to living standards need to take place and will cause the most change.
The metals for electricity and vehicles which are needed for essentials. The metals and plastics to carry water to every home. About a billion people not having a water tap, flushing toilet and more than a 40watt bulb.
We know the mistakes we made in the West, please don't insist on your right to repeat them.

Can you help convince those governments?