To think that no one will give a shit about climate change when they're freezing this winter?

[Turnandfacethestrangechanges]

Just that really. When we have a choice of spanking out £650+ in January for gas and electric or slowly freezing, will people will be less sympathetic to 'green' measures?

Will net zero go out the window when we realise how bloody miserable it is to live without modern comforts and there is civil unrest as a result?

YABU - Don't be ridiculous, climate change is the most important issue
YANBU - How true, I predict a riot

Why do you assume that net zero means no modern comforts?

The whole point Is to try and maintain basics and comfort for as many as possible

Without net zero you will starve - think anyone will care about heating bills when food and water are no longer available ?

This is a fantastically depressing post.

I know the Tory party are keen to push net zero as a bad thing. I didn't realise it was a common view.

Shifting to green energy and not being reliant on fossil fuel has to be the best route out of this.

I'm worried for my kids and for their mental health when they realise how fucked the future is & I'd happily be cold this winter to prevent that.

And let's face it

For 40+ years scientists have been saying move away from fossil fuel , be energy self sufficient - if they have bloody listened we would have cheap heat this winter

you're wrong.

some people are incredibly passionate about climate change and put a huge amount of effort into changing their own habits and also their local community, friends and family.

Also, for us our bill increase is manageable because we already use the bare minimum apart from mumsnet and so our bills have always been lower.

having to choose between heating and eating has been a joke for me and Dh because we used to not be able to afford the heating ever. And we used to sit our children next to the open oven like a fireplace after dinner to stay warm.
We used to heat by eating! quite literally.
I suppose we have quite a few tips and tricks to get away with no heating again.

But people will still care about the environment. why can't we use solar? I thought people with solar panels could sell their excess energy back to the grid? Why can't solar panels be put on every roof?

Why do you believe it won't have any impact on you?

Energy prices are directly linked to climate change (climate change is only one factor pushing energy prices higher, and maybe not even the main factor, but it's certainly a factor), so it's already having an impact on you.

Do you have children? Your children might easily spend their OAP years as refugees, or living in places with no fresh water. Fossil fuels are going to run out one day, and there will certainly be (more) wars over water to come. God knows what will happen to the UK. As more of the planet becomes uninhabitable due to climate change (either literally due to things like flooding, or because the land is no longer arable so the people can't live there anymore without starving) we'll see increasing numbers of refugees who will be referred to by the press as economic migrants increasing division and provoking conflict. More and more of the world's population will be forced into smaller areas and will increasingly fight over natural resources.

Anyone who thinks this won't affect them, only if you're lucky enough to die before the worst of it starts.

That's an interesting list. Seems like a wealthy person in good health's list.

I mean many can't afford a passport anyway, let alone a foreign holiday, can"t afford a car, can't afford their own home to fit solar panels, can't afford a holiday even locally, aren't able to walk to the shops especially a 'refill' one, can"t afford to buy new.

Not sure how useful that list is, tbh.

We couldn't afford heating last winter and we sat on a blanket by the oven eating dinner sometimes. I'll have to remember to sell it as us sitting by an open fire! I'd love to hear any more tips you have!

Thick, selfish, and spiteful.

Spitting and mocking and stamping their feet, demanding others die rather than experiencing some minor inconveniences to their holiday plans, whining about the unbearable indignity of having to wear facial masks in public places, going on massive marches to fight for their right to spread a virus that kills other people, and living in a stolid refusal to face reality...

As the OP said, and as the thick and selfish said at the start and height of the pandemic, We've all got to die.

Shit happens, if we all died off then the planet would recover and another form of life would find a way.

Too bad, too sad if a fair chunk of humanity gets wiped out. Too bad for the island nations already starting to go under. It's only other people.

On this topic, I think it's more like a herd.

I agree with you op

i think most people (include myself) care when it’s easy to make changes and doesn’t interfere with our life too much

if we all cared that much the roads and airports would look very different

You care because you can afford to care. Most people can't

Actually most people can't afford to not care. Climate change will likely make winters here much colder eventually. Let alone all the other stuff.

As a few PP have said, I've never been of the belief that humans have to exist forever. Shit happens, if we all died off then the planet would recover and another form of life would find a way

I find this kind of fatalism so short-sighted. It's not about the species ending or not, it's about how much misery we experience over the next 50-100 years - much of which you may not experience personally, OP, but people, including children who have had very little life yet, all over the world will.

Surely we should care more and want our government to invest in domestic green energy solutions and infrastructure. Relying on foreign fuel is a fools errand and leaves us all vulnerable.

But people will still care about the environment. why can't we use solar? I thought people with solar panels could sell their excess energy back to the grid? Why can't solar panels be put on every roof?

Solarpanels only help a small amount and not that much through Winter months. Unfortunately renewable energy cannot be stored easily (a home storage system is the size of a garden shed nearly) so renewable although helpful to the system aren't constant enough or can be stored easily currently so the system needs a back up for electricity generation.
Housing infrastructure for heating in the UK is old it's either oil, gas boiler or electric. A few houses are ground or air source but not enough.

The energy crisis I think will end up with people calling for green funding currently enrolled in their bills to be cut. I don't think it means people don't care but each individual needs to survive and with crazy bills there are some easier reductions given the cost of energy is subject to global prices.

the government decided

You have got to be joking.

What government, and what have they decided....?!

They can't even decide on a Prime Minister.

Meanwhile, the world burns.....

@SummerDays2020

I'm not sure if you were being serious or not but I posted this on another thread.

We batch book to save energy costs (I'm lazy so quick cheap dinners) and we usually save making the big pot for a very cold day to warm the kitchen up.
We used to have a small kitchen with no space for table and chairs but now we have a larger kitchen and can fit a table in there so we spend a lot of the winter in there because it's the warmest room in the house due to cooking. Hot porridge for breakfast on the stove top. The few mins of having the hob on helps take the edge off the house in the morning and because it's an electric hob the hot plate stays warm on top for ages.
(we rarely put the heating on for money reasons anyway, also good for the environment)

We did invest in electric blankets for some of the beds, children all share a bed in winter to keep warm. Sometimes I come in too if DH is working away from home. We took one off the bed and put it on the sofa instead of buying a heated throw which are way too expensive. That keeps us from going to bed at 5pm every night.

Children have a bunk bed so we tuck blankets in the top bunk to make a den that's so warm in there. It's sort of like Ebenezers bed in the Disney Christmas Carol. 4 poster beds with curtains were to keep warm. It works well.

For children, I keep a pop up tent with blankets and pillows and a hot water bottle. it's the option if a nice heated area for them. I wish I could fit. We used to use lots of hot water bottles and if you keep them wrapped up in a blanket they stay warm for ages.

What we couldn't afford before but can recently is curtains. We got loads second hand and this winter is going to be so warm.
I was looking at thermal lining but I think plastic insulates really well so I'll be looking at shower curtain lining, you know the plastic white sheets you can get to go behind the pretty curtains? if that's too expensive I'll just pin up spare duvet covers to thicken up the curtains.

In times old we just nailed up blankets to cover window.

Also keep the oven door and grill open after cooking.

fluffy socks for kids, slippers for adults. House coats on always. We have some thick pyjamas too which we basically live in all winter. only get dressed to go out.

--

a couple of other tips I have seen that I'll be trying this year (if I can find any local and free ha!) saving bubble wrap and spritsing water on your windows and place the bubble wrap smooth side, onto the window pane. This apparently keeps the window insulated and I believe it because plastic = warm.

Also someone else said a jacket potato wrapped in tin foil in your pocket when you go out for lunch. I read something similar in history at school about a little boy from ww2 days.
Keep a packet of salt from kfc or somewhere like that, they have salt sugar forks all for the taking. Delicious.

I'd definitely frame it all as a game or adventure for the children. I loved the 'we have to survive this' game when I was a child and it can make things quite fun for parents too. It is a hard long winter though, we never had the heating on (storage heaters on a pre pay meter so infinitely more expensive to run than q quick 10 min of central heating) and we used to have them turned off all winter and put them on from December 23rd to new years day as a treat. Christmas can't be cold!

And yet....

my cul-de-sac, 10 houses, all reasonably well off, working or retired... 4 have proper air-con fitted, 3 others have portable. And come recycling pick up day there appears to be a competition on how many boxes of recycling get put out. Totally missing the point, but they are soooo virtuous saving all that packaging from landfill.

Just feels like most really do not care.

alright but there are many buildings and gated off areas with the little lightning man death sign.

why can't we have a few of those dotted about?
I can see it would be hard but there are hundreds of thousands of roofs that are just wasted space basically.

Surely we could have one or 2 sheds for storage for every block of terraced housing.

If I didn't have to pay a few grand upfront I would already have solar panels.

We live in a deprived, low income council estate. There are maybe 5 houses with solar panels. Out of about a thousand? (I don't know its a large estate though) but the houses on the private estate, bigger houses, bigger gardens, better looked after, there are about 5 that don't. It's almost a given.

Perhaps council could invest in their stock?
they have insulated all of the council houses here which is a good start I suppose.

I know the Tory party are keen to push net zero as a bad thing. I didn't realise it was a common view.

It’s certainly not a majority view - polling shows net zero is popular and climate change is a top 5 (sometimes top 3) voter concern. And that was before a 40 degree day.

We can't have solar panels without having the roof strengthened. And we can't have them, or an electric car without having our electric consumer panel upgraded, can't have smart meters without moving where the meters are either... the uk is not being built for this stuff.

We are an island surrounded by water. Tides turning every day, never a day without. Forget the tiny bits of this and that and get the big schemes going.

I think its easy to see the ones who don't care. You don't see the ones that do, because you can't 'see' less rubbish or less energy usage.

people are there, working very hard to change things from grass roots. You just don't see it.

A VERY BIG PROBLEM IS THAT PEOPLE THINK THEY ARE DOING GOOD BY RECYCLING, NOT REALISEING THAT BARELY ANY GETS RECYCLED AND MOST GETS SHIPPED TO OTHER COUNTRIES WHICH is extremely energy intensive. Some countries (China I think?) have stopped taking our recycling.

The best thing you can do is not buy it,
then if you do buy it, reuse the containers.

I have started looking really closely at how to reduce what I buy, its a lot of work but I'm actually doing quite well.
I have started an Instagram page now I've got better at it (still haven't posted anything though) I wish I had started ages ago so I could compare and see the 'journey'.

What upsets me though is plastic grass. They take so much water to keep clean. it hurts my heart and its very popular.

But only if it doesn't impact themselves!

Not many will be keen on Zero if their household costs for enabling that cripple them financially.

There has to be a balance. Zero is a laudable aim and something to work towards, but not if it's massively detrimental in other ways.

After all, we could be carbon zero if we live in a cave without any "home comforts", but would we want to live like that? (In fact, it wouldn't be carbon zero because we'd be back to burning wood to heat and cook!).

@BeyondMyWits I live inland so forget about the sea!
why aren't we harnessing the energy of the sea? surely it a gift from the gods that we could use!

Perhaps promethius would be freed if we stepped back from burning the whole world.

@yardstickbarbedstick

The best thing you can do is not buy it

Absolutely. Far too many self-righteous and virtuous people still buying mountains of crap they don't need and consoling themselves that they put it out for recycling, so that's OK! They don't appreciate the sheer cost and pollution caused by manufacturing all that crap and then recycling some of it (after all, not everything put out for recycling is actually recycled and the energy costs for the items recycled are huge).

Best not to buy so much in the first place, i.e. concentrate on the REDUCE and REUSE, rather than the recycle!

Apparently it's harder and more expensive. But what you say makes perfect sense. In bays, the sea comes in twice a day, so that's four lots of energy that can be used to drive turbines, completely reliable, day and night.

But even rivers and streams can be used, i.e. get back a couple of centuries to water wheels that are driven by water flows from higher ground, rather than power mills, etc., attach them to turbines/dynamos for local power.