To think most people are concerned about climate change... but

[hopewithoutpanic]

Don't know what they can personally do to make an impact?

We can see the fires, floods and impact climate change is having in both near and far places.

It has to be a concern, right? This is something that could make our planet dramatically different within our and our children's lifetimes.

Would I be correct in thinking the issue is that is individuals just don't know what (aside from recycling / trying to reduce meat etc) they can do to make a real difference?

It is a very convenient way of extricating even more money from all of us at every possible opportunity.

100% agree it needs systems to change, not individuals.

I read somewhere that actually the biggest direct impact an individual can make is choose where they put their money - especially who their pensions are invested with. People like to say we're a small country but our pension funds represent huge amounts invested in lots of different places. Something over 10x greater impact if you move your pension than going veggie, I think it was.

For a lot of folk they don't get a choice about where their pension goes (and many public sector don't even get proper pension funds most of the time) but I was previously at a company where the staff lobbied to get the pension provider changed.

You should be concerned about climate change and it is caused by pollution.

The predictions made by climate scientists over the last century have generally been proved correct. They are far from alarmist and have generally been pessimistic as the early predictions didn't tend to include feedback mechanisms.

Sadly the planet will not be cooling any time soon.

Agreed. I go to the USA every year and was horrified to see on my last visit individual baking potatoes wrapped in clingfilm!

The reality is as a nation the is absolutely nothing the UK can do. The UK is responsible for 1.03% if Co2 emissions. If the UK disappeared tomorrow its would have zero impact on climate change.

China - 29%
US - 14%
India - 7%

The only way to slove climate change is more investment and research in cheaper renewable energy. Because the above countries only care about economic growth.

I think a lot of people actually just don’t care, to be honest. I don’t. I’ll be dead by the time things get really bad and I truly don’t care what happens to the humans after me. Not my problem. A lot of people dress up their “I actually don’t care” with arguments about “well, whilst X, Y, Z is going on in industry and other countries it seems pointless for me to bother recycling my yoghurt pots” etc, but the baseline is lack of care.

That figure is a bit disingenuous though, isn't it?

When you look at the emissions of what we consume (even taking out what we export) it's a lot higher. We've offshored a lot of our emissions.

Private flights are responsible for about 50% of flight pollution.

DarkForces are you sure this is true? If you look on flightradar the private jets are in a tiny minority compared to commercial aircraft.

I work in oil and gas. The issue is not the little people. It industry.
You think you're helping so much by recycling some cardboard whilst manufacturing plants are burning huge amounts of energy.
The government have done a fine job in making the public think it's their responsibility whilst putting no measures in place to make the industry sector accountable. It's actually laughable.

Sadly the planet will not be cooling any time soon

This is a good thing. Humans don’t thrive in cold weather without a lot of fossil fuel inputs tbh

The only things I could possibly do at this point is stop eating meat, and stop flying abroad which I don't do that often anyway. I don't own a car so that's the best I'll be doing.

Therefore we can assume the same for at least a portion of the highest countries' emissions too.

It makes people feel better that they are 'doing their bit', whether it makes much difference or not.

Flights (both freight and passenger) are less than 3% of total emissions anyway

China has 1118 coal fired power stations on the mainland and are planning to massively expand. There is little point in individuals in the UK doing anything while that is happening IMO as the impact won't even register.

Presuming you don't have children, it's not so bad and I say this as someone who cares very much

A lot of people make excuses to avoid having to change. "X takes 100 flights a year, but I only take 10 so it's ok" kind of thing.

Or have a mental aversion / socially derived aversion eg using family cloth or showering every other day to save water.

People want quick and effortless. I was depressed last summer with attitudes to water during the heatwave.

Sorry but this is soooo naive. ‘Live locally’?!

Ha! No one local to you makes smart phones or the components. No-one local to you manufactures the screens for your television. Or mines the component elements and metals. No one local to you grows rice. No one local to you manufacturers sieves or driveway materials or fluorescent tubing.

You get the picture. Well meaning but stupid people like to imagine we need farmers markets. Whatever makes you feel better. The actual problem is getting raw ingredients for modern life out of the ground and then shipping these and other commodities from A to B.

Rich Western countries didn’t offshore so politicians can brag about emission reductions so why frame it this way?

By now, China can sell to countries outside the West anyway, and are doing just that to diversify their markets. They don’t need Western investments like they did thirty years ago. Things have moved on.

You’re right that it seems futile to make individual changes when a lot of the climate damage is happening at the national level or by huge multi-national companies. However, it is not, as there are two sides to the climate ‘coin’ (demand and supply). If we (customers) change what we demand, then the main polluters (big companies and our government) will be forced to change what they deliver/supply.

In other words, our actions do matter: as they drive the actions of the big polluters.

Another issue is that the ‘true’ cost of the polluting activities (burning fossil fuels) isn’t reflected in the economic cost borne by the polluter. They don’t pay for the damage that we, as society, suffer via pollution and climate change. This means that the price point for polluting activities is kept artificially low. This can usually only be fixed by using taxes and government action to make polluters pay the full cost. But we aren’t powerless here either - as we can tell those who represent us democratically that this is an important issue.

Here are the main things you can do:

1. If possible, change your electricity provider to one who uses renewable energy. If even 10% more people did this, it would send a clear signal to both electricity and traditional fossil fuel energy companies (Shell etc) that it would be worth their while financially to do more to invest in these areas.
2. Email your MP and ask them what they are doing to support measures to counter climate change. Tell them that you care. Tell them you will be voting for MPs who also care.
3. Email your favourite large companies and ask them the same question. If you receive an unsatisfactory answer or no answer at all, ask the same question again but this time publicly (using social media). Companies will have to factor in the cost of negative publicity if they continue to make poor climate choices.
4. Don’t worry that it’s not perfect. Sure, there will be some greenwashing, but it’s all part of a process to re-educate the worse culprits and society as a whole (and mitigate and relieve some of the worst aspects of climate change in the meantime).
5. Continue to do the little things: recycle your yoghurt pots, use renewable shopping bags, etc. If nothing else, it sets a good example to our children. Who knows, perhaps a child of someone here on Mumsnet will be the future prime minister or someone who invents an amazing technical solution? We need to make sure that our kids care about this issue too.

Finally, let’s continue to talk about it on forums such as this! It helps us to know we aren’t alone.

They should try to live locally like their great-grandparents did. Life was short, shit and usually one or more of your kids died along the way.

Consumption based GHG Emissions per capita:

China - 7.04
USA - 15.47
India - 1.63

UK - 6.93

investment and research in cheaper renewable energy

Oh yes, I agree. I do recycle. But I know there is very little impact!

Yes, and that's along the lines of what I said in another post. We don't need those phones really. We might want them, but we don't need them. It is possible to live locally, plenty of people do, some live off grid quite self-sufficiently. I source all my fruit and vegetables from local sources. We might not be able to get every food item we want all the time, or even ever, if we eat within a certain radius (it's a whole movement), but we'd have to accept that. And less medical advances. In short, we need to accept shorter, less comfortable lives. But we don't want that.

Yes, and either we accept shorter and shitter, or we accept we'll eventually use up the earth's resources.