This isn't our heat wave, but the next one could be

[orangeleavesinautumn]

Or if we mess up the jet stream, arctic winters.

We have really messed up horrifically, haven't we.

I am scared its too late to put right

I recycle everything

Sticking plaster and not a very good one.

When Rishi Sunak was on TV debates this time last year, he was asked "what things can citizens of this country do to help tackle climate change". He instantly assumed a sickly sweet expression and said that he had asked his daughters this very question, because children are the future after all, so who better to ask than them?

His first answer was "recycle".

As if "recycling" will tackle the climate emergency 😡

And I would rather listen to climate scientists - you know, people who have studied and looked at the evidence for years - that a would be prime minister's children. A bloke who has proven he thinks environmental issues are a tiresome irrelevance.

User538765 · Today 09:32
We swapped our car for a Tesla so doing our bit there”

How is the electricity it runs on produced?

It should be focused on sustainability. There will be none of that if we can’t sustain the resources on the planet.

I largely ignore all the scare mongering. It becomes quite tedious to be lectured to all the time when those lecturing basically do little to encourage us and often fail to lead by example.

Anyway, I try to live by my own principles, the primary one being "try not to waste". Food waste kills me, people agonising over a product gone an hour over the use by date then chucking it, buying far more food than is necessary, throwing out food etc. Good storage, sensible buying and using up stuff is good.

I don't have or need a car, I don't have kids, I use heat when necessary at a sensible level, but will never go cold for the sake of it either. Minimise buying "stuff", no clothes drier, that kind of thing. I'm not perfect, but I live that way not because someone tells me to do it, but because it makes sense, and a by product of that hopefully is helping the situation we face.

I find this a bit of a sad attitude but I do understand it.

How do we do that?

Maybe I didn't make my point clearly. There is no point in switching to plant based just because we know the CO2 impact of plant based raw ingredients is lower than meat if we then eat a highly processed plant based alternative without knowing the environmental impact of the processing.

We could be swapping one thing for something equally as bad.

You can't be well nourished and extinct at the same time so nutrition become moot if the human race is extinct.

NW / Gtr Manchester. I’ve just set out for the station and it’s raining 🙄. I moved away ten years ago as the weather depresses me so much. Unfortunately, redundancy saw me have to move back 😢.

Didn’t drive when I lived in Herts/Kent/Beds either. It was a little more inconvenient, but I could still travel fairly easily. Here, you can’t do that.

Confirms my view of the Fermi Paradox.

Intelligent life never reaches the point of far space travel.

How about:
If you fly long-haul, you should shut up about climate change for a month.
If you fly in a private jet you should keep quiet on the subject for six months.
If you fly in a private jet more than once in a year, you should be banned from speaking out on anything - because you are the problem.

I have no problem with my car not being allowed inside the M25 in case I aggravate a child's asthma, but I do think it's completely outrageous that for £12.50, Sadiq Khan is happy to look the other way.

I’m not arguing, just airing my POV. Rainforest destruction is linked to the growth of food for the animal industry, the majority of soya that’s grown is consumed by the animals that humans eat.
I don’t think it shouldn’t be talked about, as it’s harmful and unsustainable for the planet, making small changes to your diet will have an impact if everyone does their bit.

thatll be my Google rabbit hole for this afternoon, cheers

@HeritageBlooms

Do you have children?

society needs children, well the adults they become anyway.

no more children is not the answer.

Giving up meat is partly to make it clear that you will change and that is what helps governments change

Yes you could devise an scenario whereby the veggy diet is more carbon intensive but that's not what happens in practises - you have to be pretty extreme in your choices

And if you want to eat cheap and veggy then you would be hard pushed to get a diet that's more carbon intensive than a meat based one

What if , ah but, let's disbelieve anything we don't like

Burn , die of starvation , drown - these will be your future , don't come moaning if you didn't make the effort

Yes exactly.
Comforts me in a strange sort of way.

Although, blows my mind to wonder how many species have been at this point before? Another type of Homo sapiens perhaps? Similar to us, and different at the same time?

I mean the answer is no more buying, unnecessary consuming or travelling isn’t it?

If you’ve got clothes, you don’t need more. No fake lashes or nails that end up in the landfill. Stop buying tat for the house, and putting chemical air fresheners everywhere. Retire the tumble dryer and hang up washing. Only buy the food you need for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Drink tap water. Mutually agree no birthday/Christmas presents. Chuck away the vape. Stop taking holidays. Don’t upgrade your phone.

Problem is literally nobody wants to do all that. Hence blame the government/China/USA/boomers.

Looking into alternatives, that’s where money should be invested. I don’t have the knowledge to answer exactly. Sustainable food production, travel etc. In Sainsbury's, you can buy an imported cucumber from Spain/Morocco or an English grown one, there’s a 20p difference, that in itself is baffling.

We need a more potent variant of Covid to kill off people that are 65+ rather than the younger generations. They are the ones that have significantly more disposable income than younger generations as well as more time to spend it on jetting off on multiple holidays etc. They are also much less likely to change their behaviour than younger generations.

The younger population is naturally decreasing anyway. We have an economic situation as well as an environmental sotuation on our hands. The decreasing younger generation just won't be able to support the ageing population.

Of course there are older people that do care about the environment, but on average they are less likely to make changes. As we've seen on this thread, some older people don't give a shit as they'll be dead by the time we feel the real consequences.

Equally, issues such as fast fashion are driven by multiple generations. No one is perfect.

And how will that go down with the public when food prices go through the roof? We don’t have the land mass to feed our population anyway, and we’re about to lose another chunk of it to new housing

No, we don't. Needing people to care for the elderly is not a reason to have loads of kids. Most of them won't work in care anyway.

That's exactly what I was saying and I'm afraid I think you're being either stubborn or a bit dim if you can't see that.

Oh my days. Missing the point completely there. Way way to simplistic thinking. Most of them won’t work in care? Oh dear.
Do some reading up around population decline and the effects, then come back to us.

Also time travel. If it were possible, we'd know. At least we'd know if people could come back from the future.

Or maybe it is possible, but we won't survive long enough to make it possible.

https://www.google.com/search?q=global+temperature+graph+1000000+years&rlz=1C9BKJA_enGB903GB903&hl=en-GB&sxsrf=AB5stBhaTtlvPpeMiIYIBECUOQaUzvQQqg%3A1689679316945&ei=1HW2ZNWZOafc7_UPloeG6A4&oq=earth+temperature&gs_lp=EhNtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1zZXJwIhFlYXJ0aCB0ZW1wZXJhdHVyZSoCCAEyBBAAGEcyBBAAGEcyBBAAGEcyBBAAGEcyBBAAGEcyBBAAGEcyBBAAGEcyBBAAGEdIrQ9QAFgAcAB4A5ABAJgBtAOgAbQDqgEDNC0xuAEByAEA4gMEGAAgQYgGAZAGCA&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-serp#vhid=_4TkdIOsoMc5mM&vssid=l

We need a more potent variant of Covid to kill off people that are 65+ rather than the younger generations

And yet we saw how nations react to it. Lockdowns. No thanks to wishing for that again.