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

Completely agree - we need to stop buying endless amounts of stuff (almost inevitably from China)

So you're saying climate change isn't anthropogenic? So what do you think is driving this shift?

Well you’ve just answered the question, we can, but we won’t. Consumerism is basically a drug which we are never going to be able to wean ourselves off.

How do you grow your own veg if you live in a flat? So many posters on here seem to genuinely struggle to understand that only the minority of us live in houses with large gardens.

Climate change is a supreme example of a 'massively wicked' problem which only cooperation and long term thinking might have solved. And as a species, we're terrible at both.

It's terrifying, because the warming we're seeing now was 'baked in' years ago. Even if we stopped all fossil fuels tomorrow, it's hard to see how we'll avoid unthinkable consequences.

I agree entirely. I remember campaigning on these issues as a child in the '80s. I was given a Blue Peter badge. Great. 🙄 But nobody listened. Something could have been done then, but as you say, now it is no longer avoidable, baked in, and emissions are going UP still.

They had houses which ran with condensation during washing day.

I was there.

If you have small children or elderly or otherwise vulnerable family members, there will be mould growth which seriously affects their health (remember that dreadful case of the baby who died because of excess mould in their home just last year?)

This was why people historically didn't change clothes often during the winter weather - getting them washed and then (worse) dried was incredibly difficult.

One of the reasons life expectancy was shorter was that people were more likely to develop pulmonary diseases, and for the very young and the very old they were often fatal.

We have had (in historical, and indeed real terms) a very short period of excellent food, housing and health on average in this country. this days I think are now behind us.

Almost everything is outsourced to China nowadays. Just check "country of manufacture" on Amazon.

We don't value the stuff we have - we go for novelty and change instead, and buy what we don't need a great deal of the time..

Worse than over-consumption is the amount we waste. It is shocking!

There are things that could be done but the problem is you would essentially need to fundamentally change all of modern day human society in order to make any kind of dent - it would be the end of consumerism, the end of capitalism. I can't see that happening when most people are so ambivalent about it they don't even want to do something as basic and simple as give up meat one day a week.

I do what I can - we don't fly, for instance, and we don't own a car - but I'll be honest, I'm well aware that the lifestyle all of us should be leading in order to correct climate change is basically unachievable unless the entire fabric of society shifts, so I don't feel hugely guilty if I have a bit of meat or what have you.

A bit of recycling isn't going to cut it. We're talking about a complete upending of every single system that makes up modern civilisation.

Yeah this drives me absolutely barmy on MN. For years me, DH, DS and 2 cats lived in a 600sq ft flat with no garden.

Nice bit of classism there!

Also why is FF milk any worse than skimmed?!?!?

Absolutely. But until then?

The problem is that our whole economic system runs on us buying stuff. The world would need a massive reset on how we do everything.

Also it’s laughable humphing that “big business” needs to act - we are their customers! They are providing stuff for us!

I have been worried about this since I was a teen. The mothers of large families are the worst - they get super aggressive if you are not effusively thrilled about baby number 4…

A couple of weeks back I was at the Timber Festival in a forest grown on old slag heaps left from the coal industry. One of the speakers was Simon Armitage the Poet Laureate who ha been studying climate change for years and years and has talked to some of the great scientists involved in the COP process. He asked one eminent Professor how bad is it, and he replied do you want to know the truth ? It's worse than you can ever imagine. But he said there is always a glimmer of hope, but not much.

Futurama

I crawl out onto the rooftop
above the world’s junkshop,
lean against the warm chimney
and eyeball the city.
The vibe is … let’s say ethereal,
rows of TV aerials

spelling out HEAVEN,
spelling out ARMAGEDDON.

It’s T minus zero
of the Petroleum Era –

all my neighbours
are burning tomorrow’s newspapers

in their back-gardens,
getting their alibis sharpened.

As the hours evaporate
I say to my spirit

I can’t really pilot
this smouldering twilight

over the scars and crevasses,
but I’ll put on my best sunglasses

and steer the cockpit of morning
into the oncoming.

We do need to make BIG changes to our current lifestyles, but we're not talking stone age here. And I would argue it's mostly meaningless stuff. Capitalism has made us consumers and we're no better off and no happier for it.

Less than 70 years ago clothes were really expensive. New clothes were a really occasional treat, well made, from natural materials, mended repeatedly. Same with furniture. We only buy new clothes and toys and homewares and gadgets because we've been sold the idea that we need new things all the time. Therefore cheap stuff that needs replacing has become the norm. We need to move towards more how we consumed a century ago.

Most people didn't own cars and walked or took public transport either

With renewable energy we could still power the things that make modern society so much better, like medical care.

I think the biggest shift would be food. As a society Brits throw away SO much food and have got used to having whatever we want at our fingertips.

Read the High House or To Paradise. They both deal with the future. No travel whatsoever / rationing etc. If we can’t do this for ourselves eventually we will be made to. Or our grandchildren will be more likely.

Unfortunately, it will cost too much and vastly alter people’s lifestyles to even slow down climate change, it needs a global effort, yes we as individuals can try and do our bit, unfortunately it will not make any difference unless the whole world acts as one, that is not going to happen

If people really cared they'd stop having children but people are only prepared to make sacrifices that suit themselves.

This will decline

if people cared they would have a minimum of two children. Who do you think is going to support the aging population. Some people are clueless.

This is where the excuses start, maybe be a bit more imaginative in your thinking, everything I’ve said you’ve basically come back with a reason why it can’t happen, that’s why change won’t happen, there are things such as allotments, government allowing use of community plots that can be implemented for those who do not have a garden.

I'm glad that most people on here take global warming seriously. I begin to wonder when the TV and radio presenter Julia Hartley-Brewer yesterday started talking about heatwave hysteria.

She said a while ago that she couldn't believe that global warming could be a problem because then she would have to believe that the industrial revolution was a mistake. She couldn't do that because the IR has lifted billions out of poverty.

What a strange way of thinking. Does she not understand that something can have a short term benefit but long term harm? Or that something might have both a good side and a bad side? Another time she shrieked with laughter when someone said the Greenland Icecap will melt and put London under several metres of water.

There's a male presenter on the same station who couldn't understand what the problem is because Britain will become as warm as many countries that people choose to go to on holiday. What about the people in Florida, Spain, Greece etc. We know they are over 40 degrees now. Also when he goes to Florida he probably has air conditioning on in the hotel room and his hire car.

A guest on the station said that young people today had no memory of the heatwaves in Britain in the 70s. That's why you shouldn't listen to yound people. But we had one heatwave that didn't go anywhere near the 40 degrees we had last year.

That was also because the houses wern’t heated or insulated efficiently? Not because some towels were being dried. Windows were shit- and if they have condensation running down then in 2023 then they need looking at.
The vast majority of clothes can be dried outside for most of the year. Towels and heavy jumpers etc are more tricky - hanging them over a radiator or airer near a radiator is absolutely fine and won’t cause mould if you air your house every day.
Hoenstly, is this sort of reluctance to give up the extras in our lives or make any changes to our individual lives that make and real positive change so difficult. This is just one example but there are 1000’s more.

But you’ve missed the point entirely. Even if we had the time to tend to an allotment a mile away every evening after work with toddlers and babies in tow (not driving to get there of course), it wouldn’t produce a fraction of what a family need. I’ve come back with a reason why they can’t happen because there are reasons why they can’t happen. Your ‘ideas’ look nice on paper but are pie in the sky and wouldn’t work. Of course if you have a large garden I would encourage anyone to try to grow their own veg, a lot of my family do and I intend to give it a go once we have moved somewhere with a garden.

I wouldn’t prioritise the ageing population over our future as a species tbf

Oh Talk Radio - the classic concrete man on Talk Radio and other such animals. No that's not fair to animals.