Can we talk about the elephant in the room?

[NeptunaOfTheMermaidBattleSquadron]

I feel like as a society we need to start talking about the elephant in the room when it comes to climate change.

All these green measures being put on individuals are surely being wiped out because of all the bombing. Everywhere. All this war and conflict. No one is looking at the impact on the climate. Everything we're doing seems so trivial and pointless because in the same breath we're sending weapons (often called international aid) thousands of miles.

Then there's the manufacturing for it. The weapons testing. All the jet fuel to send the RAF USAF etc all around the world on bombing sprees. The supplies we're sending all over the place, weapons, medicine, rations... it's mind-boggling to think of the sheer scale of this.

And while we're acknowledging and working on fast fashion, home heating, electricity generation, over use of plastics, overpopulation, traceability etc, we're not even talking about or questioning all these bombs exploding everywhere!

We typically think of MAD as nuclear apocalypse, but surely people refusing to actually engage with each other to the point of forcing the world into something with the carbon footprint of a war (never mind several of them) is the climate change version of MAD. We can't reverse it.

I feel like politicians and diplomats just aren't trying hard enough with this because war is so profitable.

Why aren't just stop oil and all those other activists out there trying to protest the most avoidable thing we're doing with the biggest carbon footprint and pressuring governments to go back to diplomacy instead of treating their people as expendable?

IDK what the answer is but we seriously need to get a handle on this and stop using bombs to make points (they're not very good at it anyway) because of this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68110310

Sorry I just needed a bit of a rant. AIBU that they need to try harder to avoid armed conflicts and solve things like adults for the sake of the planet because the stakes are so much higher than one territory or issue? I haven't had much sleep this week so please explain why IABU if you think I am.

All the bombing in the world isn’t as bad for the planet as fossil fuel energy generation, food & agriculture, travel etc. We should stop fighting anyway for many other reasons but it won’t end climate change. We should be united to do everything we can to transform our societies to get off fossil fuel dependence and stop fighting to focus on that.

But war is fossil fuel energy generation, food and agriculture, travel etc. It's an excess of all of those things (in some of the least sustainable ways) so we can literally destroy a bunch of someone else's resources to stop them destroying ours. It's all about wastefully destroying resources so we have to replace those resources. After every war we have to rebuild everything that was destroyed, get agriculture working again in those regions, decontaminate places etc. All more resources and more fuel being wasted that didn't need to be.

I don't have the data, but gut feel is that there are far more things which would have a greater impact. I think you've picked the wrong elephant.

If we stop defending freedom against brutal dictators, you won't have any opportunity to make choices to save the planet. You'll just do as you are told.

Good points well made. A lot to think about.

I honestly think we are already beyond tipping point. If the global powers that be were really interested, we could stop producing greenhouse gasses now, however that would mean such a fundamental shift in how economies work that I don't think it is tenable. It is theoretically possible (or it was) to adjust certain aspects, however there has been little to no appetite for that it seems. Governments around the world are only interested in what will get them elected, or keep them elected.

Realistically, Russia, China, India and probably America all need to change, and I can't see that happening, maybe with the exception of the US.

The human race is a blight on this planet. I fear for future generations.

Population is the elephant in the room. All we hear is how the birth rate is falling and we need to breed. David Attenborough has raised this but it seems to be largely ignored.

There's a lot of elephants in the room.

Taylor Swift's private jet, for example, and the lengths her legal team are going to to stop people from being able to see that she took a 13 minute flight yesterday... And she's not alone.

Climate change is the elephant, really. Nobody wants to think about impending devastation. It's much, much easier to ignore it, put your recycling out and "do your bit", and not have to contemplate that your children, or their children, won't have a habitable world.

Many elephants including how many people are about to move and where to

Personally, I think we have passed the point of no return regarding global warming and climate change. From what I have read it started to really ramp-up towards the end of the 20th century, with all the extra cars and greater dependency on electricity etc. Even posting on here about climate change and needing to do something about it is adding to the problem because you need a phone/laptop/or device made mostly made in China with bits of it mined from elsewhere, and you need electricity to run those devices.

If we could live like we lived in 1950s and 1960s and get rid of everything that is unnecessary in our lives - stop buying unnecessary stuff, grow our own food and don't rely so much on imported food from 1000s of miles away, get rid of all the Starbuck, Costa's etc - all nice but not necessary - for the next century, we might get to grips with it. But that is never going to happen.

Everything is too mixed into everything else to unpick.

And I am about to sit in a diesel car (which was the saviour of the planet when we bought it nearly 20 years ago) so that my son can practice his driving ready for his test, and on the way back we will probably call into Greggs. None of which is good for the planet.

Do you have any statistics to show that current wars are contributing disproportionately to climate change, compared to, say, the aviation industry (or many other global industries) or the shipping industry, or greenhouse emissions, or modern agricultural practices, or population growth, et, etc.?

I think it’s the other way around wars and volatility will increase due to climate pressures

I honestly think climate change etc is the last thing the majority of every day folk think or worry about on a day to day basis.

It’s well down the list after things like childcare costs, poorly parents, SEN in the family, general cost of living, relationship issues etc.

@NeptunaOfTheMermaidBattleSquadron

Very interesting thread post idea..

Also countries like china and India which are some of the biggest polluters. Me cycling to work a few times a week isn't going to tip the scale if we are still doing business with countries like this.

I am assuming in this instance that MAD = mutually assured destruction.

OP you make good points.

Why do Just Stop Oil protestors need to stop doing their protests? It's not a full time role for them - they can protest against oil AND protest against war? (If you have ever met any in the climate protest movement, they are a demographic who bloody love a protest and will absolutely have been at Palestinian matches, ban the bomb, anti Iraq)
Why can't you round up other people who aren't protesting about anything and head out in your own protest?

I'm a bit suspicious of anything that is "why don't climate protestors focusing on Y focus on X instead"? It's just a way of trying to diminish the importance of issue Y. Maybe both are important?

It just smells a bit of whataboutery and a way of trying to make taking climate action of any kind pointless. What's the point of recycling my tin cans when China is building coal fired power plants etc.

Even if diplomacy ends up being the way we resolve conflicts, we still need to maintain and fund armed forces and weapons (even if they never get used). Because not having defences is an open door to our enemies.

As for the other stuff, it requires government intervention. Companies will keep selling damaging products as long as they’re legally allowed to, and people will keep buying them because they’re cheap. The government literally has to ban the cheap harmful stuff otherwise it will keep getting made and bought.

I sell stuff in my job and we make great efforts to be eco friendly, only for consumers to say “this is too expensive compared to this cheap but environmentally damaging product”. We can’t compete on price without being equally damaging - the only way to make people buy eco products (which cost more) is to ban the cheap and damaging alternatives.

While there are people making $$$$$$$$$$$$$ from fossil fuels you will never eradicate them not to mention the lack of a viable alternative

You don't still believe all that climate change nonsense?

I have exactly the same fears. And the habitat destruction, and death to wildlife. A year ago I heard 50,000 dolphins killed due to missiles in the Black Sea. It must be much worse now.
I cannot bear being lead into war and destruction by wicked old men. In Russia, the USA, Israel, UK, Iran and Iraq, Sudan.. the list is endless.

I'm really pleased that I've come back to find lots of good well made points looking at lots of different aspects of this and not much "you wear shoes so you can't care about the planet!!" a smidge of whataboutery and only one "why don't you protest then???" (who says I don't? And I do know a few protesters who are out every week for every little thing and who resent those who aren't; I don't think that actually helps anything TBH, but I can't march by myself, that's just a walk, and no one is marching to stop war for climate reasons because no one is talking about it).
I was a bit hesitant posting in AIBU especially when I'm not sure I've expressed this very well.

With regards to population, I did mention that in my OP that people do talk about that quite a lot as an aspect of climate change. It's constantly talked about. It's the go-to on MN every time anyone mentions the climate people all but come out with "put those babies back inside you, that'll fix it". Maybe that's why people are being so dismissive of war, because by ending human lives, on the surface it ends their carbon footprint. Except it doesn't. Because for every life lost, another human has to come into the economy to replace their peacetime role. Which means double the carbon footprint per war casualty up to the age of death.

My personal view on that is (like war and a bunch of other issues) the economy is too dependent on growth. Until we reimagine the global economy as something that doesn't need to be propped up by the Military Industrial Complex and a constant stream of people being fed in at the bottom of the economy to prop up those at the other end like the world's biggest pyramid scheme, I don't see how we can sort any of this out.

We keep talking about manufacturing and fast fashion and landills, and we should, but conflicts are turning countries into landfills full of pointless manufactured items whose sole purpose was to do as much damage to the other side's resources. It's so blase and I don't think this attitude to conflict resolution has a place in the 21st century and certainly doesn't move us forward.

Even on this thread someone has the idea that war is about opposing dictators that threaten some given value of freedom, where in reality, most wars seem to involve two sides chucking a load of resources at each other, breaking each other's stuff as much as possible, until they're in a stalemate and have to go back to the negotiating table.

It doesn't seem crazy to expect modern leaders to cut all that crap out and to just insist they try harder at the negotiating table in the first place.

It's not a case of "this is more important than all the other stuff we already know/talk about" it's a case of "this is as important and should be talked about at all". Climate change isn't an either/or. It's a "we need to look at all of it together and sort it all out".

I think we need a culture shift on everything, and with so much recent news reporting that we're on the brink of an even bigger major European war in the next decade, I think we need to think about what will be left of the planet if that were to happen, even if no one presses the button on the nukes.

I just don't know where we start with it all. Maybe I'm just rambling IDK.

We can make all the changes we want as individuals and even as a nation but unless you make the USA and China think differently there’s no chance of any real change

No because I didn't say any of that. Please don't twist my words to suit yourself.