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.

War is bad and climate change is bad.

No army will stop a war because of its climate impact.

@Bogwood the best summing up of this matter I have read in a long time!

Yes! My bugbear is Easter eggs. If you melted down all the chocolate in a lorry full of Easter eggs I reckon you'd get about a suitcase full. Such a stupid waste of resources and that's before you even get to the ingredients in the horrible chocolate. They should be banned.

This hits the nail on the head.

The vast majority of people will not accept any detectable reduction in their standard of living. They might just about accept a reduction in future improvements to that standard of living, which they don't really know they're missing, but if they could afford two weeks in Lanzarote last year and this year they can only afford a week in Minehead, they are going to be very unhappy, and if they think that the reason for that difference is because of increased taxes on energy, they will vote for the party that will reverse those tax increases.

You can see this when petrol gets expensive due to an oil price rise. In fact the politicians who annoy me the most when that happens are the Greens. When petrol hits £2 a litre or even more, a principled Green leader would say "This is great. It will lead to people driving less, which we have consistently said we want to see. Of course we'd prefer that the extra cost be in taxes rather than going to the oil companies and Saudi/UAE/Venezuela/Russia, but it's a start. We cannot save the planet while emitting as much CO2 as we do". Do they say that? Do they heckers.

(In our house we are probably just as guilty as everyone else. We don't buy much processed food and we only use the car once or twice a week, but we do like to travel. It's part of what makes life worth living. We all have things that are important to us, and it's not easy to accept other people whose major lifestyle preferences might be slightly less carbon-intensive that your own to wag fingers at you. If you do that enough, a lot of people just throw their hands in the air and vote for the wingnut party.)

Yes partly due to cost and partly due to the pandemic we hadn't been abroad in 5 years, but we've had two holiday this year. One of them was by train, but we were lucky to be able to do it, and I woukd never have dine it with young children. I think of we had a carbon ration per person then you wouldn't have people being told they couldn't have 2 weeks in Benidorm flying on a package flight while others can seemingly just fly around for 15 minutes on their private jet without a care in the world.

Yes the wealthy and influential don't lead by example

Well, if you did that you would also have to ration pretty much everything else, not least because almost everything we own in a modern economy is full of energy (i.e., carbon). You would essentially have to build a Soviet- (or even Maoist-) style planned economy in which nobody can have a bigger house, a nicer car, or indeed a computing device that fits in the palm of your hand (or on your desk) and allows you to communicate your ideas to anyone who will listen. Good luck getting people to vote for that.

There are actually not very many private jets, and most of them spend most of their time sitting on the ground while their owners do Very Rich People Wheeling And Dealing Stuff. So while the most ostentatious lifestyles make headlines and consume a lot CO2 per person, and the people involved often seem to be awful human beings, they aren't contributing all that much in absolute terms to climate change. I saw an article last year showing that of the ten biggest CO2 emitters in Europe, nine were horrible coal-fired power stations in Germany or Poland, and the 10th was Ryanair.

So while I think Very Rich People are a bit weird (I pity some of them... they kind of have to stay away from 99.9% of the population because it would be weird to be sitting next to a billionaire in the pub), I think they are probably a necessary consequence of living in the kind of world where nice things like restaurants and travel are possible. I can pretty much guarantee that a world with a truly equitable carbon ration would not involve anybody having two weeks by air to Benidorm.

Wow! There is so much misinformation and misunderstanding in this it's difficult to know where to start but I think your last paragraph really highlights this as you've completely misunderstood the issue.

It's not about cows directly increasing CO2 levels on the planet. It's about the unnatural movement of CO2 within the carbon cycle. Cows consume CO2 locked in the biosphere (where it is not acting as a greenhouse gas) and release it as CH4 (which is c28 times more potent than CO2 as a GHG) into the atmosphere, where it does contribute to the greenhouse effect.

Naturally you are correct this could be balanced out with the natural breakdown of CH4 into CO2 which is then reabsorbed by plants but, were not talking about a natural cycle as humans are artificially increase cattle numbers beyond what nature can cope with. And that's before you factor in all the other ghg emissions associated with the breeding, rearing, slaughtering, etc of cattle.

That's the crux of the entire issues, we are taking CO2 that should be locked away in the biosphere or geosphere and putting it into the atmosphere.

And part of the reason modelling is so flawed is because the rate of change is genuinely unprecedented. In previous cycles of warming and cooling, where the concentration of atmospheric CO2 has risen 200ppm to 1600+ppm have taken millions of years to complete.At current rates we'll do the same journey in 400-600 years.

I do agree the language used can be unhelpful but the idea that this isn't an issue because it's not outside the norms of history from a planetary perspective is ludicrous. From a planetary perspective it's far more common for their to be 20t carnivorous reptiles roaming around but if t-rex suddenly appeard on Oxford Street we would all go "meh, no point trying to stop it eating everyone, it's just part of Earth's cycle".

From a human perspective our entire existence has existed during a period where atmospheric CO2 was between. 180ppm and 300ppm. Every plant, animal & ecosystem we depend on evolved under those conditions. We're now at 420ppm and rising at a rate never before seen and with no idea how we or any of Earth's current systems will react to these changes.

I agree you are missing the point @bogwood. And this is not just about CO2. Look at the incredible and devastating changes within the ocean in the last 15 years - we have about 10 years before all the coral reefs disappear, the sea becomes a grave for dead fish and the only biodiversity you will see will be in relation to jellyfish. And how many electrical items are built now to last about 10 minutes? Soon the entire earth will be one huge rubbish tip full of electrical junk made out of plastic. Big business really does need to stop its antics. Totally unnecessary - just about increasing their already overwhelming wealth and power.

I think everyone with any awareness of climate change fully understands the impact of bombing. But the issue is that it isn't a good enough reason for the nations involved to call a ceasefire. Often science and politics are intertwined and reliant on one another, and sometimes as with war, one reigns supreme over the other.

The movement of rations, people and weapons is fairly immaterial though when you look just at the UK and how much of what we consume circumnavigates the globe either as a component or a finished product.

Ceasefires are not being called because the UK, US etc have intertwined national security with financial security, the conflicts around the world are invariably about money and power, land
Not science - politics and science rarely intertwine, covid is the only example i can think of recently.

I agree, the planet cannot sustain ever growing population too many of us. I'm glad birth rates are falling but still a way to go.

I think that we in the west are living with our pink sunglasses on and don't see the real problems with the world. Try to explain to a Ukranian soldier lying in the trench about net zero or to people in Middle East. We are fighting for some phantoms and really missing the real strategic and security problems however when we finally come to our senses it will be too late.

I didn't realise that about Ryanair, although they are taking a LOT of people to a lot of places. I think in terms of overall consumption per head, there are some people who consume far more than others, but yes, I think you are right. We wont be able to have carbon rationing without having a global dictatorship, which is what I was trying to articulate in my first post, and that wont happen, not least because if you are a powerful person, your quality of life and lifestyle will have a longer way to fall than most others.
If we all do what we can, people who have the means should be doing more. And not by pontificating to others about what they can do while they do little or nothing to curb their own lifestyles, but actually doing more, even if it is to their detriment. You cannot expect people in the developing world not to have a fridge or electricity or a car and you cannot expect them to live in perpetual poverty just in case they use too many resources, so something else needs to be done. Even if you 'don't believe in manmade climate change' we need to have a liveable world, without rubbish being strewn into the ocean, polluted air and endless digging materials out of the ground rather than using renewable, cheap energy.

At the end of the day average joe probably doesn’t have much headspace for any of this considering cost of living, working etc. people are also reluctant when the powers that be continue to fly about on a whim, drive about in their gas guzzlers and continue to fling up houses on green space and flood plains when we need that green space to soak up rain and help with carbon capture surely? Is it any wonder people are skeptical.

I do what I can but I do rely on my 1.2 petrol car to do my job in rural community nursing (massive healthcare waste won’t be helping by the way). I haven’t been abroad since I was 18 choosing to have breaks away in the U.K. instead, recycle, get our groceries delivered, buy our milk from the farm vending machine, we have meat free nights, but I do have children which doesn’t help either but they’re here now. I can’t afford an electric car and currently have no where to park to charge it, I also think there will be synthetic fuel of some sort instead of everyone moving to electric

Don't worry - we'll mutate or die out.

I know this will upset everyone but I’ve just come back from Alaska where the explorer Pen Hadow was giving a talk. I asked him about climate change etc and he said it’s all bollocks (his exact words). Believe me or not I don’t really care.

With all the heavily processed foods labelled as vegan, I'm not sure that's entirely true.

I agree that it is a major factor that people ignore. Or actively argue against, as seen here.
Unfortunately, we don't get rid of wars by just not having them or just saying stop building bombs.
We have to reduce inequality, especially financial. We need to increase the number of people that receive a full education. We need full reproductive rights and education for everyone.
We need governments that are actually influenced by all the people and not just a few wealthy people who get to pollute as much as they want.
This and other things would make populaces less easy to control and less willing to fight over resources. Most armies of the world are either forcibly made by law or filled with the poor of their country.
These wealthy leaders and the wealthy who control them keep inequality high and people poor so that they are too tired from working to even read the news, much less pay attention to what is going on behind the scenes. if you have to scrounge for change just to buy some eggs, whatever is happening around the world is not high on your list of priorities.
every war machine takes resources. Wasted resources. Not just in the sense of when they are used, but also in the number that aren't used and aren't reused. There are large numbers of planes, helicopters, tanks, ships, weapons and everything else that just get abandoned or are sent to lay out with nothing being done with them. They just rot or get taken by whoever someone was fighting against in the first place.
We can't just count the weapons and destruction and the resources used on those things, we must also count all the lost resources to rebuild and clean those things. Moving populations costs resources. Rebuilding costs resources. getting all those items to the destroyed places cost resources. It costs education and mental health as well. People, especially children, who have experienced trauma have worse outcomes in life as a whole. war increases crime in those areas, especially in the short term, but sometimes areas never recover or take decades.
Food that is sent as aid is stolen. Or the men handing it out force women into sex to get the food. Which leads to more pregnancies and more resources needed. and decreases the ability to get out of that situation.
War and keeping people poor both waste resources. in different ways, but so similar in many and they are intertwined together.
If people weren't constantly living less than paycheck to paycheck, not always scrounging for every bit of life-then they would be more likely to back holding companies accountable for pollution and waste.
If you can't afford $2 eggs, are you really going to demand farmers use better farming practices that reduce waste and reduce pollution when you know that will make eggs cost $4? No, because you can't even afford the $2.
And even if you do get the gumption up to sacrifice and fight for those things anyways, with a peaceful protest, they wealthy send the government out with their war machines and their violence to shut you down.
So, even when you think that those war machines don't have as much impact on the environment as companies, they do. Because they are used to quell the protests against those very companies who are doing the polluting. They are sent into other countries to intimidate the population and steal their resources.
War machines and companies are connected. And they get their power from inequality, hoarding resources and using violence.

I get my dose of realistic news on the Daily Sceptic otherwise I'd go mad on MSM

All efforts are wiped out already. Remembering that just China's increase wiped out all efforts made by every country on earth just by a small increase. The biggest issue is that it is ultimately pointless unless the biggest two stop use, which they cannot because they have the biggest populations on earth then why are countries like the UK which are only 0.4% polluters charging everyone more, adding extra tax, making odd laws when they know it has no global impact?. The impact on those who feel it is the top no 1 priorty and their mental health is an issue too. That said, I'm old enough to of lived through 3 times when they claimed we'd all be dead due to climate issues and it turned out they got the science wrong.

I don’t drive an suv or large engine car, I recycle, I’ve had my inhalers for asthma changed to cfc free ones ( even though they don’t work as well) and I don’t make silly journeys if I can walk it.
but I’ll be dammed if anyone thinks they can try and stop me taking a once a year trip abroad . My 18 year old son is in the military and currently involved in the conflict. Unfortunately we need to stand against mentally unstable dictators and rebel groups or else we’d all suffer. So I don’t consider a a few strategically planned bombs to be of significant concern when the likes of China and India are huge culprits do nothing to improve their carbon footprint. I also think it’s a huge con charging the average working person ulez fees as those people becoming more broke doesn’t fix the climate.

its mass control and lots are blind to it.
also, just stop oil are mostly mentally unstable , jobless morons vandalising stuff for attention because nobody loved them as a child.

Manmade CO2 accounts for just 3% of global CO2 production. The rest is produced by our amazing planet, as it has been for millenia. Look at what's happening in Iceland. The amount of CO2 being produced by these small volcanic eruptions is mind-boggling, and could continue for decades.

Of that 3%, the UK produces less than 1%. We are being rushed towards 'Net Zero' and poverty because we are told the world is burning, but producing just 0.0003% of global CO2... and we are still reducing that infinitesimal number faster than most other countries.

The carmakers are finally flexing their muscles, with the worlds largest manufacturer, Toyota, saying EVs dont figure in their future, BMW focusing away from EVs, as is GM, and Volvo pulling funding for Polestar. I think Sunak gets it, and I think so does Starmer, except he's too frit to say so, for fear of upsetting his acolytes. The revolution has started!

Unfortunately, it seems about 60/70% of the time when someone or the news/Facebook mentions climate change it's about these people blocking roads. It's making people disinterested in changing or listening to new ideas on how to cut down. These protesters are making it worse.

Where to start....