Why is climate change not a bigger election issue?

[ChedderGorgeous]

Forget tax on private schools, it is going to be 43 degrees in Athens today, over 40 on Greek Islands in last week: huge risk of wildfires. The UK regularly floods due to unnaturally high rainfall , which gives water companies the excuse to pump raw rewage into rivers and beaches. Where is Starmer on this one ? Too busy smashing the gangs ?

No one on this thread has yet been able to enlighten us on how people in this country can save global climate.

No, really. Please do tell. And no garbled waffle or pearl clutching ‘won’t someone think of the children’ hyperbole. What exactly can this country’s population do to make a measurable difference?

You can't start with a false premise (that we can save the world from climate change) and expect a genuine answer.

We can't save the whole world from all sorts of horrible things that happen, but do we just point and say 'so-and-so needs to do it first? Until they solve world poverty, we shouldn't bother helping'? I hope not.

Lots of people have covered this. If you don’t care about your part in climate change then that’s fine, just say that. Nobody is going to force you to.

Name one thing. Rather than skirting around the serious question.

Is this the new mumsnet rule? Everything must come back to gender issues, no matter how tenuous the link.

I have other more immediate concerns as I imagine lots of people do.
Can I afford to feed the kids next week? Will granny ever get her hip replaced? Will my daughter be safe in the swimming changing rooms? Can I afford the rent? Will my burglar ever be caught?
And so on.

I think about it slightly differently, in terms of wider benefits of a renewables transition. Also, in the noise about climate, people are kind of missing the thing that we all worried about in the 90's- fossil fuels will run out, and before that become increasingly expensive due to the need to extract from lower grade reserves- North Sea oil and gas is in long term decline, despite what the SNP would like us to think.

Anyway, for UK specifically, shift to renewables -

Better air quality, lower water usage
Lower noise pollution from ICE
Greater energy security
For households, lower reliance on large energy companies- potential for a lot of people to become small scale generators.

More broadly

technology transfer to countries whose energy use will increase as they develop economically- prevent carbon lock in by those countries so that they dont develop the same correlation between carbon emissions and economic growth as the US/ UK/ Japan etc.

This same technology can also address inequality through reducing energy poverty- decentralised renewables can address this much more effectively as realistically there are many places in the global south that will never be grid connected.

Despite people loving to shit all over China re climate change, China is pretty much responsible for driving solar costs down through tech advancement and has hugely improved affordability and hence take up so we should probably stop hating on them.

I already did. If you’re interested then scroll back.

the sharing of one's point of view on a social or political issue, in order to garner praise or acknowledgment of one’s righteousness from others who share that point of view, or to passively rebuke those who do not. The opposite of meaningful action that makes measurable difference.

the definition of virtue signalling.

That’s usually what people say when they can’t answer a serious question.

All of that is nice to have. And people who want to strive for that should be free to do so. But it certainly doesn’t support the climate alarmism that is perpetuated on a daily basis.

I'm unclear - is your viewpoint that manmade climate change(ie climate change as a result of carbon emissions) isn't real, that it is real but the effects wont be as bad as expected, or that they will be that bad but the cost of stopping it isn't worth it?

The effects of real climate change are vastly exaggerated to cover up the rampant corruption, theft and incompetence of governments.

For instance where governments in developing countries steal aid and taxes meant for building flood defences, taking bribes to ‘sell’ public land which should be designated as flood plains. Even in this country, our corrupt governments have been talking the public to death but all but stopped investing in drainage. We get floods in this country precisely because of government failure to do so something as simple as unlocking drains.

If climate catastrophe was that much of a threat, China and the US would have cut their emissions to 0 already. Unless they have some master plan to shield their 1.7 billion population from said climate catastrophe After all, they are not stupid.

Do as they do, not as they say.

And not to mention where green taxes and ‘investments’ go. Somehow, in the name of climate defence, public money always makes it wag into the hands of government cronies masquerading as businesses.

It’s like a doctor deliberately misdiagnosing you with a life threatening condition, giving you a massive bill for treatment, then surprise surprise, the doctor’s best friend is the one he paying to treat you.

It's SEP. Stick a sign with SEP on it on any issue and it disappears. Of course when your house is under water or your food is poisonous it will be too late to claim it's SEP but for now...SEP.

Only Douglas Adam's fans will know this.

This hits the nail on the head. If people think that taking no action is going to be cheaper than trying to address climate change, they are sadly very deluded. We are already seeing climate-driven food inflation caused by crop failures, and it's going to get worse.

You misspelt "colossal public subsidies to oil and gas companies that dwarf any green investment " 🙄

It is not a bigger issue because the reality is no one knows what to do about it. Not regular people, not scientists, not economists, not politicians.

Did you mean to quote someone else’s post?

The last wildfires were organised by activists who were not getting enough attention. Says it all really.

The climate does change of course, but if you listen to the likes of Greta, Just stop oil etc you will hear the educationally challenged repeating gibberish they copied from someone's face book page.

Electric cars are deeply polluting and having enough to replace conventional cars would mean strip mining the whole world.

This is one reason that many people are cynical, many of the solutions proposed are basically useless.

That's not true.

But it does suggest that their grasp of science is questionable. Which is pretty significant if their main thing is proposing effective policy to deal with scientific issues.

They operate ideologically, not evidentially.

No? They use significantly more rare metals than conventional cars. Where do you think those come from?

Which country subsidises oil and gas companies? How do they do that? Are you talking about state owned oil companies, as opposed to BP, Shell etc? I have heard people claim this, but they never explain how they think this happens. Perhaps you are confusing the legitimate offset of expenditures against revenues, which is what practically all companies do under the tax laws of their countries. So not "subsidies".