To resent the cognitive dissonance that exists around climate change

[JacquesHarlow]

Let’s be real - will anything get better when folk’s priorities are usually about themselves?

Let me explain my rather emotional opening point.

There’s been lots of news this week unsurprisingly about how we had the hottest year on record last year. The last 10 years have been the hottest on record. Wildfires, floods, you name it - the earth is changing.

Yet here in the temperate, largely rainy UK, many people I see around me are very happy to have their head in the sand, while also bizarrely choosing just one or two lines of attack on the climate crisis to shame others.

One of the parents i know has an electric car. It’s nice, I’m happy for them. They also take at least five flight a year. They have three children.

Yet if you hear them talk about diesel cars… it’s as if the owners are personally killing everyone around them.

Now don’t get me wrong. Emissions locally are important, the air our kids breathe is important. that might be a focus.

However you see it in the choice of car journeys over trains, of large SUVs over a normal family car like a Golf.

The latter particularly grates. We have a huge climate crisis. Yet Joanna or Nicola has to have a Discovery Sport for her three kids because she needs to sit high up, it’s easier to load them in, and she worries about crash worthiness.

The history books will show that rather than looking up and out for each other, we’re actually turning more inwards. Our own personal economy will always triumph over needing to protect others. If I’m able to pay £400 a month PCP on a Dispcvery Sport, then “I’ll protect my family over anything”, even though the entire thought process is irrational.

We need to take fewer flights and more rail journeys. working from home should mean more walking to school as the commute has gone. instead we’re seeing more car journeys. More flights. More large purchases; throwaway electronics; fast fashion.

AIBU to think there’s a lot of cognitive dissonance and head in the sand about climate change in the UK, and spending power (and the choices it unlocks) is king?

England could disappear off the planet tomorrow and it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference to what is happening climate wise.

Yes the poor are most impacted, usually.... LA not quite so.

The poor though, as individuals, emit the least, they tend not to drive much, walk/use public transport, don't go on holidays BUT are the ones hit hardest with energy, food and clothing costs.

Now their rents/heating costs are going to soar because Labour have said Landlords must have an EPC of C by 2030 and if you look on any LL forum, this means houses sold or costs passed onto the tenant.
But its worse than that, as the EPC is also changing, so LLs will have to install electric heating systems, far more costly for tenants to run.

Meanwhile, people who promote NetZero will not be affected at all by the extra costs, drive around in their ultra large v expensive EVs, fly business class, heat their huge houses with abandon.. & jet off abroad whenever they like.

There is a distinct lack of leadership by the environmental lobby.

If a state, corporation, or individual does something to preserve the environment, that carries a real or perceived cost to them, but the benefit is shared with the entire planet. Rational self-interest thus requires they not take action (either others will do so, making the sacrifice unnecessary, or will not do so, making it futile).

I hope that human so-called civilisation will collapse sufficiently rapidly that some larger life forms will be spared in the already ongoing sixth mass extinction.

But surely raising EPC ratings means that rental homes will have to be better insulated, meaning that they will be warmer and cheaper to heat?

Also, what do you mean by "electrical heating systems"? Again, if you mean a heat pump installed at the LL's expense, that's a great benefit to the tenant. (Speaking as someone who lives in social housing with a landlord- installed heat pump, and who is warm and toasty with low bills).

Not really, I rent out a property (can’t sell for various reasons). It has think walls without a cavity, insulation against those walls. The EPC assessor first used default assumptions based on the type of property (old cottage) that it would have none = terrible EPC. Had to argue with him that there was actually some insulation there (had just been added) buy showing him some of the receipts and details on the billing from the builder, he didn’t seem to have any means (or intention to) establish it himself. Lots of buildings in the UK can’t be significantly upgraded but there is a huge amount of embedded carbon in them and to rebuild in a more energy efficient fashion would many years to actually to reach a “climate positive” point in the life cycle.

THICK walls (not “think”)

Private school IS consumerism! It's parents shopping for a better education for their child.

That post just shows how deeply the neoliberal ethos ("my money, my choice") is embedded in our psyches. It's the air we breathe nowadays - we're barely even aware of it.

@zaxxon and why is a better education a bad thing? What negative environmental impact is a better education having on our planet out of interest?

Agree and disagree.

It's not "just one group's way of making money". Big business always finds a way to monetise things, climate change included unfortunately. Small distinction, but an important one.

Also, a side note but people who worked in tech around Y2K get very frustrated by people laughing off the 'millennium bug'. It was a legitimate concern that was averted by a great many IT workers manually re-programming systems.

Yup, I agree this is how it will go. And we'll be buying even more eco-conscious mascaras and taking even more foreign holidays, always chasing the sense of fulfilment that we no longer get through work. And it will never be enough. It's a self-perpetuating cycle.

The latter particularly grates. We have a huge climate crisis. Yet Joanna or Nicola has to have a Discovery Sport for her three kids because she needs to sit high up, it’s easier to load them in, and she worries about crash worthiness.

I don’t drive at all and would be your natural ally on some points but this sexist BS can fuck all the way off.

And I expect you’ll think that’s beside the point/trivial or whatever but it’s not, actually, because it makes me doubt your capacity for genuine insight on the wider issue.

Don’t open the “pets” can of worms
for many that is the sacrifice too far, they’d not consider not having a pet for any reason!

Yeah that really annoyed me too, suppose it doesn't matter if James or Nigel are taking their big fancy cars to work but why should a silly woman choose comfort to get her children from A to B.

Also totally agree about the day to day. We can all buy fresh local fruit, veg and eggs where we can, cut down meat if you eat it, same with dairy etc etc.

Climate change is a collective problem that requires collective solutions. You're right that there's a lot of cognitive dissonance, but I'd point the finger more at government than individuals.

The government accepts that climate change is a massive problem, yet the tax on fuel hasn't been increased in 15 years. The government have refused to invest in clean energy from tidal power. The government have completely failed to invest in the technologies of the future that will make it cleaner - where is the rollout of electric car charging points, why is there only one modest factory making car batteries in Britain, why is it taking years and years to order mini nuclear reactors, etc, etc?

We'll never fix climate change by having a go at each other for our personal choices. We'll fix climate change by investing, as a country, in the technologies that mean the personal choices don't matter.

Yup. People are the issue yet I get mocked for saying climate change is one big reason I didn't have children. Plus why have a baby when they are likely to suffer the most.

'But I recycle' is often the response, or 'we only holiday in the uk' as if that makes them equal.

Total cognitive dissonance.

A 4/5 year voting cycle does not lend itself to helping make 20/30 year decisions

Agree with others that we need serious regulation on this to stop over consumption. But it's never going to happen because governments need it for their growth plans so until we fight the patriarchy it's not going to change. I did wonder whether the fires in LA might get more Hollywood backing behind climate change. If its affecting them perhaps they'll be more vocal amd start leading the way with more sustainable living....or at least getting rid of one of their private jets.

Agree with this, i actually would prefer to use public transport for some journeys but always regret it as its a mess. Wildly expensive, filthy, often delays or cancelled so unreliable- it's not surprise lots of people are put off.

It's already too late to be honest. The climate changes and tipping points are occurring at a faster rate than even the worst case scenarios and more intensely than imagined. There is already modelling showing that human life may be impossible on the planet by 2050 and will be hellish for most of us long before that. We'll see some desperate attempts to fix things with geo-engineering before too long lets just hope they won't make things even worse.

The greatest dissonance is people who have children lecturing others on Climate Change.

There is nothing you can do, or that your children can do, to mitigate the damage that their existence will cause to the planet. Forget SUV's or wood burners, children are the single most damaging thing we can do to this planet. But nobody wants to admit that.

There are teenage soldiers in our armed forces who have more conviction in their beliefs than your average middle class "eco worrier". That teenage soldier is literally prepared to die for their beliefs, they signed up for it. Meanwhile, Debby from Darlington is crying into her organic porridge because there's a cyclone in the Gulf of Mexico.

Will Debby actually do anything about it? Not a chance. The fact that she has three kids who have been inhaling iPhones since they could walk is lost on her.

You can't stop climate change by not having children. The population won't go down fast enough even if there were zero children born from now on.

And if we solve the problem then people aren't a problem. When the global population starts to fall it's going to cause so many problems.

It's not meant to be sexist. I know this person in real life.

I am a woman (for what its worth) with children, but I don't feel I need a mountain goat of a car to traverse the city we live in. I walk, and we have a small car. I could afford bigger, much bigger. But I don't NEED to. Plenty of other people I know, do feel this 'need'.

As an earlier poster said, we are now at a stage where we have larger, more polluting cars in our cities, than we did 20 years ago.

And we have plenty of families with four or five cars lined up outside their house on the street, one for each parent, one for each kid, and a 'fun' one for the weekend for mum or dad.

That's fine, but ... where does it end? Do we "need' any of this? of course not!

But is it more about how emotionally we have this need to upholster, to make our lives softer, more comfortable, more... MORE?

It just fascinates me. People are prepared to hand-wring about one single environmental issue, while living a life of massive environmental impact elsewhere.

"You can't stop climate change by not having children. The population won't go down fast enough even if there were zero children born from now on.

And if we solve the problem then people aren't a problem. When the global population starts to fall it's going to cause so many problems."

Nothing will stop climate change. But population reduction will help.

How can people solve the problem? We can't tech our way out of it.

The problems falling populations cause are based on our current economic model. It's unsustainable. The problems climate change will cause will be far harder than that....

And we have plenty of families with four or five cars lined up outside their house on the street, one for each parent, one for each kid, and a 'fun' one for the weekend for mum or dad.

Stationary cars are hardly polluting while being stationary, though... And yes, it may not be a need for you but we do need multiple cars. When my partner's car broke and spent 4 months in a garage, we had to share one. Which either meant me dropping him off to work, then driving home to start my own work and then doing the same again in the evening (that's 4 car journeys instead of 2) or him taking my car and me being effectively housebound (limited public transport and, again, I can't fork out £6 just to do round trip to the supermarket or the gym). It would be wonderful if we all could hop on a reliable bus or bike but a lot of us can't because there is no infrastructure in place to do so and the public transport option is not always affordable. It's external structures that made individual car ownership a necessity, not personal choice. I didn't even learn to drive till I moved out of London at the age of 38. I had no need, now I do.

I wouldn’t give up my pet although I won’t be getting another one when she eventually passes away, but I don’t have kids, I’ve given up driving, I’m vegan and I only travel in the UK now. Oh, I try to buy used where possible too. I think we should al so what we can but I also don’t see the point in us all living completely joyless lives.