What can I do that isn't on an individual level regarding climate change?

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I've done all I can on an individual level, I've joined a litter picking group and have a veg patch and made my small garden 'wild'...
But I feel I need to do more.
I have so much passion on the subject, always have even when it was called 'global warming' and ' the ozone layer ' and 'being a hippy' 😅

What else is there to do?
I don't mind spending time and money, I only work 25 hours a week so I have time to put into a project but I don't know what would be best to try and do?

I'm thinking maybe I could try to start a really zero waste business?
I always daydream about winning the lottery and buying loads of land and building a waste free city but I'm not going to win and what's the point in waiting?

I know this is a little bit of a ramble but I just want to be able to look my children and my grandchildren in the eye and assure them that I did all I could.
so does any one have any ideas? what can I do today or plan to do next week or next month that would make a change?
or just a bit of solidarity?

Who pays you? 🤔

What are you implying here? That my husband somehow fakes the results of his scientific research because he's paid (bribed) by someone to prove that climate change is real? You're ridiculous.

Always these sly, shitty insinuations that climate scientists are somehow bent. When all too often it's those making the insinuations that are. The oil industry has chucked billions at climate denial and misinformation campaigns over the years, and whenever anybody pops up on here parroting their crap I wonder whether they're just useful idiots or something more sinister.

There's a BBC documentary called "Big Oil vs the World" that lays it all out pretty well.

Don’t be selective with your quoting of me. You said that there’s no doubt about man made climate change. I didn’t say that your DH fakes results either nor did I suggest he is bribed. You’re being ridiculous.

Asking where the funding is coming from is a basic question for any type of research and particularly one that is contentious and at best is used to help promote policies and drive political agendas.

It’s not rocket science.

What's your actual aim OP? What would you be trying to achieve by whatever actions you take?

There's a BBC documentary called "Big Oil vs the World" that lays it all out pretty well.

Yeah sure the BBC is a great source of unbiased information… did they give the Drag Queen take into “Big Oil” too? lmfao

The amount of hypocrisy from people who sneer at the oil industry yet benefit very well from it is staggering.

I’m sorry to derail OPs thread as I know some people genuinely do want to feel they can make a difference.

I work in sustainability and your greatest tool to use is your infuence. Think raising issues with local mps, campaigning for retailers to operate better etc.

are you employed could you look at introducing carbon literacy training into your workplace?

So would you care to lay out where you go for unbiased news? Genuinely interested to hear 😆

Also, could you elaborate on who "benefits from the oil industry", and how??

And why exactly is it that you're so keen to defend a multi billion pound industry that's known to spend vast sums on misinformation and climate denial? 🤔

Any published paper will have its funding sources listed.

Funding usually comes from research grants either via the government or EU. However, the government and policticians do not decide who gets grants (or what science gets grants) and who/what doesn't. The government decides the budget for each Research Council (which have broad remits) but that's it. Scientists (or rather a consortium of scientists) can then apply for money in certain grant rounds. These tend to be open calls so you can apply for anything within that Research Councils remit. Each proposal is assessed by a team of independent scientists (again not politicians!) to rank them on the how good the proposal is (eg is the science robust, how important is the science, is it a knowledge gap and are the aims are achievable). Only the few highest ranked proposals are funded. What science gets funding and what doesn't is entirely independent of the government - as it should be.

Worringly the US is currently trying to make it less independent by governmental employees scrutinising proposals due to certain words. Which is ironic as the policticians interfering are trying to shut down climate related research not as you suggest promote it.

I consider these schemes to be ways for rich people and corporations to feel less guilty about carrying on wrecking the planet. Most of these schemes are worthless. One pollutes the atmosphere today and these schemes (if they ever work) take years to recoup it. I would prefer that the individuals and corporations concerned did something about cutting down their emissions in the first place.

In my view, it’s better that rich people fly around and pay the offset, than they don’t fly and don’t offset. Why? Because the bad thing about flying is the environmental footprint. Remove that, and it’s a good that people can travel. Remember that what looks extravagant to you is relative. Your lifestyle is extravagant by the standards of most people on earth (I guess), and certainly by the standards of almost everyone in history. It’s to be celebrated that we are now richer, and that we continue to get richer, as humanity.

But even if you dislike that argument on egalitarian grounds, the practical fact is that if you tell people the way to get to net zero is expensive and difficult, you’ll only appeal to a minority, which will get us there slower.

Worse, you’ll get people who’ve bought their Prius or their heat pump and think they’ve made a huge difference, so not think twice about their flights.

Better take that Prius money and that heat pump money and make it go 50x further by spending it on the most cost-effective ways to reduce carbon. Because that’s politically achievable. Getting people to spend 50x more on net zero policies just won’t work. Taking that same money and making it do 50x more can work, and is surprisingly easy. Even if you take a very sceptical view of carbon trading/offsetting and divide by ten times to account for fraud and waste, the planet is still ahead.

In my view, it’s better that rich people fly around and pay the offset, than they don’t fly and don’t offset. Why? Because the bad thing about flying is the environmental footprint. Remove that, and it’s a good that people can travel.
I remain unconvinced that this will remove their environmental footprint. If they really cared they'd be using rail travel to replace short and medium haul flights and would keep long haul flights to the minimum necessary, always flying in economy.

I think my question would be whether your scepticism is empirical (you judge the schemes are all 100% fraudulent) or a moral one (you don’t like the idea we can buy our way out of carbon sin).

If the former, then I’d encourage you to look again and some of the better schemes (like the cooking fuel ones
with proper certification) which remove the carbon immediately (as soon as the fuel switch is made), and where the cost-effectiveness difference vs taking local action is so massive that even if you account for huge fraud you can’t avoid ending up ahead. Or schemes which pay to protect forest that would
otherwise be logged.

If your distaste is moral then I think we are just optimising for different things. I think climate change probably is quite serious and does need to be fixed, and we should go for the most effective method even if it fails to do anything for,
say, equality or some other moral goal.

I think for me, the question is whether we want the battle against tipping-point runaway climate change to be fought only by those who really care, or also by the large middle ground who somewhat care, or who even barely care at all but
who are happy to cheaply and easily turn their carbon footprint net-negative.

The broader coalition sounds like the winning coalition to me.

Anything else will work for a time, but risks crumbling as soon as cost of living bites, or politics or ethical fashions change.

On an individual level - very little.

Avoid overseas travel, especially long haul and minimise car use come to mind.

I think it's great you still have enthusiasm and energy to contribute OP. As pp have said, reusing and lowering consumption generally is important, especially if you're also helping to effectively persuade others to do the same.This helps to change what's on offer to consumers.

Nothing you can do will make a difference because the UK barely contributes to the issues - less than 1% annual emissions That's because we are no longer a manufacturing nation - Europe outsourced that to China et al - we are partly responsible for their high emissions because we consume what they make.

OP the modern world has a global impact on climate but 'the environment' more local to you is being impacted on a different scale by modern living and consumption: wildlife, wilderness and farmed land, ancient woods, rivers and seashores and all the dwindling creatures that live there, as well as nature-free urban areas - you could make a LOT of difference at that level, with time, energy and money to support organisations that work for environment conservation and greening vities and suburbs.

Start small, start local?

Respectfully, I’d give up. Let the next generations deal with the mess because you’ll have a very miserable life trying to make a difference in a world where the majority don’t really care all that much. Climate change will really be an issue in the next few decades, yes it’s shit for the children but you won’t be around so why care.

@GeneralPeter If the former, then I’d encourage you to look again and some of the better schemes (like the cooking fuel ones with proper certification) which remove the carbon immediately (as soon as the fuel switch is made)

Except it's not immediate, is it? It takes a period of time for the savings to accumulate with the change in fuel, unlike a flight where the emissions spew out over the course of a few hours. Think about it, you replace your old appliance for a new one because it's more efficient. The new one won't recoup the outlay overnight, the payback period tends to be years. In the case of solar panels it takes five years to recoup the manufacturing carbon before you can even think about the carbon you were 'offsetting' in the first place (a 4kW installation costing £5k will take four years to offset a return flight to NY for example).

Aid to developing countries is a good thing in itself, and should be done anyway. The trouble is that so many people (many of them rich and famous) think that they can fly hither and thither just as long as they tick that "offset" box on the airline's website.

I'd really recommend Professor Mike Berners-Lee's book How Bad are Bananas?. On the subject of offsets he says:
There is a strong temptation to use offsets as an excuse to shirk our responsibility to cut the emissions in the first place. Only once all possible emissions reductions have taken place can it start becoming reasonable to talk about 'offsetting' the remainder to achieve net zero. The next test for a legitimate 'offset' is that it must actually remove carbon from the air [so paying for an energy efficiency programme doesn't count, as it only reduces emissions going forward, it doesn't remove existing GHGs from the atmosphere, particularly not the ones emitted by that flight]. After that you need to show that the removal would not have happened without your funding (the so-called additionality test). Finally you need to check for any other negative environmental or social consequences.
[My notes in square brackets]

There is no way that £70-£200 - even if well-directed - will make the 12 tonnes emitted by the average Brit every year disappear as quickly as it was emitted.

that's fair
I'm not in a position to completely cut out meat as I love with 5 other people
we cut down and don't have beef so that's good enough for me for now.

we toyed with the idea of getting chickens on the allotment but due to a few factors (the people who ran it changed and there was an increase in price and loads of rule changes) we decided to give it up and focus on the garden and it's just too small for chickens.
Also I don't think I could stomach raising them for meat (I know I know)
My husband would eat meat whether I stopped or not, so I still have it. I don't do all I can then I suppose. I still want to do more though. I do enjoy meat and cheese

Nice attitude!

Whilst it may all seem a bit pointless, with plastics pollution, wars, tanker fires, Trump and Badenoch...

We can all do a little to reduce our carbon footprint, even if its just one less european city break.

Climate change effects are here already and it wont be decades before they get far worse.

Ah yes I still have some enthusiasm. I have spent the last 2 or 3 years sort of burying my head in the sand. Its horrible, really horrible.

I did spend a good few months campaigning and started a petition to keep a piece of woodland from being developed on. We won! it's still there but those kind of threats come back around don't they? it's quite disheartening. I got quite depressed by the whole thing and that's what made me stop watching the news. Its so hard to handle the emotions that come with it.

I am around. huge portions of the amazon went up in flames not too long ago. Masses of peoples homes too.
flying foxes were dropping dead out of trees in aus a couple of summers ago. and me in England had to sleep downstairs in the coolest part of the house because the temperature hit 40°c
that was brutal.
anyway the next generations include my children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, their children and so on.

Look where you invest your money…you may not have lots of savings but pensions are an investment and lots of pensions are invested in places that aren’t in line with your views. So maybe take some time to research where your pension money is invested and see if you can do anything about it if you aren’t in agreement

Have a look on Ethical Consumer a lot is behind a pay wall, but it should give you a starting point for further research.

You say your work does a lift share scheme, would it do a cycle to work one if there's secure storage for bicycles?