AIBU not to buy in about all of this net zero/environmentalism?

[ShanCran]

Okay, so I understand the need to look after the planet and all that but just feel that the whole “net zero” agenda is being pushed too hard and too fast. Things like “clean air zones” in cities. Surely that’s just a money making exercise?

I recycle where I can, but not as religiously as most. I also travel about 20,000 miles per year in my (small) petrol car and in my 28 years on the planet have travelled approximately 175,000 air miles. Some will say that I am awful and totally unreasonable - but I suspect that many will agree that the whole concept of net zero is being pushed too hard and too fast.

After all, for all the environmentalist rhetoric that is preached by many politicians, the King, numerous celebrities and the likes - I don’t see any of them being principled enough to reduce their airmiles (often travelling by air for trivial things) or travel less generally. I doubt that the personal carbon emissions of many of such “celebrities” is far from net zero themselves.

I agree op. I don’t recycle and have no plans too. It’s far too late to change any of this now. I worked in a hospital and the amount of waste was ridiculous from our ward alone, never mind the 100s of other wards. Same thing when I worked in a university. We’ve fucked up the planet and we can never get back to what it was.

It's this kind of pointless negativity that really is the biggest threat to a positive future.

We are making huge progress. It's not perfect, but it's not hopeless.

I don’t care and many people don’t either. What you going to do?

I recycle, don't buy fast fashion and don't complain about the disgusting paper staws but the biggest impact is private jets, big corporations emitting polution. Its on a grand scale. Its not something going vegan and charity shopping is going to change.

Agreed
and you can tell who watches GB news

You not caring says lots about you

Nobody is talking about restoring the earth to what it was. They are simply trying to ensure the planet is a viable home for human beings. But yeah, don't bother to recycle because after all, why should you be arsed.

I‘m not arsed. That’s my whole point.

And me caring about what a random stranger on the internet thinks about me, affects me how? 🤣 Ok Greta. Do whatever you need to do that makes you feel important. I’m sure recycling is definitely going to help.

What a one dimensional answer. What will the cost of not addressing climate change be? Do you even have any concept of what it already costs?
Don't bother replying, I know the answer

Oh wow a laughing emoji. How mature

Making an assumption on a person’s whole character based off their opinion on a single issue is what? I wonder what the word for that is?

People who are destroying their one and only body see no reason to be arsed about destroying the one and only body, the Earth, that sustains all life.

This is quite a common theme on MN, which is a worry, as this is largely a group of women raising the next generation - on shit food and UPFs, and lazy thinking.

You know you can’t grow food in Alaska nor Dubai for most of the year, don’t you?

It’s not about air conditioning or heating your home. It’s a far more fundamental issue of food security. Warmer, wetter winters that prevent planting crops in spring as the ground is sodden. Stronger, briefer storms that destroy crops as they’re near harvest.

Insurance companies have big teams dedicated to trying to work out how climate change will disrupt their business. If the most capitalist cog in the system takes it seriously - there’s enough credibility behind it.

I see a lot of waste where I work so I understand where you are coming from but I will still continue to recycle and do as much as I can

Sky high energy bills are because of the increasing price of oil and gas, NOT renewables.
Our energy bills have more than doubled since Russia invaded Ukraine because our energy bill costs are set by the international gas price, and that went through the roof when Putin destabilised European gas sales. The more we rely on oil and gas, the more we are vulnerable to prices going up. Worth noting that oil and gas companies have made bumper profits the last few years. Go figure.
If we switch to renewables to power and heat our homes and transport, we don’t have to import it from anywhere and would just have a domestic price.
Switching to renewables = lower bills.
Sticking to oil and gas = bills going up and up and up and foreign companies make more and more profit. We get bugger all in taxes from these companies because our government barely taxes them.
And last thing, most of the oil and gas in the North Sea is owned by foreign companies who drill it, take it away and sell internationally to the highest bidder. North Sea oil and gas is not “ours” is not “local” or “domestic” and certainly doesn’t give us cheaper bills. Plus after 60 years of drilling it’s pretty much run out.
Climate change is here, the impacts are getting worse and net zero disinformation (thanks Farage and Kemi) does my nut in.

The Royal Society have stated that we'll need 100 TWh of energy storage to make renewables work.

https://royalsociety.org/news/2023/09/electricity-storage-report/#:~:text=The%20report%2C%20based%20on%2037,5%2C000%20Dinorwig%20pumped%20hydroelectric%20dams.

They're currently building 1.5 GWh of capacity at a cost of £800 million.

https://news.stv.tv/scotland/two-of-europes-largest-batteries-costing-800m-to-be-built-in-south-lanarkshire-and-fife

We'd need 67,000 of those units to provide 100 TWh of storage.

That would cost £53 trillion.

The UK's annual GDP is £2.5 trillion.

It's simply unaffordable and can't be done. There is zero chance of renewables / Net Zero being cheaper.

There is nothing about renewables that “don’t work”. They work, the energy mix and how energy is priced is a political decision. What is not up for negotiation is that burning more fossil fuels will continue to heat the earth’s atmosphere, and without a stable climate, much of life on earth will be unsustainable.

It's unbelievable, isn't it. People fail to grasp that we are all going to have to make huge changes to our lifestyle if we want the planet to survive as a home for human beings. Recycling isn't even the tip of the iceberg, so if people "can't be arsed" to do even that, there is no future for us.
I'm thankful I don't have children when I read threads like this one, but I feel so sad for all the animals that will perish along with human beings when there is no home for them anymore.

Perhaps they'll ration power in the future, as they do in South Africa now. We'll have periods of no access to electricity each day.

Wishful thinking isn't going to power your local hospital or heat your home in winter when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing.

That's why we need 100 TWh of energy storage.

A price of £53 trillion isn't a 'political decision'. It's simply an impossibly expensive sum of money.

Too many people seem to believe in unicorns and fairies, rather than facing up the reality of the situation.

So let’s assume that moving away from fossil fuels is “too expensive” - how then did Norway, Costa Rica, Paraguay and (nearly) New Zealand move to 100% renewable production? Are they all sitting in the dark? Is Norway windier and brighter than the UK? No, it isn’t. Their governments decided to move to renewable energy, it isn’t rocket science.
If you’re worried about the cost of moving to wind, solar and hydro and away from oil and gas, take into account that energy companies made hundreds of billions in profit throughout the few years that your energy bill more than doubled. If cost is the thing that sticks out to you as being the barrier to clean energy, get angry at the oil and gas companies, who in the main are investing hardly anything in renewables and instead diverting money to shareholders. All the while, seas get hotter, our towns and villages flood more each year, food gets harder to grow and extreme weather gets worse each year. Every degree of warming matters, we’d all be better off listening to scientists rather than populist politicians who weaponise “the environment” to excuse the fact that we’ve been ripped off by oil and gas companies for decades and it’s only going to get worse, if we do nothing about it. You’re right to be annoyed (which I sense you are), but point it in the right direction.

It’s not just about air miles or car miles though, it’s more than that. Eg, I didn’t know that having g loads of saved documents at work, whether that be in the cloud or not, leaves a massive carbon footprint.

What I can tell you is that I regularly walk/run round my local area and can most definitely smell the car fumes. If I lived and worked I. The city centre it would be much worse. So I can’t call clean air initiatives a money making exercise.

People might choose to do very little about reducing their carbon footprint. But it doesn’t change the fact that pollution, whatever form it takes, is impacting the climate

I feel the same

Norway hasn't achieved net zero. They do have mainly hydroelectric power.

We can't do that because... reality.

They have a large area of land, relatively small population and mountains.

We have a smaller country, 12x as many people and completely different geography.

Can you see the problem?

Do you need me to draw you a pretty picture with unicorns?