To feel really worried about climate change in this heatwave

[Fulbe]

This heatwave has been caused by climate change but there seems to be hardly any discussion about this at all. It seems that people are focused so much on getting air con or massive paddling/ swimming pools without thinking how that might be actually contributing to the problem. People outside the school gates idling their engines to keep their air con turned on whilst creating more pollution.

I think I remember reading somewhere that we've released 6 million years' worth of CO2 in the past 150 years. Something needs to stop but consumption and car use seem to be increasing.

Am I the only one to be concerned about this and that we're just slipping into a future of more dangerous heatwaves?

We have passed the tipping point where we had the chance to prevent the temperature rise.

We are now into the next stage which requires resource and effort put into adaptation i.e. coping with the changes. These have v widespread impacts on housing stock, water supplies, crop yields, and parts of the world becoming uninhabitable. Im a bit out of date now but parts of southern europe could become like the Sahara and those populations will be displaced in the longer timeframe. Some big thinking is needed but the human species is very adaptable. However there will be some winners and losers.

’WE’ didn’t chose to let it happen. Technology advanced and capitalism became king. That wasn’t a collective decision amongst the human race. There were tribes of nomadic people who moved across the world and built communities. Communities required resources and the land was pillaged as a result.

Sometimes you just have to accept you’re pissing in the wind.

We need to accept this is happening and adapt.

Stop building on flood plains, start moving inland from the coast in anticipation of sea level rises, invest heavily in ensuring new homes are ready for the new climate and older homes are adapted, put systems and provision in place for the massive displacement of people, work on food and water supply issues, etc.

We also have huge swathes of people who don’t want to be here anyway. There’s been long running threads of people fighting against Euthanasia and yet reducing the population seems a bloody good idea. Let the people who want to get off, get off.

There is a very good, if deeply disturbing research paper by Jem Bendell, written in 2018 called Deep Adaptation. It did used to have the strapline 'near term human extinction' but they've taken that off in a revised edition. It is not for the faint hearted.

https://lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf

What we are seeing now is the at the worst end of the modelling that was done in the 90s. The climate emergency is coming far quicker and with more intensity than was hoped.

This is an excerpt :

It is a truism that we do not know what the future will be. But we can see trends. We do not know if the power of human ingenuity will help sufficiently to change the environmental trajectory we are on. Unfortunately, the recent years of innovation, investment and patenting indicate how human ingenuity has increasingly been channelled into consumerism and financial engineering. We might pray for time. But the evidence before us suggests that we are set for disruptive and uncontrollable levels of climate change, bringing starvation, destruction, migration, disease and war.

Anyone still in denial is a fool. Governments are reluctant to outline the sheer terror of what is coming and they have more or less agreed to keep populations in the dark and business as usual for as long as it can continue. I'm not sure how long this tactic will hold. It's not just about having to survive extremely hot weather, it's about having to survive crop failure, lack of water, collapsing infrastructure, wildfires that spread to urban areas, major cities like London flooding etc.

It's not good to go down a rabbit hole on social media with this, but it is definitely better to understand what is happening, what is coming and make future plans accordingly. @bluesherbet's comment above is ignorant in the extreme.

And, in the here and now, it is possible to change your own behaviour so you tread a little more lightly. It might be 'pissing in the wind' but the fuck it attitude is allowing our leaders and big business to continue to fuck us over.

I don't think we are going to be able to address climate change without tech.

If we solve the power problem (cheap unlimited power) we will solve climate change. IMO we would be better off investing in getting fusion working than renewables. If we could make that work then we could literally suck CO2 back out of the atmosphere.

OTOH if we don't crack fusion we are probably doomed, outgrowing the petri dish before we adapt to the constrains of our environment.

For the UK it is difficult. As a % of the world we are quite small, but people do take stock of what we do. If we start to abandon projects like net zero then other much more significant (in terms of CO2 emissions) countries will use that as an excuse to abandon their own programs. OTOH, I don't think the world is doing enough at the moment to stop it from happening and I doubt it will be convinced, so beating ourselves up over achieving net zero is not actually going to achieve anything other than a poorer quality of life for us in the few years left that the climate will remain temperate.

Probably the most pragmatic approach would be a shift away from policies to try to stop climate change to policies that mitigate it, all the while hitting the doom button hard to try to convince others.

At the end of the day, this is a problem for our kids to solve, in the same way we had to solve the issues we inheritied from our parents (nuclear weapons and plant decommissioning probably being the biggest ones of these).

You probably need to go and criticise the cultures who are routinely having large families but i suspect you wouldn’t do that.

I agree with!!! There are fates worse than death!!!!

I disagree. It’s not good at all to fall down these rabbit holes. It puts people into a massive fear state and nothing good happens as a result. Hope is what is required. Humans have always been adaptable and whilst I accept we have some very tough times ahead of us I do not believe we all have to sit around feeling terrified.

Are you for real? That's some massive denial going on there, and it's climate crisis not climate change

We could question if humans should carry on living? Humans cause nearly all the damage on the planet. If it’s about letting the planet recover and thrive, humans need to become extinct. Of course we are all selfish being, and most of us won’t want that!!!!

Do we only want the planet to survive if humans get to live on it?

And rabbits are one of the species that reabsorb unborn young under environmental stress. They, like other animals, will even eat their kits if under stress, or if there’s a nutritional deficiency. Many animals will abandon their young when under stress.

Yes it’s concerning. And i think society will need to adapt. I feel absolutely no ounce of guilt for having portable air con in my house though on days like this.

I think most sensible people are concerned about climate change, unfortunately there are a great many people who aren’t sensible and really couldn’t care less about the future as long as they are making money now, there’s one in the US in particular who springs to mind. What the UK does is truly a drop in the ocean when compared to the co2 emitted by the likes of the US, India and, although they do seem to be making huge strides in clean energy, China. The oil producing countries aren’t interested in climate change, the oil is such a large part of their countries income. Mankind may well have found a way to lead to its own eventual extinction

And still they drive huge cars, go on their foreign holidays, have multiple children and keep buying, buying, buying. I hate it.

I don't understand how this can be pinned on climate change considering it hasn't been this hot since 1976. If we get these temperatures several more times over the next few decades, fair enough, I will buy it.

@EvangelicalAboutButteredToast I disagree. It’s not good at all to fall down these rabbit holes. It puts people into a massive fear state and nothing good happens as a result. Hope is what is required. Humans have always been adaptable and whilst I accept we have some very tough times ahead of us I do not believe we all have to sit around feeling terrified.

I said it wasn't a good idea to fall down rabbit holes BUT it is better to understand than have fingers in ears and shout la la la la.

If you read the paper, it will tell you that hope is what is stopping us from doing anything tangible to adapt. Only from hopelessness that we can continue to do the same thing on the same trajectory will we be able to envisage a new way of living.

The being terrified comes from having leaders who aren't prepared to do anything but business as usual.

I think we are talking at odd with each other here.

I’ve conceded that point already. My post was originally to the PP who criticised people who have children because they believe they chose the higher, more selfless path. My point was that having children is an inherently biological act driven by hormones. It’s not like going into Amazon and decided to choose a baby and get it delivered. People have sex and sex will sometimes equal a child. Sometimes those children are planned and sometimes they are not.

When I had my children the world was nothing like it is now. Houses were readily available to rent. Food was affordable. Jobs were easy to walk into.

This. It's far bigger than us.

🙌

Who are ‘they?’

Here lies the problem!!!

I understand why people have air con on, but from an environmental standpoint it’s incredibly damaging.

There is only so much we can do as individuals. There needs to be big changes by companies/manufacturers/farming to actually make a substantial difference and I don't think many are willing to change, and governments aren't willing to make them. They just keep kicking the can down the road.

Individuals can make a huge difference if they choose to do so. Everyone expects someone else to take responsibility be it the Government or large corporations.

Every single choice you take will have an impact from the clothes you wear, the food you eat, the car you drive, how many children you have and how you raise them, to the house you live in and so on. If you extrapolate that out across a population, there are huge impacts.

It will require unpopular and difficult decisions at all levels which is why change is unlikely.

During Covid, the dramatic drop of planes and cruise ships made a temporary difference to the environment.