AIBU to feel people are far too complacent about climate change?

[Quibble123]

I should probably say up front that I work in this field, so this isn't based on a few headlines or a panic after a hot week. My job has involved working with scientists, policymakers and communities for years, I have a PhD in social policy (focused on social action and social change), so I'm fairly well immersed in the evidence. If anything, it's made me less alarmist, not more.
But I honestly feel like I'm watching two different realities.
The impacts we've been warned about for decades are now happening with increasing regularity, yet most people seem remarkably unbothered. We have a hot spell, floods somewhere else, another wildfire, another record broken... and everyone just seems to shrug and move on.
I'm not expecting people to spend every day worrying about it. Life is busy enough. But I genuinely don't understand why there isn't far more public outcry and pressure on politicians to treat this as the priority it surely has to be. People do talk about the consequences (such as wildfires etc) but the discussion on the causes (fossil fuels, over consumption etc) remain largely untouched - when we should be absolutely raging!
Maybe people feel powerless. Maybe we've just adapted to each new "once in a generation" event until it becomes normal.
I don't know. I just find the lack of urgency really hard to get my head around. This is the single biggest threat to our current and our children's futures - it could literally kill them - and we seem to be walking blindfolded....

What I find amazing is that we have known about this for decades yet, imo, things have got worse.

I try to buy glass bottles where I can, yet regularly find brands have switched to plastic. People drive and fly so much more now, and this seems to be younger people too. When I was a child, it was unusual - but not unheard of - to holiday abroad every year. Now people I work with fly several times a year in some cases. No one ever went on a cruise. You could take bottles for refilling into the Body Shop in the late 80s/early 90s, but that didn't seem to catch on.

That's just 3 exexamples. Im sure some things have improved e.g. recycling, but so much seems much more wasteful and polluting now

The global economy is built on endless growth and accumulation. To address climate change we’d need to address this underlying cause and unfortunately the elites are not going to let that happen.

Not much our tiny little country can do when they likes of China, India and the US don't give a shiny shit. We already have ZERO coal powered plants - China has 1195 and last time i looked they were approving another 2 every month.

Our little country trying to do anything is like pissing in the wind. All it does is make our lives more expensive with no real effect.

I wonder if given people are self interested it’ll take mass climate driven population displacement and migrant crises to make them care/notice by which point it’ll be past the point of being able to do anything?
There are socio economic reasons too but the impact on Morocco of climate change (floods, droughts, crop failures, temps of 50c) is contributing to most of the population wanting to leave. I wonder if the world will feel the impact more from this than changing weather? You’ll still have pricks like Trump denying climate change exists though… (while he sells rights to drill to his pals/kids)

And I don’t believe that people more widely want to ‘address’ this, at all. No one wants to face up to the fact that we would need to be content with less - less travel, smaller houses, fewer possessions, less choice - smaller, simpler, poorer lives overall. None of the big campaigning organisations are willing to talk about this.

Individual lifestyle choices count for fuck all, they really do. We cannot recycle our way out of this.

Well said!

I get it. I'll do my small amount, but in reality on a world built on growth, wars, defence and all the rest I'm not going to give up my epic holidays to stay at home, whilst there is zero way any of the big players that need to step up will do anything. I've only got one child, so by default I'm a chunk better for my footprint than most others with more kids anyway.

In reality, we can't change it, only the big countries can change it, with joined up leadership, it's not going to happen. Our bills are already higher than a lot of other places thanks to our drive for net zero. And I don't think us as a country can make that much of a difference on a global scale. I think it's gone to far now and in future (and I don't think too far away, maybe one generation if we're lucky), there will be epic wars over resources and land grabs etc. I saw something that said to even stand still places like India would have to stop striving for the same standard of living as the west. That's before the west even dialled back their lifestyles at all.
I'm going to take my daughter and enjoy life right now and keep enjoying my twice a year big holidays.

YANBU!

But we HAVE been getting on with it for decades.

Ok maybe but fast enough but you must have seen how we now have green technology, we have slashed the per capita carbon consumption to pre1860 levels when no one even had electricity, we have implemented and enforced energy efficiency, emissions limits, anti-pollution and recycling. We have cleaned up toxic wastes left by the generations before us- including reversing the hole in the ozone that was a rapidly expanding threat to all plant and animal life in the S Hemisphere. We have the first countries hitting carbon neutral. We in the north have reforested much of the planet compared to 100yrs ago- despite the ongoing destruction of the Amazon and southern forests- it’s been a net gain.

I understand you are frustrated at lack of urgency. We are in the middle of a very long multi-generational push. Various people causing wars are to my mind the biggest issue sabotaging all the climate efforts billions are doing.

Well you did your bit, I started in Greenpeace back in the 1990s. Now I’m old and knackered but I do want Gen Y to pick up the torch and keep the pressure on governments so we do not backslide. We are in real danger of that imho.

Indeed. Case in point - oh look another climate change post on MN.
OP you aren’t saying anything that hasn’t been said a 1000 times before.
Ultimately humans react to imminent danger. Right now immediate concerns are cost of living, AI, what to do with the kids over summer… until there is direct significant impact on people’s day to day quality of life no one will do anything. Right now
its a bit of warm weather, which, despite the few on MN, the majority are enjoying.

Climate change is natural, the earth has been much colder and much warmer at periods on the past. Human impact is speeding the change but it's not clear how much.

Your reply on what can be done lacks substance. The UK is a tiny fraction, we could all become self sufficient and not make a jot of difference.

We do what we can to look after our own environment eg recycling, preserving green spaces, clean air initiatives. Beyond that it's pretty hopeless.

I do wonder what the world will look like in a few hundred years. Some species will flourish, probably more sealife and smaller mammals.

I recycle
I drive an EV
I have a house with a huge amount of insulation
I haven’t flown in 10 years.
I eat less meat.
I try and buy food with less packaging and cook a lot from scratch.

what else do you want me to do?!

China is definitely making inroads

But America seems to be going the other way and it can make me feel very despondent. Even if we pressure our govt to make the right decisions, much bigger economies aren't.

Would be interested to hear what OP thinks we should do to impact this

I'm not complacent, I just genuinely don't see the point.

While there are celebrities jetting around on their private planes everyday, and while there are factories belching out tons of toxins, what is there to be gained by me rinsing my yoghurt pots or walking to the shops in the pissing rain in the middle of winter so I don't use my car?

@Quibble123 I do care, and it keeps me awake at night sometimes thinking about the future, especially while these huge fires are burning and we are in heatwave 4 or whatever it is. I try to do the right things, but it feels so enormous, and increasingly inevitable that we are heading for disaster. I think many people feel - in the face of national, international and corporate behaviours - that nothing they can do makes any difference. Not small or big personal changes, not writing letters, not protesting. No one who can do anything about it is doing anything about it, or not enough.

I used to panic about the climate. Now I'm resigned to our downfall. Sorry if that sounds fatalistic, but there is nothing I can do. If I and my consumption disappeared from the earth tomorrow, the planet would carry on just as before. The only things that will make any real difference are drastic, and we need change on a massive scale, internationally. That's not going to happen.

People have been protesting about this for decades. This has led to law changes which make it harder to protest at the actual targets so we end up with things that feel out of touch and ineffective like throwing colourful cornstarch at Stonehenge or blocking traffic. This puts people off.

I also agree that there is a lot of fatigue around this, some of us have been in this for 40+ years. When you've already been in regular contact with representatives, done as much insulation as possible, added on more environmentally friendly energy systems, don't drive, don't fly, living near and supporting rewilding and development of new forests, having most clothes be second hand, reducing animal products and food miles...being continuously told that I need to do more, that we need to do our bit, that we need to not be complacent about it all can feel like a tiring joke told too many times.

There is also frustration that every solution often has significant issues as well. We can recommend solar panels all we want - I have solar panels, and I'm aware that they will need to replaced, the issues of mining the minerals to do so, and we're not really at a place yet where recycling or repairing them is accessible to most. Similar with heat pumps, a lot of heat pump maintenance companies only want to work on systems they installed, and schemes that have been used to support low income families putting in these systems rarely prioritise a local company who can do maintenance, leaving people struggling and needing to pay significantly more to get in maintained for those who already have gas systems. There are a lot of questions around insuring them - especially the outside component, quite a few companies outright refuse - and there is the issues around the supply lines around these products. They're flogged as part of the solution while the complications they can add get dismissed with the push for people to do more, often the people with the least who are being impacted the most already.

We can rage on all that, but raging can only be sustained for so long, and people need to keep their own wellbeing in mind in their activism or we'll burn out. Rage is not going to get us a sensible long-term plan. It's not the grounds social change really comes through.

We live in a democracy where people can put pressure on their politicians. We also live in an oligarchy where the needle has only budged when enough corporate interests have aligned with those public interests or when those in wealth and power haven't cared and people have cared loudly. Pretending if we just have enough of a public outcry or put enough pressures or enough of us push for green energy, politicians will rally is the same 'we all need to be doing our bit' tired joke.

Yup. If everyone in the UK died tomorrow it would make no perceptible difference to climate change. That's why people don't bother.

Served a lady the other day, hosepipe ban in place, she said, hope it rains soon, fed up of watering plants and filling the paddling pool daily. Everyone I talk to is just back from Spain or going to Spain. Everyone I know who works in an office is flying everywhere and anywhere for meetings and conferences. Neighbour says she could start selling back to temu as she’s so addicted to buying from them … I’m just constantly having to keep my mouth shut/ trying to be diplomatic

Jesus! Another one of these posts 🙄

No, the world isn't dying. No, separating your recyclables isn't going to change anything. Driving an EV and paying congestion charges isn't going to stop the Amazon from being burned to the ground (although, good news, 2026 was the lowest level of deforestation recorded). Remember the oil crisis? The hole in the ozone layer? Ever noticed how the answer to all of this "environmental emergency" rhetoric isn't to stop doing whatever the thing is, it's to tax it, charger for it, bill you for it. And as soon as one "problem" is "solved", they find another one . 🙄. It used to be vehicle emissions, they "solved that one by getting us all to buy expensive EV's. Now it's "tyre wear emissions" 🙄. Having children is the single most damaging thing you can do to the planet. But nobody wants to talk about that.

There are other countries whose emissions absolutely dwarf ours. I honestly don’t see the point of doing anything until
they finally decide to take action.

Having children is the single most damaging thing you can do to the planet. But nobody wants to talk about that.

It is spoken about a lot - frequnetly coming up in survey of younger people as a reason not to have any or have fewer kids. More good news birth rates in UK have been below replacement level for 50 years now.

Most countires in world are now at or below replacement figures. Since 1950, global fertility rates have halved.

World population models suggest the population will peak sooner than previously thought and rapildy decline - when depends on which model is looked at.

Never sure what people want here - peopel to kill the kids they already have - or to stop any chidlrne being born in a world now worried about population decline.

Plus a lot of the models that say this add entire children and predicted grandchild to parents estimated carbon output and assume there will be no declines in carbon outputs due to tech improvements or changes in behavior.

🙄

Well the solution to the ozone layer was actually to stop using CFCs and emitting them into the atmosphere. It was an emergency. And that the whole world ratified the treaty was a triumph of environmental diplomacy.

Of course new problems will arise. It doesn't mean we shouldn't tackle the ones of today.