To despair about how little people, the media and politicians seem to care about the environment.

[bogwobbit]

Particularly in view of this, which surprise, surprise didn't even make it onto the front page of the BBC News website.
Don't people care about what kind of hellworld they're leaving to their children. Or are they too busy watching X Factor. Or do they all just think it's one big con because a friend of a friend who's high up in the USA told them so, although about 99% of serious scientists say otherwise.
I know there's another thread about this - and tbh that made me despair too - but I was going to post this anyway.
I feel so strongly about it and hardly anyone else seems to give a s**t. I don't understand it.

Maybe we've all got our own day to day worries to contend with.

Jeez yes, I know we have and I've got mine too. But I just don't understand how little we all seem to care. I really just don't get it.

People don't care (including me, BTW) because its is too far in the future and too uncertain. Even that article you linked to said there are several possible scenarios.

Also? The planet has been here for millions of years. It will be here for millions more. If we kill off the human race? The planet couldn't care less.

Cold? Heartless? Anti-human? Perhaps.

But you'll never get most people to care. Hell, most people I know only recycle (including myself) because its considered anti-social not to.

I do, however, prefer reusable shopping bags. But that's only because they have long handles that sling over my shoulders rather than having to carry them in my hands as I don't have a car and walk/take the bus everywhere.

And now feel free to flame away. I have a horrid cold and am off to bed so I won't see it!

Not all people...

I walked to work this morning through heaps of litter and rubbish - plastic bottles, empty paint tins, fast food wrappers, bits of old car, you name it. There are rats scuttling through people's front "gardens" in broad daylight, and you have to dodge gobs of spittle and worse all over the pavements. The council have issued every house in the neighbourhood with brand new bins - 3 different colours for each home. People just don't give a toss. It is grim.

This is the generation that should care about the planet.

I've had some other stuff on to be honest...

at 3littlefrogs route to work. Do you suppose it's worth trying to organise a residents/locals clear up one weekend day?

You can't make people care by preaching at them and getting pissed off because they don't care.

What I don't like is people treating it all as scientific fact, shouting down anyone who has an opposing view. All science is relative and the answer changes depending on who's paying for the reasearch.

i don't really care ....

YANBU

The climate change issue is a bit of a red herring; there are environmental problems that are staring us in the face now (rather than in the future) that we don't do anything about.

Many people worldwide do care about the environment, but there is a mismatch between the people who hold power and the people who actually work with the environment.

Most people in the developed world don't care because they don't do most of the essential work, that keeps them alive, for themselves. They don't grow their own food crops, or get their own water, or irrigate or drain their own land, keep their own animals or grow the materials for their own clothes. People are utterly divorced from what keeps them alive, so they can turn their backs on the environmental problems and someone else, somewhere else, pays the price.

We are rich enough to have other problems to think about; none of us are going to starve in the immediate future.

poor countries are responsible for most of the damage anyway....not sure what i can do about people in India ruining the planet...

Little people care about the environment?

So why is Mars heating up too ? Are those little Martians becoming too consumeristic ?

Daftpunk you have it the wrong way round there.
Europe and the US consume far more energy and resources per capita, and produce far more pollution and CO2. We also have far bigger capacity to do something about it.

So some poor bugger in Bangladesh might have the right to make that comment about us next time they are flooded out, or has the land their family and livelihood depend on washed away, not the other way round.

But oh I forgot, you don't care.

last year developed countries were responsible for 46% of global emmisions, with developing countries responsible for 54%...

I resent the scare-tactics used with young children wrt global warming.

It's become the bogeyman... one little girl I know became terrified of her and her family dying as the world came to an end because she had been taught at school that this would happen if we didn't 'do something'

But developed countries represent more of the world's population and much of their carbon and water footprints are caused by them producing goods that will be consumed by us, not them.

What goes on in India may be damaging the planet, but it is not due to the consumption level of the Indian people.

I agree tethersend. And Sputniks prickly post is the kind of thing that puts me totally off any environmental message. It's like you can't have, or not allowed, an opposing view, so what's the point in thinking about it or debating it cos you'll just get a gobfull and be told what you should be thinking. No ta.

it always seems like it is little people who know most about 'green' ishoos. at least my DCs are much more aware than i am.

They are indoctrinated at school...

Agentzigzags, will you tell us then what the opposing view is, not on climate change, but on treatment of the environment in general? Are you arguing that it doesn't really matter that we are not responding to environmental issues, or are you saying that there aren't really any environmental issues?

I can understand that extinction may be seen as a non-issue, when it doesn't have an impact on humans, but I don't know what the argument is on other issues that are risky to humans in the environment.

MillyR, It's not that we shouldn't be concerned about the effect we have on the environment, it's about viewing all aspects of scientific belief. As some scientists can show, we aren't yet out of the last Ice Age as we still have polar ice caps.
Our planet has cycled through stages of drought and almost total coverage of snow/ice.
If we investigate any scientific view, there will always be an opposing view to discredit it, therefore IMHO, we be careful, but not let the paranoia of destruction rule our lives.

Apparently mARS is heating up faster than earth and so is somewhere else (pluto ??)

Bit OT but what happened about that giant Meteor that was going to collide with the earth , is it still coming ?