Should MN support Mothers Rise Up's call for urgent climate action? Tell MNHQ what you think

[NiamhMumsnet]

Hello all.

Mothers Rise Up have been in touch asking if we would like to sign their open letter calling on Prime Minister Boris Johnson to take urgent climate action.

The letter will highlight the government's continued investment in oil and gas projects around the globe and its plans to build yet more polluting roads and runways. It will also call for a massive expansion in clean energy and green transport across the UK.

A similar letter was pulled together last year - it was featured in the Guardian and helped draw attention to their call for climate action and to engage parents across the UK.

The letter will be published ahead of a Mother's Day march to Downing Street - you can find more details about this march on their website.

We see a lot of threads on Mumsnet discussing the climate crisis - so do please let us know what you think.

Thanks
MNHQ

Yes, definitely!

Yes, please do

Yes

No politicising climate change is already out of hand

No. You're basically saying to people who don't agree they dont belong on this website. I'm fed up of every portion of my life being endlessly bloody politicised.

We won't solve the problem without government support and intervention, which the government will only do if they know it's important to people.

People who think climate change is just a political position don't understand what we are facing.

Yes, please do. We are in an increasingly alarming situation and the vast majority of humanity is still behaving as if the alarm is ‘in the future’. In other words we are still in denial. The only solutions to climate change are mass behaviour change globally (individuals, corporations, nations, social groups etc). This can only be achieved by our ‘leaders’ actually showing leadership, something they seem lamentably ill-equipped to do, not to speak of reluctant. Any pressure put upon them is a good thing. Mumsnet doesn’t actually represent anyone except itself, but if it chooses to represent a proportion of its users it doesn’t have to justify itself to another proportion that disagree, although again, it can choose to do so.
To not act on climate change is simply evidence of collective insanity. We may indeed be collectively insane. To care more about the freedom to drive a car and get on a plane for the next few years than to have an actual habitable planet long-term – madness. That simply means it’s then incumbent on the less insane to do what they can.

Disclosure – fifty years an activist (mostly feminism), aware of climate change since the 1970s, married to a climate scientist.

We have choices. To do nothing is to CHOOSE human disaster. As is now becoming clear I hope?

@NiamhMumsnet can you take this off the climate change board and pin it to get people’s attention? It’s a pain in the arse that people are choosing not to engage with the problem – the thing that unchecked is going to kill not only them but their children and grandchildren (if their children even manage to have grandchildren). And yet the coronavirus threads drone on and on… I’m not uninterested in coronavirus, by the way, but the difference in numbers engaging is staggering. Given the floods, Australia, etc, i.e. that it is happening now just like coronavirus is. Thank you.

Are we allowed to say that only women become mothers?

Until @MNHQ allow women to speak freely about issues we face as women, I don't see why we should do survey/signing work for you!?

You evidently have strong feminist views, Catting, may I suggest that climate change is a considerable feminist issue that will disproportionately affected women globally and one worth campaigning about.

Yes of course! Why would you not???

I don't care either way. Their website makes me cringe but I won't be personally slighted or feel involved if you do.

Yes. The effects of climate change will disproportionately affect women and children. It's governments who must take the biggest and most sweeping actions.

Conservation and environmental protection is something that should never have become politicised. Every government, no matter their political persuasion, must be pressured to act. We only have one planet and actions now will make a permanent difference.

Just today JP morgan published a report forecasting human casualties if action isn't taken now: www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/02/21/jp-morgan-warns-end-human-life-leaked-climate-report/

Yes

Absolutely

Yes

Yes.

Yes. To me climate change transcends every other issue that we currently face. There is no point in arguing about anything else if we don't have a planet left to live on!

Yes, please do.

Yes, definitely.

Yes.

Yes, absolutely.

If we only have 11 or 12 years to turn this around then we are already fucked.

The letter won't do any harm if it's the same as the one in the Guardian, although do check the exact wording and make sure you understand it before signing - ask the Labour leadership candidates why this is important!

Really though, if they sent this letter last year and nothing happened, I don't understand why they think it will work this year. Have they added in 'pretty please' or decorated the edges with lovely bright children's hand prints?

They seem to have strong links with XR and plug Greta Thunberg a lot which I feel uneasy about. Also not keen on the way they use children in their protests (this always makes me uneasy whatever the cause). There's a picture on their website of a row of children holding hands, all wearing t-shirts that say '11 years'. Whether the 11 years thing is accurate or not, I don't think it's good for children's mental health to be putting these sorts of messages on them (literally in this case) that are likely to provoke anxiety and despair.

Still, it looks like a nice day out and we're all fucked anyway, so meh.