Climate change: has anyone actually said what life would have to look like to prevent catastrophic warming?

[workwoes123]

I’ve been reading articles about the very gloomy, completely ignored, most recent IPCCC report.

What I can’t find is anything saying what daily life would look like if we adopted the measures that are necessary to prevent catastrophic warming? Like, in the UK, if we were to do what’s necessary:

how would we Heat our homes?
What kinds of homes could we build?
How would we travel / what transport could we have?
What would we eat?
What industries would still operate?

The reports all talk about the need to move away from fossil fuel use. What I can’t find is anything telling me what my life will look like if / when we do this?

I know people make what they think are big changes (eating veggie, holidays in the U.K., bamboo toothbrushes etc) but I suspect all these personal lifestyle changes add up to bugger all on a global scale and that the actual impacts on our lifestyles - however modest we think our lifestyles currently are - would be massive and negative (and that’s why no-one’s talking about this aspect of it). Am I right?

@themonkeysnuts as I put in my post it will come from a massive increase in offshore wind, particularly floating offshore wind. Other countries will use hydro, geo or solar as appropriate. Excess electricity production will be diverted to hydrogen generation via electrolysis. Hydrogen can then be used directly as a fuel or combined with atmospheric CO2 to basic hydrocarbons.

Do you have personal experience of EVs or are you just making claims based on hearsay?

Yeah we won't make the changes. We definitely won't so no idea why people keep talking like we might. There are too many people. We will keep on as we are until we are unsustainable and then a lot of us will die. Not us who are wealthy though, so that is most of us in the UK. Huge parts of the world will be uninhabitable so those populations will die out. Or try to relocate but affluent countries won't let them in. Population is already decreasing in affluent countries and that will continue, maybe with a bit of added euthanasia and forced sterilisation. Happy days. Humans do not have the power or will to change this by building wind farms or eating veg.

Well maybe it won't be an issue as we're currently moving towards a period of potential war so that might get us before the climate does. Either way, war isn't great for the climate so we might need to now start looking at what we can do to convince great powers that they won't have anything to rule over if they don't change their methods

I'm afraid it will affect us here eventually. Parts of the UK will be under water, and also we'll run out of food, as crops will fail. The future is very very bleak, if we don't act now. It's very depressing.
Of course it'll be far worse, and sooner (already happening) for people in the global south.
Humans eh, what a greedy self-destructive species we are 😔

@workwoes123 to answer the question Climate change: has anyone actually said what life would have to look like to prevent catastrophic warming? an awful lot better than if we don't prevent catastrophic warming.

Good post with info

I think we will adapt to this

We need a more sensible government though.the £130 billion Truss is pledging to energy companies could have been used to invest in wind farms that would power 10 million homes for 30 years!

@CherryGenoa there are already fully funded projects to increase offshore wind by 500% by the end of the decade. Developing plans for floating wind could add the same again.

It's massively complicated, what we actually need is more STEM qualified engineers and technicians.

The plans are there for renewables but it is years away from fully supplying UK energy needs, unfortunately we are not in a position to flip a switch to renewables and the cost of energy crisis is here today.

Listening to radio we are second worst population after the USA for single use plastic.
All those take always, yoghurts, even most fruit and veg .... W H Y don't we buy unpackaged veg, why don't the dairy manufacturers find an alternative to plastic tubs.

W H Y don't we buy unpackaged veg
It's not even available a lot of the time. I do bring my own bags for loose veg, but rarely get to use them.

A few points:

I'd double check the fact that the UK is the world's 2nd largest user of single use virgin plastics.

Single use plastics are only a major issue if they are not recycled and in this respect the UK is pretty good.

Plastics aren't, per se, bad. It's what we do with them.

Plastics have almost zero effect on climate change. Don't conflate environmental damage with climate change, one is a subset of the other.

Personally, I believe that any changes that we make, no matter how big or small, will have a positive impact on the environment. And if we took collective action together our impact could be huge! For example, by going veggie one day a week you can save 2 kilos of carbon from entering our atmosphere and taking public transport instead of driving to your destinations once a week, saves an average of 7.3 kilos of carbon. If you made these 2 small changes for a whole year, you are preventing over 480 kilos of carbon from entering our atmosphere. This can help slow global warming by releasing less greenhouse gases. Imagine the impact a family of 4 could have if they made these small changes to their lifestyle?

I have started using the Nudj app to make small changes in my everyday life and track my carbon impact at the same time. They give you over 50 challenges that you can complete which has helped me feel like I am making a difference! I have already saved 934 kilos of carbon in the past few months.

I hope this helps!

Zero Carbon Britain has modelled how we can make the changes needed:

cat.org.uk/info-resources/zero-carbon-britain/research-reports/zero-carbon-britain-rising-to-the-climate-emergency/

The problem for me with using public transport is the length of time it would add to my commute. I can drive to work in 20 minutes, public transport would take me over an hour. I'm not spending three times as long commuting. It's a nice idea if you've got good public transport links. I can get to London faster than I can get 4 miles down the road!

Same here, Pink. Public transport where I am is woeful and I need to carry heavy tools as well. Even if public transport got me as close as possible, I'd still end up walking a couple of miles on roads with fast traffic and no pavement, while carrying tools.

And that’s why small individual gestures will not work, when they aren’t made as part of a much bigger cultural and social shift. Ie it’s the difference between:

• Tell people to stop using cars AND create a reliable, available, workable, practicable, useful and free public transport system that’s available to all ✅

• Tell people to stop using cars and just suck up the inconvenience, cost and sheer impracticality off using existing public transport because that’s the ‘sacrifice’ they need to make if they are dedicated enough ❌

It’s really important to make individual lifestyle changes, not because it has any significant impact on climate change (it doesn’t) but because it normalises the behaviours we will need to adopt at a societal level to actually have an impact. It demonstrates that it’s possible to not eat meat, to stay home during holidays, to cycle / bus to work, to use washable sanpro, to live in a small flat without a garden, to not buy every gadget going, to make do with the slightly tatty old kitchen, to west second hand clothes, to consume less overall - and still have a nice, fulfilling, pleasant life. That’s the value of individual lifestyle changes.

It's all very well to say what we in the UK will do, but while China, the US and India do nothing to improve things (and just keep increasing their output) it's fairly meaningless on a global scale. We have 3 coal power stations, China has 1100.

Sorry, that sounds like a miserable life to me.

But our ‘happy’ lifestyle is not sustainable.
It has been enabled and propped up by access to cheap fossil fuels for decades. These are no longer an option. How can we address that?

So how does living in 'a small flat without a garden' help? I do get some of it, although I won't necessarily be doing it. There's got to be a compromise, not living in misery.

I’m not sure why gardens are so bad. I feel grateful for mine, and rely on it and would choose other changes over that

Same here. I've got a small garden but would hate to live in a flat without one again. If I'm supposed to stay at home for holidays I need some outdoor space!

it’s vastly more efficient to provide services and resources to high density communities than to spread out suburbs. Less need for individual provision, much more efficient collective provision. If 1000 people live within 5 min walk of the local school, no one needs to drive. Ditto a doctor, or any other service. Ditto parks and play areas too actually: a park can be provided for 100 kids to play in, rather than 100 houses with gardens spreading out.

I’m playing devils advocate here. We’ve got so used to living very Individual lives, living collectively / sharing space, resources, collectively provided services feels like a step back. But individual lives are hugely resource intensive.