Guest post: “Climate breakdown will affect us all.”

[MumsnetGuestPosts]

TLDR: The Mothers’ Climate March is on 12 May; Hyde Park corner to Parliament square. Come and join us.

I am not usually the sort of person who organises marches - I’ve never been an activist or a campaigner.

I really, really hate conflict. And asking people to do stuff.

But being a mother has changed me in some quite profound ways. If my kids are threatened, you can bet I’ll be there to protect them. If they need me to advocate for something, I’ll make myself do it; I’ll arrange meetings, write letters and have difficult conversations. In my time, I’ve thrown everything into getting them into good schools or trying to get my DS help for his SEN. And now I’m organising a march with a group of mums called Mothers Rise Up. This time it’s not just for my kids - it’s for everyone’s kids.

I’ve known our kids’ futures are threatened for some time now. For me, this knowledge has mostly manifested itself as an underlying sense of dread, humming in the background alongside a feeling of absolute powerlessness. A desire not to look. I’m talking about the C word.

Climate.

Climate breakdown, more specifically. You may not have heard of the IPCC report (it didn’t get loads of press)  -  it’s a collaborative report commissioned by the UN and worked on by hundreds of climate scientists. These scientists make predictions about how the climate will change and recommendations for what to do about it.

Historically they have always underestimated the speed and severity of climate change. Their most recent report is the first one I’ve read all of. I’d known about climate change - as much as we all know - and knew things were bad, but I hadn’t let myself realise quite how bad.

This report, I believe, is what has inspired the recent protests and documentaries such as the Youth Strike, Extinction Rebellion, and the recent David Attenborough documentary. The narration is in plain language, but it paints an alarming picture of what will happen to the world in our lifetimes if we do not all act quickly.

This is not about polar bears. Without rapid, systemic and far-reaching change there will be serious loss of human life. Climate breakdown will affect us all. Our food supplies, our homes and the other resources that we need to live are all under threat. Rising sea levels, ocean acidification, spreading deserts and natural disasters like forest fires, floods and typhoons will become more and more commonplace. This scenario is on track to happen in my old age, when my children are in their thirties and forties. Their kids, if they have them, will face threats and hardship unlike anything our generation has known.

This will not be solved by individuals diligently separating their recycling. Arresting climate change is possible, but it will require radical, systemic and rapid change.

Our children are already out there on the streets protesting, striking from school and demanding government action, but this mess is not theirs. We wholeheartedly support them, but they are too young to take this burden alone. It should be us who are out there demanding change and protecting them. This is something the current government needs to act on. It’s time for us to sort out this mess.

A group of us have come together to form Mothers Rise Up. On our own, we felt worried and powerless. As a collective, we are not powerless. We are organising. Our first step will be a march to demand government action: The Mothers’ Climate March is on International Mother’s Day, 12th May and will go from Hyde Park Corner to Parliament Square in London.

This guest post is your invitation to join in. To come to the march on Sunday 12th May, to email your MP, to make your change, to find a community that shares your concern over the future of our shared home. You can find us on Facebook or follow us on twitter @MothersRiseUp

Join us! Everyone is welcome. Like Mumsnet, we are powered by mums but we are not only for mums; anyone who cares about the future of our shared home will get a warm welcome. My DD is making cookies for the march so if you spot me and give me the Mumsnet wink I might persuade her to part with one.

This post is also your invitation to chat. I’ll be back in a few days to answer your questions. I also have a personal Mumsnet account @traynorbird where I generally lurk about giggling in AIBU and Classics. I’m happy to have a conversation there too.

First though, I have a question for you. Should there be a climate board on MN where we can form community around this issue? I think there should be.

Catherine will be returning to the guest post on 26/04/2019 to answer some of your questions

[GhostsToMonsoon]

Unfortunately I can't make the march as I'm working, but I'm glad to see it being publicised on Mumsnet.

[Valanice1989]

Nobody wants to talk about there being too many people on the planet.

Bollocks they don’t! It appears on literally every thread re climate change. Pretty quickly.

But in discussions about other topics, it's obvious that people think they're doing the world a favour by having children. Just last week, someone posted about how childless people need to "step up" and start subsidising 52-week childcare so that parents' careers won't be affected in any way by having children. A childless poster pointed out that they already pay taxes towards education and paediatric care despite having no children, but the other poster kept repeating "my kids will be the ones wiping your arse when you're in a nursing home". They honestly seemed to think childless people should be so grateful to those who selflessly children that they should be willing to finance the parents' career in return. It's insane.

We need to get the message out that the population simply cannot increase at the rate it currently is. Before anyone says "but if we all stopped reproducing, humans would go extinct" - yes, that's true. But if people actually stopped to think about whether they could afford children before having them, we wouldn't be having the population crisis we are now.

[Smotheroffive]

When I drive by wheelie bins that are the largest and still stuffed full it horrifies me, the sheer vast quantity

I love the irony of you tutting at people's waste bins while you drive past spewing out fumes and emissions

Do you Silvery the kind of irony that everyone has that complains about anything? Judgement made with no regard to the balance made around how much a car is used? For what journeys? Average mileage? Type of car? Who says it has to be spewing out fumes and emmissions

I think you might have deliberately completely missed the point of my point just so you could post about irony

It was, to be clear, about personal responsibility, about buying unpackaged food, doing what's within your control, now.
That it's a combined effort from every individual and govts.

It's not helpful to try to shut down peoples efforts at making a difference is it, and I don't see much of that where I've happened to be driving.

[CupOhTea]

@Valanice1989

With respect, I think you may be projecting a little.

People having children on its own isn’t actually a problem. This is the... problem, with people hearing the message on overpopulation and slightly misunderstanding / oversimplifying and interpreting that to mean that we should all be sterilised and anyone who has children is a bad guy.

Saying that existing children should not have decent childcare because they shouldn’t exist in the first place due to overpopulation is misinterpreting the message entirely.

If by saying “nobody wants to discuss overpopulation” you actually mean nothing should be done to care for existing children and actually people shouldn’t be allowed to have them full stop, then say so. If many people don’t agree with you then it’s hardly surprising, as basically, you’re wrong 🤷‍♀️.

We are below replacement levels in the uk as it is.

One single, childless person in the west does many times more damage than a person in parts of Africa. So a large family there is better than a single, childless westerner, which implies that lifestyle is a factor as well as population.

We have an ageing population in this country. Perhaps the “problem” (seeing as we are already below replacement levels) is people are living too long, not that people are having too many babies.

The babies we do have, have just as much right to be on the planet as you have. If you take the “there’s no more room on my lifeboat” attitude and beat children off it, (by depriving them of resources that you’d rather have for yourself thanks), so you have more room, that is frankly deplorable.

[Smotheroffive]

The streets are overflowing with cars, and bins rubbish, and the world, resource using people.

AFAIK the population growth rate is slowing?

[Smotheroffive]

It's disgusting that anyone's rubbish ends up killing, and to add insult, in other parts of the world otherwise unblemished by the ravages of selfish resource hungry humanity.

Exclusion: those populations who live without impact other than as any other creature on the planet would. The tribes of the world who are shoved off their ancestral homes, their environment deforested, industrialised to become a contributor to pollution, and told to take on the religion of Christianity, and leave behind their inherent respect of taking from and giving back to, nature.

With our positive ingenuity as a race all can be put to better ways of living. Sadly mostly consumerism is king/queen.

In the UK we have one of the highest turnover of clothes, if not the highest. I have just donated to our local RSPCA, where they are now taking all clothes, for recycling, including bras, useless articles that are torn etc. No need to throw anything in the bin, get it across to the RSPCA shops.

[hilbobaggins]

@ChardonnaysPrettySister So you’re happy to deny people in developing countries access to the kind of efficient energy we in the West can’t live our lives without because - what?? - their contribution to CO2 emissions as a result of fossil fuel usage might result in a hurricane?

This is the kind of thinking that’s made me much more sceptical about the climate change lobby.

[ADropofReality]

Anyone who engages in protests, marches, etc, has immediately lost the argument. If your arguments were right and good, they would stand up on their own merits. You wouldn't have to say "Do what we want or we block Oxford Circus", which is essentially a form of blackmail.

As for those misanthropes arguing there are too many people on the planet, what you're basically arguing for is genocide in the Third World, isn't it? The idea this might affect you in the comfortable west is a no-starter. If you genuinely believed that argument, you'd all being doing away with yourselves as an example to the rest and as the first step of the answer.

[Valanice1989]

People having children on its own isn’t actually a problem. This is the... problem, with people hearing the message on overpopulation and slightly misunderstanding / oversimplifying and interpreting that to mean that we should all be sterilised and anyone who has children is a bad guy.

I never said that - I said that people who have children are not doing the rest of the world a favour. I have children of my own!

Saying that existing children should not have decent childcare because they shouldn’t exist in the first place due to overpopulation is misinterpreting the message entirely.

I didn't say that they shouldn't have decent childcare, I said they shouldn't expect childless people to subsidise childcare for them 52 weeks a year. That's all about the parents' careers, not the children.

If by saying “nobody wants to discuss overpopulation” you actually mean nothing should be done to care for existing children and actually people shouldn’t be allowed to have them full stop, then say so. If many people don’t agree with you then it’s hardly surprising, as basically, you’re wrong 🤷‍♀️.

I didn't say nothing should be done to care for existing children! Again, I said childless people shouldn't be expected to fund 52-week childcare to enable the parents' careers. Have you never read one of those threads on here where parents are horrified to discover that school holidays exist?

And I never said "people shouldn't be allowed to have them full stop"! Did you even read my post? I said people need to think more carefully about whether or not they can afford children.

We are below replacement levels in the uk as it is.

If the worst comes to the worst, I strongly suspect there will be immigrants who are willing to come to the UK.

One single, childless person in the west does many times more damage than a person in parts of Africa. So a large family there is better than a single, childless westerner, which implies that lifestyle is a factor as well as population.

Yes, but it's going to take a long time for people in the UK to change their lifestyle habits so that they have as little impact on the environment as someone in Africa.

We have an ageing population in this country. Perhaps the “problem” (seeing as we are already below replacement levels) is people are living too long, not that people are having too many babies.

It's certainly true that the increased lifespan is having an impact.

The babies we do have, have just as much right to be on the planet as you have. If you take the “there’s no more room on my lifeboat” attitude and beat children off it, (by depriving them of resources that you’d rather have for yourself thanks), so you have more room, that is frankly deplorable.

Where on Earth did I say that? Did you even read my post? I said that people who have children (including myself!) are not doing the world a massive favour, and that childless people should not be expected to provide childcare 52 weeks a year in order to enable the parents to carry on with their careers as before. I'm sorry, but the sense of entitlement some people get after having children is crazy. We need to accept that actually, childless people are doing the world a favour by not adding to an already bulging population.

[hilbobaggins]

people who have children are not doing the rest of the world a favour.

This is such a strange, depressing viewpoint. Somebody’s child invented ways of using energy to make our lives today incredibly easy and comfortable. Somebody’s child will invent a way to cure cancer and / or sort out the overuse of plastics. Humans are ingenious and creative and remarkably good at improving their existences. It’s such a strange modern phenomenon to bemoan the existence of one’s own and everyone else’s children - to go around feeling like nothing more than a walking carbon footprint, worried about how much space you’re taking up. Our lives really are incredibly luxurious if we have time and energy to dwell on how much better everything would be if we weren’t here.

[GhostsToMonsoon]

Anyone who engages in protests, marches, etc, has immediately lost the argument. If your arguments were right and good, they would stand up on their own merits.

Would you have said that about the suffragettes?

[CupOhTea]

Sorry if I misunderstood your post @valanice1989. I think we are mainly on the same page.

However, you were responding to my post from the first page of this thread where I said that overpopulation is indeed discussed all the time on here, (and rightly so). You were saying (I think) that, although it does come up on threads about climate change, it doesn’t appear in general topics of conversation*, such as when people are discussing issues with childcare.

How do you think those conversations should go?

“Childcare costs are prohibitively high for me and it means I have to give up work”

“Shouldn’t have had children then. The world’s overpopulated anyway”



You’re right that people need to be educated to make the right choices for them, but saying that “only those who can afford it should have children” does not sit comfortably with me at all.

We ALL should be having smaller families. Not just those who can’t afford them; which, let’s face it, means poorer people, or those from developing countries.

//www.populationmatters.org is really informative. It’s about empowering and educating people to make the choice to have smaller families, so that all of us can enjoy a decent quality of life.

*it often comes up on threads where people are considering having a larger family. Usually someone will bring it up, which is a good thing I think, as it is worth mentioning.

[DuesToTheDirt]

ADropOfReality, women didn't get the vote till they engaged in civil disobedience. Same with Civil Rights in the US.

Why would we expect politicians to do the right thing just because, well, it's right?

[Smotheroffive]

Balance whilst I hear what you say, its a very real difficulty for working parents to keep working when there's work inflexibility, sex inequality, and overly priced child-care cost s that negate the working with many working despite losing money as the net effect.

It's a bit like saying NHS is only for those that can afford it!

Why should any of us and our hard earned money be taxed to pay for others suffering.

You are talking about denying social policy.

Social policy that does help DC from financially challenged families to still have access to education and positive social experiences and gives them the best opportunity to be their best contributor to society and have the best life they can.

[Smotheroffive]

Valanice ^ (not Balance )

[Smotheroffive]

Size of family arguments?!?!

Families can live with far less impact on others and more economically, than individuals.

I do get that often larger families, or any new parents cannot predict fully the actual costs involved and the reality of managing to work and have DC and have the ability to balance that well,or to be able to continue to afford it. But more together do live cheaper than individuals due partly to economies of scale but also that they share the hearing across many, the cooking on a larger scale is more effective, economically.

Also, many families break up and can no longer manage alone. A lot of the supporting is around genuine strife,not because some decide to just blithely procreate without regard to the lives they produce.

I don't believe that stating concern around overcrowding, equates to ethnic cleansing of some sort! That is the extreme view not the initial concern.

[Cranb0rne]

It's pretty obvious we are overpopulated. Everywhere you look, developers are concreting over the countryside and replacing it with overpriced housing estates. Each house brings two or more extra cars spewing out emissions and clogging already gridlocked roads. Public transport is totally inadequate over a lot of the country, buses being scrapped left, right and centre. Something definitely has to change.

[FriarTuck]

If the only choice when standing on bridge with no shade protesting is to take a drink from a plastic bottle or dehydrate, then you have to drink from plastic.
Yes but the problem is that they use their plastic bottles once and then dump them on the pavement and bugger off home. They don't even try recycling let alone reusing. And how many are driving their kids the short distance to school instead of walking?

[Smotheroffive]

It's pretty obvious we are overpopulated

Yes, but short of killing people what do you propose, as there are less young than old? We need young to keeping the country running (and support the old)!

[KateXland]

Thanks ByGrabtharsHammarWhatASaving for the feminism and climate change thread link, might become my new safe space!

Reading through these comments with interest.
What jumps out at me is the misunderstanding that we are at a point where personal change will do anything. XR talk about getting 3.5% of population engaged with the issue in order to achieve momentum for change. Let's be more optimistic and assume that 10% of the whole UK population, no let's go all out and say 10% of the world population, make huge personal changes to reduce their carbon footprint. No car, no flying, no fossil fuels, no meat/dairy.
It''s not going to be enough is it? Not if the other 90% carry on regardless.

And that's the reality. Change is hard; justifications get made- great post about this on that other thread!

We need to be made to change.
I saw the attached diagram on treehugger.
(www.treehugger.com/bikes/what-hierarchy-controls-and-what-does-it-have-do-bikes.html)

Think about it in relation to climate change.
Those of us who are able (financially, time-wise, education (broadly and on climate etc) have done the PPE and the behaviour change. A bit. But we need to remove and replace the hazard.

So the BIG question... HOW?
XR are about getting the politicians in Westminster to listen. I salute this. And petition them, write, apply pressure.

We can also try our local councils. Check out this list of local councils who have declared a Climate Emergency already (nb I don't think the list is up to date).
Find your council.
If it's not declared an Emergency, contact your councillors- easy to find out who and how via council website and ask them why not.
If it has, contact your councillor and ask them how they intend to make this a substantial decision; where's the action plan; how is it going? And if they say they have turned off the lights in the town hall at night tell them they have MISSED THE POINT.

And breathe.
Sorry that turned into a huge post.
Comments!

[64632K]

It worries me when I look around the area that I live and remember what it looked like 10 years ago, all trees gone, driveways concreted over, hedges removed, plants and flowers gone. We live in a village that looks more like a concrete jungle. Hedges and trees help to clean the air we breath not to mention soak up rainwater.

[ByGrabtharsHammarWhatASaving]

A good example of what we're up against:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-48038130

"The fast food giant [McDonalds] is switching from plastic to paper straws at their 1,361 restaurants after customer pressure. An online petition calling for a return to plastic straws has so far garnered more than 35,000 signatures."

Comments include "I'm all for saving the turtles but..."

If people can't even give up plastic straws, they ain't going to go vegan any time soon!

[Smotheroffive]

I've yet to see how eating highly processed food and synthesised additives is healthy.

[ByGrabtharsHammarWhatASaving]

You mean like meat and dairy substitutes? I agree, eating loads of quorn and stuff every day isn't healthy, but you don't have to eat that to be vegan. I eat quorn maybe once a week, otherwise I just eat veg. All the cheese subs are gross so I don't eat them. I don't have a highly processed diet.

[ByGrabtharsHammarWhatASaving]

I'm not sure everyone needs to go vegan anyway, though cutting down on meat (esp. beef and lamb) and dairy always features high in ways individuals can have an impact. But I suspect even that is too much if you're mad about McD stopping plastic straws.