Climate Change - Are you Concerned?

[LillyPink]

I have just read the news online about confusion regarding Britains target on capping damaging emmissions.

Its not a subject that I think about much to be honest, but I have realised I know very little about a very important issue.

So, in simple terms (I'm not exactly scientific!!) Do you think that climate change etc, is something we should be panicking about?? Know it is a concern for the world and am aware I sound niave, but how worried should the public be?

Yes, I'm concerned about the pollutants we put into our environment, but firstly because of the damage to our health.

I hate the idea that we burn oil as fuel, it has taken millions and millions of years for the earth to make this stuff and we have no respect for that.

What do I do about it? Recycle as much as possible, buy local produce. Think twice before I get in the car. What else can I do?

yes.

What does the future hold then? How long are talking about before things get badly wrong? I watched a programme ages ago about global dimmimg that worried me a bit but I can't remeber the details. There really isn't much a normal person can do though is there. Its all down to the government and big companies.

Lilypink - that's how I feel about it as well. We need our cars and transport, that is the way life is today, but we are dependant on the car companies to provide us with alternatives to oil fueled cars, which they are doing very, but only very slowly because it is not economically viable for them.

I think as well that Europe is a small polluter compared to the US, China and India. We need the support of them to make real changes to the way we live.

Lillypink - every little bit helps. Things like energy saving light bulbs and the like don't seem like a big contribution, but if everyone swapped to them then the impact would be substantial. Households account for more of the emmissions and energy wastage than any other sector.

For more info \link{/www.sus-uk.com\click here}

I have just found this thread which may interest you

\link{http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk?topicid=9&threadid=158986&stamp=060328092729\green discussion}

thanks for the links will read them.

Yes but feel helpless about how much I can really do sometimes. Lot in today's Indie (again!) - like Joan Bakewell's idea of a huge tax on those who keep sending junk mail. Recognise lots of flying is a huge problem but am not keen on teh rich declaring the end on cheap flights.

I think it is the biggest issue facing the world at the moment - and one that the world's governments are doing b*gger all about, and which most people know next to nothing about.

Normal people could minismise their energy and materials consumption, lobby government and big organisations (eg supermarkets) to minimise things like packaging, and use local produce. Government could tax air travel, and imported food to encourage local production.

Lots of things we could be doing - but don't yet see the importance of it.

Tax on aviation fuel would have to be by international agreement though, the first country to do it would lose out - less flights there since too costly to re-fuel.

Yes very concerned. mawbroon I cannot get your link to work....?

Climate change is the single most important issue facing the human race since the last ice-age. Makes me bloody angry when people say 'Nothing I can do, it's down to the government'. Well, you can turn your central heating down to 18 degrees, walk to school not drive, take one less holiday abroad every year, insulate your house properly. I could go on. Take some responsibility for fgs.

Tax on aviation fuel would have to be by international agreement though, the first country to do it would lose out

yes - but someone has to start it. Someone has to point out that aviation fuel is an increasingly large part of the picture.

And someone has to convince the Chinese that it is in their interests to make sure they develop in a responsible way - not the way they are now.

We are hardly in a position to lecture the Chinese though, are we?

Quite FM. Who is going to be this someone who tells them they can't have a share of teh wealth that teh West has enjoyed?

Callisto, I dont' think anyone is saying that there is nothing we can do, but the feeling is that we are to a large extent powerless and the big impact can only come when changes come from government which means that the corporates would have to agree. The small things I do still leave me feeling powerless and as if I am not having an impact especially when I see most people around me are getting lazier with recycling, drive even more waste even more, buy food that have been imported from the otherside of the world without a thought....etc

Has anyone done the cavity wall insulation thing? Do you have to do it through your energy supplier?

Did anyone hear John Humphries grilling (I think it was) Margaret Beckett about aviation and climate change this morning? He was brilliant, she was squiming and had absolutely no answer for the fact that aviation will DOUBLE by 2020, co2 is increasing etc - same old stuff about international agreements.

Was fantasitc wasn't it - and there was a great moment when she started to go "ohhh" in a really irritated way, as if she was about to start to say "ohhhh for goodnes sake"!!

I love JH, wish I'd caught the whole interview.

\link{http://www.sus-uk.com/\try again!}

Sorry, should have tried it first!!

Yes. My new year's resolution, apart from getting ds to wash his hands before meals, was to go on a survival skills course. Because I do think it's quite likely that in my lifetime the fabric of life as we know it will alter completely and we will be fighting for scraps of rotten landfill newspaper to chew in the streets.

I got slightly less stressed about it when, looking at the 'hockey stick' of global temperatures, it's clear that the rot set in in 1850 when industrialisation really started to spread. Still terrible but it didn't feel quite so personlly MY fault IYKWIM.

You can only do what you can do - In theory I have given up flying but don't know what i will do when temptation strikes.

What's frustrating is how wasteful life is compared to our own parents' lives. who was that idiot in the late 80s who tampered with or claimed to tamper with a bottle of baby food, since when use of packaging has rocketed by some ridiculous figures.

but so much packaging is a waste. for example - why package 4 already packaged single yogurts in a box. thinking about it its already wasteful to buy single yogurts, it uses much more packaging.

2 good things they do here in Switzerland - you pay for your rubbish by volume, so if you buy things over packaged in a supermarket you take off hte extra packaging and leave it there so they have to get rid of it, this has encouraged them not to over packag things.

Also we pay for bags in the supermarket, they are paper so you reuse them until they fall to pieces. clothbags are better I know, but the paper reuseables are better that the Tesco's plastic non-biodegradable ones.....

acnebride - ar you taking the p!ss? It will only get to that in our lifetime if there is a war or national disaster . If you read Bill Bryson's 'A short history of nearly everything' you can believe that a natural disaster is waiting to happen any second.

not taking the piss leogaela, and am not a scientist. but it's what I thihk, based on reading and not understanding any of the New Scientist every week