Flying on holiday is a sin....................does it make you feel guilty

[zippitippitoes]

so says the Bishop of london as the church of England brings forward a plan to encourage everyone to step lighter on the planet

are you justified in flying abroad on holiday?

I agree with georgina on carbon neutral schemes, although they're better than nowt.

anyway in answer to the op, yes I do feel guilty. it's one of the reasons we're coming home soon, in fact.

god, how santimonious will I be then, I wonder? perhaps I should keep quiet about that reason for moving - there are others.

Oh I agree - but neither do I think we should be sitting and getting depressed and fearful and panicked about bringing children into the world. We should get on with what we can do, yes.

But I also think there's big eco-business about being "seen" to be green without it actually making a blind bit of difference except make the "green" businesses an awful lot of money. Encouraging more consumption ... but the right "ecologically friendly" consumption is not the solution, imo.

50 years ago, households were encouraged to make use of every last bit of food. Cheapest ingredients, make stuff last - we were in a war with lots of rationing.

Now we're encouraged to consume consume consume but spend MORE on the best cuts of meat (throw away the icky cheap stuff, no-one wants THAT, you have to have the BEST you know), MUST be organic (flown across the world), MUST be fairtrade, etc, etc... You only have to see how Body Shop marketed stuff (okay, it's more environmentally friendly apparently - but flown across the world? to make luxuries we don't really need? How's THAT helping the environment?). Has Body Shop really helped communities or has it just earned a lot of money for itself?

Going back to the science stuff, there's an interesting article on spiked about climate models Climate change: a model cock-up - I don't agree with all of it, but it does make for interesting reading on how these predictions are reached.

Callisto - really, I am the greenest of most people i know! honest

All, I am saying dear, is that I know I can do more! We all can!
I will am willing to leave in a hut and eat berries, and have no luxuries at all if there is world left for my grandchildren. I am just not naive enough to think that if I go in a hut by myself, that I would save the world....

yes - sometimes I think that bringing back some form of rationing, esp for fuel/leccy is the only solution.

And while I'm mid rant - Solar Panels. Financially, currently they just do not pay for themselves in the lifetime of the unit. They're made with toxic chemicals. Looked at closely, they're not actually that green or helpful when you see how they're manufactured.

On the flip side, if they were put onto every new public building built, would that help? Or would we pillage the planet just a bit more to get all the components needed to cope with the increase in manufacturing?

I don't have an answer. I don't think anything is black and white.

One of the best quotes in that article:

"And the discussion is perverse because it ignores very major problems in the here and now in favour of flagging up some potential medium-term apocalypse. These are not just technical or scientific problems, either. Why is it, in the twenty-first century, that so much of the world lives such a marginal existence that changing weather patterns could prove disastrous for them? That is a political problem that has slipped a long way down the agenda in popular debate."

Blimey Georgina and I thought I was cynical

I do take your point, and I suspect I'd be happier than many to live a carbon neutral life, but I think its better to do something rather than nothing. And showing dh that he can pay three quid to "neutralise" his flight (ok not neutralise it but compensate for it in some way) will make him think about it, and the next person he tells about the scheme, and the next..... He would fly anyway- he may as well give something back to atone- even if in reality he shouldn't be flying at all.

Anyone know anything about home wind energy units. I would like to get one of those on our (flat) roof if possible (we live on the coast, so sea breezes galore).

...but bollocks to that quote georgina.

it's not just about the very poor losing their livlihoods is it? half of norfolk might lose their homes - what, should the govt be saving up to compensate them just in case? but more to the point, I think that wildlife should have some priority.

SP- I think you're right, rationing is the only way if a difference is to be made. I try to be green(ish), and walk to work 9 times out of 10. With rationing I'd walk 10 times out of 10.

Actually am currently editing some research on changing habits to become greener- will report back.

Professional cynic, me

SP: so are we more upset about the people in Norfolk who lost their homes? It's a fairly established fact that it's those living in extreme poverty NOW that will be most hit in the event of catastrophic weather changes.

One needs to only look at recent events in New Orleans or the big tsunami in Asia to see that it was the very poor who suffered by far the most

But they're easier to ignore... if it's happening to white tax payers in Norfolk... NOW it's a problem?!

Flutterbee, I think things need to be done, and urgently. We need to start building reactors now, not tomorrow, not when a consensus is formed by victims of our defective education system, but now.

As for carbon neutratlity, I think it's an amusing and mostly harmless affectation or marketing technique, not a method for addressing these issues.
Trees only buffer CO2, do nothing about CH4 and actually make the effect from water vapour marginally worse. When a tree dies, it's carbon goes directly back into the system, in a rain forest that's quite rapid, this is part of the issue that they typically have thin soils.

Also I'm sad that GeorginA doesn't get the nature of climate models, and as such is in the BBC led majority.
But it is genuinely big problem with the way almost all people think about low probability/high consequence events, they thinkof them as "SciFi" and simply exclude them from their thinking.
A bit of reading on geology will show that that some very large events have ocurred in the Earth's history, many of which make the most lurid preduciton of sharks swimming through the streets as London as reasonable as "maybe it will rain in September".

Of the deeply bad shit, the probability of any given scenario is quite low. But the probability consequences is scarliy high. Try to think of it as hittin g a golf ball. The chances of you hitting any blade of grass is almost zero, but the chances of hitting some blade of grass is high (even if you're as crap at golf as me, and likely to hit trees, other players or sand).

jimjams check your local planning applications to see if anyone in your area has applied for a domestic wind turbine and then contact them to see what info they have..I think they need to be in the ground don't they? so that they don't damage property

no, I mean that poverty AND problems caused by global warming are problems. the latter for many many more reasons than that quote seems to suggest.

and as it goes, global poverty has probably more political momentum as an issue these days than global warming. they should both be very high priority.

Thought I'd seen mini roof ones...... think the ground is out.......

you're probably right then..there have been at least half a dozen applications in this area just thought people who are keen to have one have probably done a fair amount of research and would be enthusiastic to share it

What about the impact that overpopulation has on the enviroment?

I've been curious about this angle, but don't know if there's any hard science out there about the effects.

Anyone? Anyone?

here Mind you I keep reading chunterings about grants becoming available to install this sort of stuff, so may hold on.

I think you are near me zippi? I think the ground ones are huge- we only have a tiny garden...

God know what ds1 would make of a turbine. He would think he had died and gone to heaven.

I would imagine that overpopulation has a direct impact on global warming. Most of the very densly populated cities in asia have horrendous air quality.

at ds

Another reason why I can't have a ground one There's a decorative one down the road from us, he knocks it over every time we go past (trying to stick his head in it).

why is me and DH in a different continent than our families? Is because we can.... I believe 30 years ago, we would have never considered being this far away from the family....

But is that true?? My mother emigrated to Australia when she was 18 on her own- in 1968 - only other family out there was a rather eccentric Aunt of my mum's who, when her DH died, decided to up sticks and move half way round the world!

30yrs ago people were still moving to other countries with their families for the same reason that DH and I moved - political climates/tensions.

RE the change in food - surely a part of that is down to the multicultural country we now live in - Brits living abroad expect to be able to eat 'british' food - likewise foreign nationals living here in the UK like to eat at least some of the food they are used to.

"and fools with different superstitons in places like Bangladesh are going to realise that Darwin and Malthus had a point."

I'm actually shocked by that statement, and consider it to be pretty racist.........

I'm afraid I'm in the 'anti' Nueclear power camp (atm). What I'd like to know is this.

How much carbon would be used in the building of just one plant??

QoQ - My father also emigrated 40 years ago. But he didn't expect to ever see his family again... I actually have only seen my grandparents twice in my life.

Many immigrants will continue to move when life is not possible on their own country.

Me? I moved because I could. Because I could afford to live in a nice place, have a challenging job, and can afford go back and visit family. Didn't menat to say that evrybody else has this choice... but I think with the globalization of the economy there are more an more people moving around the world at a head spinnig rate just because they can....

as an aside..600,000 people are expected to come to the uk when the next two countries join the eu (Romania and Bulgaria)unless work restrictions are placed on them