What can we do about climate change?

[georgarina]

I mean who to vote for, who to speak to??

I really feel the need to do all I can.

Relatives in California are on rationed water allowances and that will be coming here soon. Meanwhile everyone I know just avoids the issue or says "the only thing that will happen is some nicer weather."

It's so scary.

Stop buying shit we don't need.

Stop replacing phones every 2 years

Stop buying clothes for fashion that you barely wear (or buy vintage)

Stop buying plastic crap for kids.

Stop buying new furniture when the old stuff is fine

The factories in China will keep making it if you keep buying it.

We don't all need to visit everywhere in the world. Limit travel.

'Get an electric car' is simple-minded. They are too expensive for many people and it doesn't take account of the manufacturing costs resulting 8n energy use and waste. Someone running an old petrol car may be doing more for the environment.

@stuntbubbles

I don’t think behaviour change at scale at speed is possible without legislation – it needs legislation the way smoking inside needed to be banned, and then legislation supported with choices and financing.

Legislation only works when the majority of the population agrees with it. Smoking inside could only be made illegal once the majority of the population didn't smoke - it couldn't have become law a few decades earlier when nearly everyone smoked! So it needed persuasion and education for a few decades to get the number of smokers low enough so that laws could be passed.

So with, say, air travel, you'd need to get the travelling public on board, already flying less and not as reliant on air travel, before you can even start thinking about limiting number of flights/air miles etc.

With car use, the public (car users) won't be on board with restrictions/bans until there are realistic alternatives for travel and travel in general is reduced (i.e. more home working). No one will vote to ban cars in a town centre if they don't have a reliable/affordable/regular public transport alternative.

Turkeys don't vote for christmas and the voting population won't vote for politicians/parties who are going to introduce laws that adversely affect them, however well intentioned. The key is education and alternatives.

Stop buying tat from China less a market for it the less they'll make it.

It would be useful if as well as country of origin, produce had a flag to show if had been 1. hot house grown or 2. air freighted, as both really increase the carbon footprint.
Food that is grown in the open and transported by ship is generally lower carbon even if it's from a long way away e.g. bananas.
UK produce from a heated greenhouse isn't low carbon.
Local and seasonal produce is usually low carbon but that would really limit what is on the supermarket shelves when we have got used to seeing almost any fruit/veg in any month of the year.

I don’t think there’s anything we can do individually.
The main problem is big corporations and the 1% who gain massively from capitalism.
The only way I can see the masses making a difference is by going back to more sustainable living, staying local, eating local, not buying everything, stopping the reliance on products that make billionaires richer.

I'm sorry but this is just ridiculous.
You all know the main culprits.
Burning fossil fuels, cutting down forests. Until they are tackled, which recent COP27 conference failed to address, most of @Phrenologistsfinger list, while admirable is just totally inconsequential.

My DH keeps telling me it's media hysteria. My horse nearly had to be evacuated last night because the land all around our yard was on fire. Media hysteria my backside. How can people be so blind?

To the people saying what's the point with the likes of China, it won't make a difference. I think that's a defeatest attitude. Even if I as one individual can make a tiny difference that's better than nothing. And if every single person in the UK made tiny changes it would add up to a lot. We need to be setting an example to others, not just giving up and blaming another country. I think a lot of the time it is lazyness - people don't want to change their ways to help the environment but rather than admit that they say "well China needs to do something first".
And, looking after the environment here in your own back garden can have many positive effects for the local area like increasing biodiversity, managing water, reducing litter and air pollution. It's not just about global warming and what China is doing, I care about what people here are doing.

I think people need to make personal changes where they can because the big changes will be coming, and they will come quicker if it's clear that's what voters/consumers demand.

The chance of the current government doing that is next to nothing but the next GE should be fought on climate change, stabilising the economy and addressing poverty (which will make it possible for people to get behind the changes needed).

Someone needs to be brave enough to make really unpopular decisions about planning, housebuilding, food and farming, oil and gas, construction and transport, for example and not be shouted down by corporations and lobby groups.

* Someone needs to be brave enough to make really unpopular decisions about planning, housebuilding, food and farming, oil and gas, construction and transport, for example and not be shouted down by corporations and lobby groups.*

Exactly @NotMeNoNo

But the climate emergency has not even been mentioned by the PM candidates for example. And how many of us even voted Green in the last election? (850,000 google says [https://greenworld.org.uk/article/2019-general-election-greens-increase-vote-share-60-cent] )

And the biggest carbon emmitter in the world is NOT China - it's the USA (then China, Russia, India & Brazil) UK is 9th.

There are two main problems. Firstly there are too many people in the world. Secondly, a lot of those people consume too many resources (fuel, food, products etc). We can't do much about the population size apart from stop reproducing. But, we can reduce how much we consume. I'm currently cleaning out a deceased relatives house and the amount of stuff is unbelievable. Clothes, ornaments, kitchenware, toiletries etc. When you see it all at once it is shocking, and that's from one person living in an average house. Everyone needs to stop buying unnecessary crap and learn to live a simpler life. Just look at how much stuff is bought for weddings, birthdays, Christmas, bloody gender reveal parties! It's so wasteful. And recycling is only part of the solution, we have to stop making and buying stuff in the first place. But people care more about "living their best life" and their social media image than the environment. Sorry, rant over!

''@frazzledmess ·We need to reverse economic & population growth.

how do you stop people living longer?''

Come on...''growth'' does not mean increase in lifespan, it means increase in the number of people being born...

@Destinyisall25

Really good points there.
SociL
Media fuels the Must have
The amount of posts I see of birthdays and Xmas gifts piled high. Each kid must have 20 gifts each.

Reversing population growth in the short term wouldn't just require women to have fewer than two babies. Because of the momentum of previous population growth there are far more women in the world in their fertile years then there are older citizens reaching the end of their lives, and that's what's going to drive population growth until 2050, unless those women reduced their fertility drastically to around one: which would produce other problems in the future.

Population will peak and then slowly decline if current trends continue, but we're realistically not going to be able to do anything to stop it growing in the short term unless something terrible happens.

Yes this! And as someone else has mentioned hot housing and trying to grow things that don't suit our climate and/or out of season are terrible for the environment. Unfortunately it's not as simple as buying local if those local things are animal products or intensively farmed plants, whether that be with chemicals and fertilisers that wash off into the rivers and damage the ecosystem, or force grown in heavily watered and heated greenhouses.

Kit malt house said yesterday we have to adapt to climate change - no talk of trying to stop it .2 candidates for PM don't appear interested, in fact Truss doesn't want the green initiative.we all need to do our bit however small at home but also need to sign petitions, ( look at petition.org) lobby by emailing local and government MPs and councils -we need to use our power collectively on mumsnet and educate others, friends,relatives . I dk if there are any marches planned.i'm talking about peaceful protest not disruptive.otherwise what future are we creating for our kids ?

Also do you hat on the main boards here and in other social media so that excessive consumerism is as socially unacceptable as drink driving and smoking near children

Do that.

FFS fat fingers

I’ll join you. I feel petrified and powerless and that small personal actions make no difference in the face of global forces. And our politicians couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery, let along co-ordinate the necessary global action this will need.

Blaming China is nonsense. China's TOTAL emissions are higher than most countries because they have such an enormous population. So what? Are you saying the UK is terrible for not having emissions as low as Lichenstein's?

Per capita, which is what actually means something, China's emissions are lower than ours.

As for what we can do, it's true that only coordinated action by governments can have the reach and scale necessary to make a significant difference. In the UK, there are two problems with this.

1. Much of the electorate is incredibly stupid, uninformed or just in denial. A lot of people still have no clue just how urgent climate action is, while some are just waking up to the point they should have been at 30 years ago, and thinking a government that makes the right noises might be a good thing, as long as it doesn't make any real difference to anything else or inconvenience them too much.
2. Our system of representative democracy, already pretty tenuous under First Past The Post voting, is being steadily compromised and rolled back, with the passive consent of much of the population, to the point where even if enough people do wake up and realise this has to be the No. 1 priority for government, the facility to vote in a government that will make the necessary changes and take the necessary actions won't exist.

Here in Ireland it is being taken seriously and farmers groups have been in discussions with politicians to reduce emissions.
With farming and food production so important to the Irish economy it has been a difficult task to keep everyone reasonably happy.
The Green Party is in a coalition government and they are pushing their agenda.
A 25% cut in agricultural emissions has been agreed. It was hard fought for and neither side are thrilled.
BUT
The "big boys" China and its vast manufacturing economy and Brazil, home to the rainforest, and its huge farms - what are they doing ????

It's hard to accept that we shoulder the burden of the cost of being green and the bigger, more polluting countries continue on their not so merry way.

I agree that we are rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic in our minuscule efforts here. The world’s population is growing astronomically, particularly in some African countries and in India and Bangladesh. Particularly the African nations will not be able to sustain a large young population, who will push to move elsewhere, to already bursting countries.

In China rising standards of living are proving a disaster: millions living rurally, riding a bicycle and eating simple rice, not such a problem. Millions wanting cars, a meat diet and - so I read - disposable nappies is a huge issue. The disposable nappy market is new and huge in China.

Realistically we need to send half the world to a new planet.

“Realistically we need to send half the world to a new planet.”- Yup, this ^ or more likely war. That’ll be the reality. A fight for resources and land.