Feminism and Climate Change

[ByGrabtharsHammarWhatASaving]

I've been thinking a lot about climate change recently with all the Xr protests going on. Call me naive but I really didn't realise things were that bad. I mean, I knew they were bad, but I thought we were on track to fix it. I thought we had time to fanny around with recycling and reusable coffee cups. Reading the Xr website and seeing the phrase "mass extinction event" used over and over really got to me. I thought things were going in the right direction, but it turns out we're at ground zero. My own fault for having my head in the sand and not looking deeper into it. Anyway, I was thinking about the ways this all intersects with feminism:

1. Reproductive rights . Clearly over population is a big problem here. On the one hand, increasing access to abortion, contraception, and sex education helps with this. But any attempts to limit population growth in a more active way, such as through legislation, will necessarily infringe on women's rights. China's "single child" policy is an obvious example of this, with it's double effect of not only controlling women's reproduction but also increasing sex selective abortions/ the murder of female infants.

1. Consumerism . Rightly or wrongly, when it comes to things like food shopping, gift buying, and fashion, women have a lot more consumer power than man. Obviously this ties into patriarchal expectations such as women being "just better" at gift buying, women doing the food shop because they're SAHPs, and pressure on women to wear the last fashion which lead to the rise of cheap "fast fashion" like Primark. Under patriarchy we earn less of the money, but in many ways have a lot more say in how it's spent.

1. Unpaid labour . A lot of the stuff we're encouraged to do at an individual level to halt CC comes down to an increase in unpaid labour. Off the top of my head this includes sorting and cleaning things to be recycled, washing reusable nappies, researching and buying eco friendly products, and taking longer over cleaning jobs from using less effective but greener cleaning products. This increase in labour disproportionately affects women.

1. Politics . The main green political party in this country has aligned itself against women and alienated thousands of it's female voters. Women are being excluded from women only short lists. The ability of girls to participate fully in education is being reduced. We are seeing first hand how poorly female activists are treated by the police. In short, climate change activism and feminism have a large cross over, and in many ways a lot of the power for change is in female hands, but women are being excluded at a political and social level, and being discouraged from activism. We need more power but even the small amount we have is being taken from us.

So, those were my thoughts so far. How do we re-engage women in green politics? How do we make the changes that we need to make as a society when many of those changes will disproportionately disadvantage women? How do we balance our fight for women's rights with our desire to not go extinct?

Change on an individual level prompts others to join in.
Young Greta was a girl on her own, now she is supported by thousands.
I was originally influenced by a single friend who lived deliberately green. I influence my friends. It's slow- but building quickly! David Attenborough is helpfully making those of us who live a lower carbon lifestyle look a little less like cranks.

The bar for people's tolerance on putting in effort is extremely low.

This is highly selective.

Women put in massive effort on fashion and ‘beauty’ (not my opinion, look at the money spent annually and the time) because want to.

Suggest there may be numerous reasons why this isn’t in our best interests, and you get a response of ‘But I like it’ and ‘Anyway, it’s all too difficult to solve, businesses/government need to fix it’.

Reining it in is no harder work than complying with this shit. I think it’s easier, personally, but people choose what they choose.

Interesting thread.

Someone posted about the best way to reduce population size, I think, but I can't find the link above now. Basically, maternal education, maternal health and infant health are the most effective (humane) way to address the issue - the better all of those are, the fewer children women have (as well as access to contraception, which is sometimes limited, as in, say, Taliban controlled-Afghanistan).

Women do have a lot of consumer power that they can exercise, at least in this country.

An optimistic view, perhaps, but I see the necessary dismantling of capitalism and degrowth of our culture/economy as something that could be positive for women.

I mean, in a post-apocalyptic waterworld at least we won't be shamed for our hunter-gatherer consumerist choices, will we? It'll just be a case of spear what you can get.

Sorry, trying, but not feeling overly optimistic about humanity's future right now. How likely is it really that Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Theresa May are going to voluntarily give up all their wealth for the sake of everyone else's children's future?

How many politicians are willing to risk their necks to speak up on important issues?

That likely. That's how much hope we have.

Oh dear.

Making small individual lifestyle changes is a decent and worthy thing to do, but those changes are going to have very little impact on carbon emissions unless they lead to the above outcomes happening within the next decade or so.

I disagree. It’s a case of volume, if enough people do it then it absolutely makes a difference. So do it, influence others, spread the message, help each other find solutions, it all matters if enough of us keep doing it. I’m not waiting on corporate giants to pull their finger out, they’re reactive, they’ll only change when we do- or they’ll cease to exist in my ideal paradise!

Yes hipster, I agree. What I meant to say was "the bar for people's tolerance on putting in effort to do things they don't already want to do is extremely low."

How many politicians are willing to risk their necks to speak up on important issues?

Basically none. We can't even scare up more than a handful of politicians willing to say "humans are sexually dimorphic" so how any of them are going to get the balls to tack on "also, we'll probably be extinct in a few hundred years" is beyond me. The inability to state "unpopular opinion pertaining to material reality X" is strong and getting stronger.

Unpopular fact I mean, not opinion

Ok, but why would anyone not want to save lives, or preserve quality of lives (their own, possibly, or their children’s or grandchildren’s)?

Seriously, this is what we’re looking at. Why doesn’t this desire dwarf the desire for a house full of useless crap, for example?

What is stopping people from seeing it like that?

What I meant to say was "the bar for people's tolerance on putting in effort to do things they don't already want to do is extremely low."

Yeah I think it plays it’s part. We are a very disconnected society, so people are racing around busy making money in order to buy more stuff and holiday more, with huge overheads and demands on them. To try and be a conscious consumer and research things to change that lifestyle, is quite a shift in thinking. People are incredibly disconnected from their food and how it gets to their table, for example. That’s why it’s important to have these conversations and try and steer them into a solutions discussion. What can we do?

Does anyone here want to do more and have an area of their life they’d like to focus on? Have help with? Let’s have a discussion about what reducing our consumption and environmental impact looks like!

We can't even scare up more than a handful of politicians willing to say "humans are sexually dimorphic" so how any of them are going to get the balls to tack on "also, we'll probably be extinct in a few hundred years" is beyond me.

We ask to be given information by scientists and ask politicians and legislators to set boundaries on our behaviour in light of the information, then we punish them for telling us truths we don’t want to hear and spoiling our fun.

Time to grow the fuck up, fast.

Time to grow the fuck up, fast.

Absolutely

Grab, sorry if I’m coming across like I’m having a go at you personally in responding to parts of your posts. I’m really not, just thinking about why we are, collectively, so stupid.

I imagine it's a lot of things hipster.

1. A general desensitisation to shocking newspaper headlines which makes people gloss over stuff that should fill them with terror and dismiss is as fear mongering if they even register it at all.

2. A lack of awareness about the actual time scale of the problem.

3. A feeling of "whats the point, we can't change it anyway, I'd just be denying myself for no reason".

4. A misplaced trust that the people in power are on track to fix things, coupled with laziness and fear which stops further critical thought.

5. The human propensity to rationalise and give ourselves permission for things we know are bad ("I always recycle so I can treat myself to a foreign holiday")

6. Letting perfect be the enemy of good ("I can never go 100% green so whats the point?")

7. A joker-esque desire to "watch the world burn"

8. The selfish feeling "I'll be dead by then so who cares"

Basically, I think a lot of people either don't know or don't believe, and many of those who do know either don't care or feel too apathetic/ powerless to change.

So many great points on this thread, hardly know where to start.

Just wanted to comment on OP's first point about population. It is estimated that around 40% of pregnancies globally are unintended/unwanted. I believe that women's access to contraception, abortion and the freedom to refuse marriage/relationships would control population extremely successfully without there needing to be draconian China-type policies.

Local charities in various nations try to talk to men and male religious leaders about contraception because that is where they see a major problem - men refusing to allow women bodily autonomy.

No no I understand hipster, no offence taken! I hold up my hands fully to my own apathy and ignorance leading to our current situation, and should not be spared from judgement.

I disagree. It’s a case of volume, if enough people do it then it absolutely makes a difference. So do it, influence others, spread the message, help each other find solutions, it all matters if enough of us keep doing it.

I think this massively underestimates the scale and complexity of the problem.

Take air travel as an example. By now most people in the developed world most know that air travel is bad for the environment, but still demand for air travel is rising. And air travel is something that should be relatively easy to give up, as it's not a necessity for most people.

Now imagine asking most people to give up their car when a large number of them have lifestyles that are heavily dependent on car travel with limited practical alternatives.

In lots of countries they are actively taking steps to increase the population, such as Hungary offering women financial incentives to have lots of children rather than going to work:

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/hungary-mothers-tax-breaks-income-children-immigration-viktor-orban-birth-rate-a8773221.html

This is largely down to racism and a feeling that there are too many children of immigrants and not enough Hungarian children.

I think for some people, they haven't realised how serious it is because they don't see much change over their own lifetime. They've been hearing about climate change their whole lives, but they think things look about the same. The human lifespan isn't long enough to see the clearer changes for a lot of people, especially if they live disconnected from nature as many do, especially in cities.

And then, I live in Canada, and a lot of people think our government now is doing what needs to be done. It was a major platform point, and JT has done a lot of campaigning to show how green he is.

But in a lot of cases, I think habit is a huge factor. People have a hard time imagining a really different lifestyle. They feel immediate pressures to do things like buy gifts for birthdays or have certain clothes for work, to give their families certain experiences. I struggle with this myself, I rarely fly, maybe one every five years, but last summer I flew on an overseas holiday, the first time I've ever flown internationally. But would I have done that if I was really serious about climate change? And yet, that feels so depressing and unfair, and if we aren't going to fix it anyway, which is a real possibility, why not have one trip to the place you've always imagined going to? I think that kind of feeling can end up justifying a lot.

Now imagine asking most people to give up their car when a large number of them have lifestyles that are heavily dependent on car travel with limited practical alternatives.

Perfectly do-able in London, unless one deems maintaining a lifestyle exactly as it is - no compromises acceptable - to be more important than not harming one’s own children and everyone else’s children.

Just make the change and the rest will follow.

Don’t want to isn’t the same as can’t.

It makes sense for a nation that has achieved population stabilisation slightly too successfully to go for encouragement to get numbers back up a bit. I doubt they are aiming for four children per family or anything. Merely two per family average again I would guess.

It's actually evidence that human numbers are perfectly controllable if some countries want them back up to replacement level again. A stable population is not a bad thing for planning purposes.

I agree Goosefoot. I did so much "gapyearing" in my early 20s - long hauls to Africa and Soth America several times a year. I saw some incredible things and learnt a lot. I've enjoyed a lot of luxuries in terms of clothes, food, electronics, travel, heating my home, water usage etc. I never thought about the cost to the planet. Now I'm in my 30s and have children I realise that they may not have those things because of me. They may have to live greatly reduced lives because of my excess, and if they don't then their children will if they have any. And they won't want to because it's so unfair. It's really terrible. If I could go back in time and make different choices I would but I can't, all I can do is try and pass as little of the cost on to them as possible.

I think it's really easy to understand why people don't take action, it's because we will be making our immediate life harder, more expensive and less enjoyable.
Personally? We've given up one car but we still have my old diesel-sucking freelander because I need it for work and we can't afford a new one.
We're cutting down on the meat we eat, and only buying locally reared stuff. But I really enjoy eating meat, so we're only going half-arsed.
I'm going on two flights this year, when I normally don't do any, because we want to visit friends in the Channel Islands and it's more convenient than the ferry (plus I don't then have to drive aforementioned diesel-sucking car); but also because I want to go on a piss-up-in-a-villa weekend with my friends for our milestone birthday.
So I'm going to donate to #TrumpForest or similar to offset my carbon, when the best solution would be to make different choices. But I really really want to eat the meat and go on the holidays.
Perhaps next year we'll be veggie 5/7 days, and I definitely won't take any flights.

I can genuinely see me not taking any more long-distance flights again though, which is a real heartbreak as I would love to experience global travel with my family - there's so much to learn out there.
Perhaps I need to start planning a carbon-neutral Eighty Days Around The World.

Practically I think there are a lot of barriers. The car is a good example. Yes, we need to really cut this out, it may be that carbon taxes are the best way.
But - it is also the case that they could impact people who live rurally in an extreme way. Many city people believe that everyone should live in cities for environmental reasons, but there are a lot of good reasons that is not ideal - it's not very compatible with sustainable agriculture and healthy farming communities. Even people who live in suburbs could be in trouble in many places, and if they can't afford to get to work, what are they supposed to do? We needed to come up with real solutions, including building communities where we expect most people to live near their work, years ago, so we could make these choices now.

I've become skeptical at birth control as the answer. The west has a stable birth rate, generally, but we consume far more - these are connected. We have fewer children in part because we want to consume more and over the last few generations we've become used to this standard of living, we see it as normal. We have also now shown this to the world as something to aspire to and tell them if they have fewer children they could have the same.

And then, we somehow hope for an environmental solution that means we use new energy technology so we can consume at the same level without polluting. Which is simply impossible on so many levels, but even many environmentalists make that claim now. But it's remarkably similar to what people see with contraception - a technological solution which allows people to carry on having sex without having to become pregnant - what they are hoping for is a sort of consumerist equivalent. I don't think that is a way a thinking that will save us, quite the opposite. We need to become people who live within what the environment dictates, and if we can't, well, that is that.

I don't think we'll prevail without moving from capitalism. But if we don't find a way I suspect we might see autocratic governments supported by the military, mandated limits on childbearing and consumption, and a lot of other bad things.

"Perfectly do-able in London, unless one deems maintaining a lifestyle exactly as it is - no compromises acceptable - to be more important than not harming one’s own children and everyone else’s children."

The vast majority of people in the world do not live in London.