You get made redundant? I don’t understand what I am supposed to be answering? Is this now or in 20 years? makes a big difference to the answer and what about your wife and kids. context? Whats the issue and the question?
Well the issue is that I am the master of my own destiny in your world. Except I probably wasn't planning on being made redundant from a job that paid well. Now I have to find alternative employment which there isn't in the local area.
So do I
A) commute
B) force my wife to quit her job and follow me (as the main breadwinner then of course its me who should be followed). We incur the costs of moving, remortgaging, possibly increased costs of housing. Plus the social costs of moving away from friends and social groups. Plus the disruption to my daughter from moving to a different school with no friends.
Can you tell I may have put some thought into this? Can you possibly guess why? Can you understand why I'm getting so pissed off by your constant "master of my own destiny" nonsense whilst simultaneously blaming me for having the sheer ineptitude of having a job that turned out to not be as guaranteed as I believed it to be? For the sheer audacity of being born 20 years late so I couldn't even contemplate owning one city centre property never mind two?
You are incredibly lucky and privileged but utterly blind as to just how much. If I could live within farting distance of a job in the middle of a city with absolutely fantastic public transport I would. But the reality is even as a professional I'd still be out in the commuter belt unless I wanted to either be mortgaged to the hilt in a rabbit hutch flat or else slumming it in some shithole like Pilton or Sighthill. That's the reality right now. This is the result of the years of social engineering since comprehensive development and the post-war slum clearances coupled with the Thatcherite housing boom. People don't want to live in places like Cumbernauld. People don't want 2 hour commutes. But they are forced into these situations by circumstances utterly outwith their control. Some got lucky, others not so much.
You summed it up perfectly with this;
Just the usual gulf in understanding and unwillingness to accept
Such a shame half of what you claim I have said I never have
I have had enough. Bye
Develop the UKs recycling infrastructure in terms of capacity and ability, rather than shipping it to the other side of the planet to end up in landfill
Such a shame half of what you claim I have said I never have
The only thing in his posts he claims you said is directly quoted in the quote bar.
The rest of it is fact about modern life for a young couple with children living in the modern world - and solid hard factual reasons why what you say is as impossible as you claim putting solar panels on your roof is. Not impossible just not convienant /cost effective or efficient - it's a good analogy to how easy it is to just live where the work is for the whole family.
14 pages of someone who worked for the UK's largest employer lecturing us that we're not living close enough to our employers
Squirrelking - you have a PM
I didn't say "master of your own destiny". I didn't blame anyone for anything and I do understand the pressures far more than folk here seem to believe. I am not blind to my priviledge. I didn't lecture anyone. I stated a case and argued it.
The tone here towards me has been so frankly unpleasant and the personal insults directed at me extremely nasty.
Squirrelking outlined the choices he has - commute or move - thats a choice and commuting always is a result of choices made
Once more there has been a pile on and its frankly vile. the reaction has been one of shoot the messanger because you don't like the message
Squirrelking outlined the choices he has – commute or move –
Only in your mind. He did not say that.
He can compute or move and force his wife to get a new job and his kids to change school . Very different to your interpretation
It's not a pile on. It's trying to get you to accept that the world is different to the one you grew up in so people DO NOT have the choice you were privaledge to. No matter how many times you keep "messengering it"
I give in an will not contribute further
Two days and eight pages back, yet still you’re here posting on this thread TJ.
Your blinkered vision of everything seems to habitually drag threads like this down. People want a discussion, they don’t want a lecture from you every time.
I understand what TJ is trying to get across and Chevychase too. I also wholeheartedly agree with their detractors. It’s not always choice that puts you where you are in life. Luck or lack thereof and circumstances also play a large part. As do upbringing, opportunity and a shed tonne of other variables. You simply can’t make assumptions about the circumstances and ability of others to take the same path you have in life.
We can still do something about climate change. Two degrees is pretty much a given at this point and that is ****ing terrible. It doesn’t mean we should stop trying to stop world averages going up further though. Frankly the worst attitudes on here are coming from those who claim to know better. On the other hand you have the likes of molgrips and squirrelking trying to have a reasoned debate about it.
You can tell this place is populated by older people in the main. Misanthropy and well I’ve done my bit so **** the rest are the main themes
Your blinkered vision of everything
Wanting to avoid the collapse of civilisation. *Blinkered* 😂
All you lot are doing is the classic bullying of anyone who speaks the truth on this issue because it makes you uncomfortable. TJ is completely right. The fact that you lot haven't yet understood the enormity of the problem that faces us is your problem not his.
We can still do something about climate change.
Yes we can. At the risk of repeating myself...
All you lot are doing is the classic bullying of anyone who speaks the truth on this issue because it makes you uncomfortable. TJ is completely right.
No, you misunderstand. We understand the enormity of it. But we don't want to just sit here and doom-monger about it. We want something done, but we're interested in WHAT that would be.
If I say "you can't just stop buying stuff" TJ seems to think I'm saying "it's not acceptable to compromise my lifestyle". But that's not what I mean. I mean that if we all stopped buying stuff overnight the global economy would collapse and cause huge problems. So we need a better solution than simply stopping buying things. We're part of a massively complex inter-dependent system, economically AND environmentally.
the reaction has been one of shoot the messanger because you don’t like the message
No. We are all onside with the message. We're trying to explain and you're mis-understanding whilst refusing to be told that you're misunderstanding.
Absolutely TJ is right but how de we get to a point where the majority of people can live as he does? What advice can he give to others that is realistic and achievable relatively quickly? I’d genuinely like to hear that from him. Same with chevychase, other than drastic reduction in world population, which isn’t a short term thing, what other tangible advice can he offer to limit global warming and for individuals to reduce the their footprint to circa 5t.
So far all I’ve read from the former is it’s all choice and the latter **** all human scum!
Edit - Molgrips put it much more eloquently above. Yes, we’re screwed to a degree, how do we stop a further slide in to oblivion? If we need to reset how the world economy works, what does that look like and how do we get there? It’s a complex subject but it absolutely needs to be discussed.
But we don’t want to just sit here and doom-monger about it.
True but that's all I hear from those arguing against TJ. "We can't stop flying", "We can't drive less", "We can't eat less meat", "We can't consume less", "We can't stop doing what the hell we like". I've hilighted above that in many cases we already do things that we might not like for very good reasons. We need to start applying that to the issues around climate change, and we need to do it without pointing fingers, blaming others or picking holes in the behaviour of people like TJ (and myself) who are trying to be honest about what is required.
What advice can he give to others that is realistic and achievable relatively quickly?
As I said earlier - no-one wants to commute. We cannot all live near a place of work because there simply isn't the space near enough workplaces.
My suggestion would be to lean into the WFH revolution. This is a huge opportunity to slash emissions and this is a major area where governments are failing.
+1 to the rest of funkmasterp's post too.
what other tangible advice can he offer to limit global warming and for individuals to reduce the their footprint to circa 5t.
See the video I posted above. Change to a plant based diet and stop flying. Those are the two easy practical things you can do that will have a measurable impact. The rest is all 'micro-consumerist bollocks' as Monbiot calls it.
True but that’s all I hear from those arguing against TJ. “We can’t stop flying”, “We can’t drive less”, “We can’t eat less meat”, “We can’t consume less”, “We can’t stop doing what the hell we like”.
I’ve not read that on this thread. I’ve seen “how do we get people to fly less” and “taking current infrastructure in to account how do we drive less” anybody that isn’t actively cutting down meat consumption or stopping buying tat is a huge part of the issue and I’d like to hear why they aren’t so I can try and convince them otherwise.
True but that’s all I hear from those arguing against TJ. “We can’t stop flying”, “We can’t drive less”, “We can’t eat less meat”, “We can’t consume less”, “We can’t stop doing what the hell we like”.
We can do all those things. But there are limits.
We can drive less for discretionary trips, but some of us are forced by circumstances out of our control to drive a certain amount to put roofs over our heads.
We can consume less, but if we all consume 10% of what we do now (the kind of numbers that I suspect are required) then our global economy will crash and that will itself cause issues because we cannot invest in environmental protection without money. So this needs to be a managed process, not simple prohibition.
Do you see what I am trying to say?
See the video I posted above. Change to a plant based diet and stop flying. Those are the two easy practical things you can do that will have a measurable impact.
I’ve flown twice in the last twenty years and rarely eat meat (just chicken or pig when I do), but how do we convince others to follow suit? How do we do this in a managed way without destroying the livelihoods of farmers the world over. What does the transition from livestock to plant crop look like? The majority of the main contributors on this thread are on the same page so why are we arguing? What can we do to help others and drive change in them?
but how do we convince others to follow suit?
I posted ideas above. People are not going to give up these things voluntarily. They have to be coerced to do so by regulation and incentivisation. Ultimately we need to ration air miles/meat eating/driving. Start from the top down so the richest have to makes sacrifices first. Phase it in over a decade or more. So on flying as a specific example..
Year 1: Ban private jets
Year 2: Bring in air miles rationing for the top 1%
Year 3: Expand it to the top 5%
etc until..
Year 10: Rationing for everyone
Also reward people for not flying at all. If they don't use their airmiles give them a reward of say £500, or reduce the amount of tax they pay by 1%.
Year 1: Ban private jets
Year 2: Bring in air miles rationing for the top 1%
Year 3: Expand it to the top 5%
But you need to do that across the whole world. And it won't be electorally popular. So how do you bring that into effect?
We know how to slash emissions. What we need to discuss is how to get people to accept and vote for slashing emissions across the whole world.
Flying on holiday once a year or not will make little impact. My friends a pilot and fly's for super rich Saudi's. Paris for Lunch, then quick jaunt to Rome and off to London clothes shopping then back to Saudi. An average week for the incredibly wealthy which we have no chance of influencing.
I dunno. There are not many people who do that. There might be far more flights taken by 20 or 30m Brits going to Malaga once a year.
EDIT it seems the average number of flights per year per person in England is about 1 ish. Of course it's not evenly distributed but that means say 60m flights by English residents. That's 165k per day. I dunno how many super rich private jetsetters there are but I'd expect it's not that many.
Flying on holiday once a year or not will make little impact. My friends a pilot and fly’s for super rich Saudi’s. Paris for Lunch, then quick jaunt to Rome and off to London clothes shopping then back to Saudi. An average week for the incredibly wealthy which we have no chance of influencing.
how many rich Saudis are there, and how many chavs going to magaluf?
edit - beaten by Mols
From that article.
However, private aircraft still emit more than 33m tonnes of greenhouse gases, more than the country of Denmark, and because they carry so few people they are five to 14 times more polluting than commercial planes, per passenger, and 50 times more polluting than trains, researchers have found.
I think you'd have more success electorally banning private jets than you would commercial flying
I think you’d have more success electorally banning private jets than you would commercial flying
Yeah, you probably would. But if you'll forgive the tinfoil-hattery for a moment, electoral hopefuls need to court both the electorate and the rich and powerful, often separately. Otherwise we'd be taxing fat-cats properly because its a pretty popular policy amongst normal people.
Thousands of private jets. Busiest period for Newquay airport was during lockdown as they could happily fly in. Thousands of super yachts lots of them using the Channel Islands for duty free fuel. If you think the numbers are small you just don't know many super rich people.
how many chavs going to magaluf
Usual STW tactic of bashing the white working class. I'd argue the worst offenders are people like my sister who are always flying off to the south of France about five times a year so she can show off on Instagram, or my ex who would fly to scotland to see her mum every other week rather than evil chavs having an annual holiday. And it's always these types who react like you're selling child pornography when you tell them you don't recycle.
Spot on Jambourgie. A friend has just flown to Aus for 4 weeks then NZ then home. Holiday cost £40,000. Regular event and seen as nothing special by them. Millions of people live like this, just shows the growing lack of social diversity on here that's it's chavs off to Magaluf once a year who are to blame.
Usual STW tactic of bashing the white working class.
Hence why any action against climate change needs to start at the top and work downwards over time. Working people are not going to accept restrictions on their lives as long as they see rich people buying their way out of their own responsibility. Climate change is a class issue as much as it is an environmental one.
whilst I agree banning private jets is probably not going to be a problem with the electorate how are you actually going to do it on a global scale? How are we going to persuade the Americans or Saudi’s or Russian Oligarchs they cant use their planes any more?
Its a fine idea, but its never going to happen in the real world
Its a fine idea, but its never going to happen in the real world
I agree. hence the need to find solutions for the pollution to allow these folks to still carry on their lifestyles, because that's the barrier to change. Folks are afeared that by voting for measures to tackle climate change they'll be forced to live in a cave.
Now for absolutists that answer is unsatisfactory, and largely it will mean that we'll miss the ambitious targets of the UN most likely but the only realistic way we'll change anything is bring the majority of folks along, and the only way to do that is to say to normal every day folks is "yes, you can carry on living like you do, just do it this way, rather than the way you did it before". so that's heating that has less impact, driving/using a vehicle with less impact and so on. it might be increasing the cost of meat, but subsidising the cost of vat grown vegetable alternatives for example
A country has to be the first to get to net zero, there's no reason it can't be the UK.
Banning most business travel would be a great idea. It's clearly feasible as we effectively have, in our company at least, and by and large the people travelling don't even want to do it. Three years ago they'd ask us to be on site, now we just get a meeting invite. I've currently got 4 customers on the go, in Finland, the Middle East, Indonesia and California!
The problem is that it needs to be done globally. Customers want to see people fly to them, it impresses them. If you want to win deals or look good with customers then you want to visit them because if you don't a competitor will. So it needs global co-operation. We have a general travel ban because we're an established company living off our revenue stream. But we have recent start-up competitors trying to pinch our customers who are spending a vast pile of VC money specifically for this purpose.
the only way to do that is to say to normal every day folks is “yes, you can carry on living like you do, just do it this way, rather than the way you did it before”
I would change that - I'd say the message is "you can live a good life that you enjoy, but it will look a bit different".
It may be that if our own lives were happier and more fulfiled we might not feel the need to buy endless tat or new cars etc. We might get our dopamine from other things, which might even be carbon intensive just less so. For example if we could stop people wanting new cars all the time and encourage them to go on holiday *instead*, they might actually end up happier and have a lower carbon footprint. Or if we could get people to travel smaller distances to hang out somewhere in the UK with their family, it might end up being more fun than going abroad.
Squirrelking
No it’s not, it’s neither clean nor renewable. And I say that as probably one of the bigger enthusiasts of nuclear here.
Within the definitions being used as "clean" and "renewables".
It's not like wind and solar are actually either clean or using renewable materials either as deployed.
Those solar panels don't magically make themselves and deliver themselves magically to your roof and the batteries needed to use them don't either. Neither do they magically renew themselves and dispose of themselves.
And here lies the crux ...
Option 1 Carry on as per usual - increased global temperatures, changed weather and mass starvation, resource wars.
Option 2 We somehow kill off 75% of the population (or more) and the selected few go back to living in metaphorical caves and we only address climate change as apart of a wider green agenda.
Option 3 We prioritise climate change over all those niceties and change to cleaner and more sustainable tech whilst the population and tech stabilises
The whole important point here is to realise the "green agenda" (option 2) is at its core not about homosapiens living but some belief we shouldn't be leaving a detectable trace on the planet.
That is a whole different thing to how does human kind not kill itself off (option 3).
The "green agenda" has not and never has been about climate change except as a periphery or where it intersects, rather climate change is a bandwagon jumped on by the "green agenda" every bit as much as from the other side.
With the "green agenda" every solution intrinsically leads to a mass cull of homosapiens one way or another.
Is this a good/bad thing? That's more philosophy but lets just be honest what the aims are.
Put another way we can reduce the world population very significantly to a point where we can all use log burners (whilst they can still be produced) and open fires burning wood and tallow candles.
Even the Amish will need to step back their technology by centuries. No kerosene for stoves, indeed no stoves except from steam powered foundries using coal and coke.
This is no less insidious than Option 1 .. it's basically the strong, light, cheap pick any 2.
Reductio ad absurdum
The contradiction for the UK is we need to use our farm land for solar and wind whilst getting rid of 100% of farmland because we have to re-wild the UK (apparently) back to pre-human interference because unless we reintroduce wolves and bears its integral (and if you don't understand that it's because you're too thick).
Go with this and we'll need to insulate our homes with wolf and bear skins (and perhaps some deer the wolves and lynx don't eat though under their utopia wolves will all be vegan)... we can't have wool remember because the pastureland has to be reforested with native trees, we can't even use straw as we can't grow it in the native forests. We can't have kingspan because it's oil... but in any case our stone-age existence wouldn't support making it anyway.
Putting that into a sci-fi context we could liken it to 2 new habitable planets being colonised.
One is going to start off with Tech and fission ... the other is going to work with nature and keep population at levels that don't require tech beyond Roman times. Other than the medical stuff I personally would likely go more for the latter... EXCEPT it's not a sci-fi thought experiment, we have a population and we are dependent on tech or forced depopulation
So coming back to fission ...
it’s neither clean nor renewable
By which metric/option? Option 2 or Option 3?
Option 3 wise .. yes it's not totally clean, we need a LOT of concrete .. we need to mine, refine and transport fissionable material but then the CO2 and greenhouse footprint is almost non existent. We have an abundance of fissionable material... and we can use all that excess power to undertake carbon sequestration
Option 2 wise ... its a different matter.
You can say the same for using gas over wood burning, diesel for long journeys over petrol ..
You guys still whining about ways to find "acceptable to voters" ways of banning certain things?
You just don't get it. The actions required are not acceptable and never will be.
On flights? we need to hit everyone - rich and poor - because even poor people consume too much in our current economy. But you're determined to hit the most polluting sector - yes, the 70 million flights to magaluf are where you hit - not the rich saudis, no matter how unfair that is and how much whiners are going to whine about rich people.
People live a long way from their jobs and struggling for transport because they live in remote locations? We're at the point where we need to be looking at what is an acceptable location for humans to live. - But are we going to do that? Hell no!
You're pissing in the wind people.
With the “green agenda” every solution intrinsically leads to a mass cull of homosapiens one way or another.
Is this a good/bad thing? That’s more philosophy but lets just be honest what the aims are.
You guys still whining about ways to find “acceptable to voters” ways of banning certain things?
You just don’t get it. The actions required are not acceptable and never will be.
Ok you've made your point, we all need to die. Thanks for calling.
We get that that is your opinion. We also get that there's no point debating it, because you haven't really given us anything to debate. You want to do things that people won't accept; the only way to do that is by force so you're implicitly advocating global violent revolution - essentially, you want to take over the world by force and make it do what you want.
Good luck with that, is about all I can say.
I would change that – I’d say the message is “you can live a good life that you enjoy, but it will look a bit different”.
Yes, that’s a much better way of putting it
One also can't help thinking. why go out slowly in misery waiting for a slightly milder catastrophe? Ride it out in style into oblivion!
whilst I agree banning private jets is probably not going to be a problem with the electorate how are you actually going to do it on a global scale? How are we going to persuade the Americans or Saudi’s or Russian Oligarchs they cant use their planes any more?
Its a fine idea, but its never going to happen in the real world
Not really, obviously banning internal private jets in Russia is problematic but a ban on private jets in the G7 would be almost as good.
How are we going to persuade the Americans or Saudi’s or Russian Oligarchs they cant use their planes any more?
Ignoring the Americans as they need to buy-in Saudi's and Russian Oligarchs can keep using their jets but they can only fly internally or to/from each other.
Good luck with that, is about all I can say.
Good luck for your kids and grandchildren with continuing to exist, is all I can say.
When water scarcity hits the 5 billion people it's going to hit, where are they going to go? How big a wall are you going to have to build? Wars are going to kick off over this - and if there's one thing Einstein pointed out about war in the nuclear age, it's not going to be one we recover from.
Unpalatable as the choices are - unless you're thinking in those terms (which, quite obviously, hardly anyone here is) then, you're likely condemning your grandkids to a pretty horrible end.
70% of animals is an extinction-level event. Nobody has blinked at that (in fact, idiots still don't understand how climate and biosphere are linked). Our ecosystems are dependent on them. The topic of discussion here is how to stop people flying planes (and don't forget the rich!) - not, how do we transform every single thing we do...
I'm not "giving you nothing to discuss" - I'm saying we need to completely transform the context of our discussions...
...but indeed. Good luck.
How are we going to persuade the Americans or Saudi’s or Russian Oligarchs they cant use their planes any more?
We don't. We find a way to offer them private planes that aren't as polluting as the ones they use currently. Then when we've done that, we ban the old type.
Good luck for your kids and grandchildren with continuing to exist, is all I can say.
So what's your actual point? Kill 70% of people? Or have no more than one kid? Or no kids? What are you actually advocating here? All I'm seeing is angry ranting.
The topic of discussion here is how to stop people flying planes (and don’t forget the rich!) – not, how do we transform every single thing we do…
No that's just one thing that's been discussed. Many other things have as well. I agree with you that curbing aviation isn't anywhere near enough, and I've said as much.
I’m saying we need to completely transform the context of our discussions…
I agree. So what're your ideas for doing that?
I agree. So what’re your ideas for doing that?
I don't have "ideas" - I'm doing it already! I've shown what the actual problem is - and shown people in no uncertain terms the sort context they need to be thinking in. Now it's up to you to change your thinking - I'm already on that page.
But it turns out, people want to be spoon-fed what they have to think, without actually doing the thinking for themselves.
But to humour you. Lets get a bit out there:
What are you actually advocating here? All I’m seeing is angry ranting.
Both the suffragettes and Nelson Mandela are held up as shining examples of bringing about necessary change, against both an intransigent authority and an apathetic public.
So, a bombing campaign maybe? For both that was their most effective action. When people start getting blown up, the issue is no longer ignorable.
Sunak isn't attending COP27. COP26 was an abject failure. The "nice talking" and "trying to get the public onside" has been going on for 70 years - to very little effect. The UN has come out and said there's no path to the "less dangerous" (but still dangerous) route for climate on the table. The whole planet is yet to see the necessary action - and we're all still ignoring it (or really: paying it lip-service).
You guys have kids. Your apathy and inaction is going to kill them. I've not got a chip in the game - no kids. The only think I'd like to see is maybe the human race gets to live on. But ultimately, despite having taken measurably more hard and fast actions than almost anybody - I'm alright jack.
So I'm giving you the message: What are YOU going to do to save your grandchildren? - because what you're doing right now, the conversations you're having, the action you're NOT taking - gets them all killed.
Constitution be damned.
No Prime Minister. No backup unelected ****er King.
It's not enough of an "emergency" . There are clearly more important things than the continued existence of life...
