Everywhere is burning or drowning…

Dont forget, all you vegan and plant based guys are apparently going to live 10-20% longer than us meat eaters

Is that before the spaceship comes down to whisk them off to nirvana ?

Dont forget, all you vegan and plant based guys are apparently going to live 10-20% longer than us meat eaters. Have you considered this in your calculations?

<satire>They never do. There disgustang, and they also virtue signal by not having kids (morelike no one would have kids with them) or because soy turned them gay.</satire>

#satiredied

This thread has gone the way of all threads on climate change:

You, you there riding a bike to work. You think you’re so bloody perfect I can tell just by the fact that you are riding that stupid bicycle, virtue-signalling and making all of our lives more difficult, including your own.

I bet your mamil tights were made in China. So don’t lecture me about climate change. And did you know that 87.5% of all emissions* are because of 1. Work and 2. Traffic. Not only do you go to work but you are also holding up the traffic. You’ve been served. Keep your hands off my sausage etc

*Source: #madeup

A recent report found the majority of all soya (65%) comes from countries with high deforestation rates. … “Without knowing it, we’re eating meat and dairy products from animals fed on soy grown on deforested land in Brazil,” said Mike Barrett, executive director of science and conservation at WWF-UK

Cattle arent the only thing eating soya 😉

This thread has gone the way of all threads on climate change:

Now who’s doing the straw man arguments? 🙄

It’s not just smartphones. It’s anything containing semiconductors (and getting worse with circuit complexity). For something so tiny, those electronic devices take an almost unbelievable amount of resources and energy to manufacture. They are also not recyclable, in any meaningful sense of the word.

So that’s also your Garmins, tablets, smart speakers, Zwift setup, wifi lightbulbs, drawer full of raspberry pis, car infotainment system, etc etc. In my opinion, any solution that claims to be “environmentally friendly” while involving any of the above is a crock.

It would be intersting to work out just how much energy it took to make those little smart energy meter screens, and how many fewer cups of tea you’d need to make to pay back that cost.

Edit For someone who works in the industry, I really seem to have caught a bit of a bee in my bonnet. Maybe I’m the new vegan!

i always find it interesting the counter arguments towards people that are trying to do something positive.

Your vegan.. pah, but you still have a new iphone.
You drive an elecric car.. pah, but you still eat meat.
You dont fly… pah, but you have a log burner.

Ok, so you can pick holes in what others are doing, but what are you doing to help your future, the worlds future, the future of your kids…. oh yeah, picking holes in what others are trying to achieve. AKA nothing.

Many a good point made in this thread, but as we know, the main cause of the situation we are in is us. Not enough of us willing to give up things up, make changes or sacrifices. Its such a shame that the human race is so selfish (we all are in our own ways, i am not saying i am any better than anyone else, before someone tries to pick holes in my random words on the internet).

Or that folks are so closed minded that giving something new a try is so alien to them.

For example the meat and milk trade have done an amazing job of convincing us we need to consume these products to survive. Whereas the reality is we dont. Its the best marketing ever! (the only species to consume milk outside of infancy… and its not even our own milk… grim)

They don’t actually live any longer, it just seems like they do 😀

🤣🤣🤣

I’ve a long way to go… but…

– not got on a plane for 15 years now
– dropped meat down to once a fortnight
– changed career path for a lower paid one that doesn’t have a daily drive

…still lots to do, and will never be perfect… but we don’t need anyone to be perfect, we just need everyone to make adjustments… but many won’t, partly because they compare themselves to others that won’t. So it requires more government intervention if we have any chance of meeting their own “targets”, never mind actually act now, rather than at some point between now and some target date chosen to fall in the distant future… after the people currently in government have long gone and are being paid nicely by third parties for having ignored calls for stronger action when they were in power.

Ok, so you can pick holes in what others are doing, but what are you doing to help your future, the worlds future, the future of your kids…. oh yeah, picking holes in what others are trying to achieve. AKA nothing.

Fair enough, I suppose I should leave the vegans alone, as long as they let me eat my sustainably-sourced meat and don’t demand all pastures get sown with something silly like biofuel crops.

My issue is not those who have made their own choices about what they consider suitably sustainable and environmentally friendly, it’s what will actually happen with the current “official” line of what is “sustainable” and the corresponding legislative changes. I see the net result of this being – we will be ever-more dependent on imported goods which will be carefully branded as “CO2 neutral” or whatever. All while making minimal changes in any environmental impact.

Your vegan.. pah, but you still have a new iphone.
You drive an elecric car.. pah, but you still eat meat.
You dont fly… pah, but you have a log burner.

Ok, so you can pick holes in what others are doing, but what are you doing to help your future, the worlds future, the future of your kids…. oh yeah, picking holes in what others are trying to achieve. AKA nothing.

I do plenty to try and help thanks, still lots more to do though. Stop trying to make everything so black and white/polarised. It’s not unreasonable to point out that veganism alone won’t save us. It is unreasonable to use that as an argument for doing nothing.

And here we have a Climate Minister flying around the globe for “important meetings”…
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-58112621

This Government don’t really do irony do they. Maybe they think it’s the opposite of crease-y.

@grum – that wasnt aimed at you, or anyone in particular, its the common feeling i get when discussing climate change and what can be done. Whether that’s with Randoms on the internet or with friends/work colleagues/people in real life.

i am sure you are doing lots, as i feel i am, as i hope many are.

But there seems to be this attitude or culture of instead of congratulating people on their efforts, we pick holes, say ‘well its not enough’ or generally take the p1ss. its a sorry state of affairs.

And its the mindset of ‘making a little change isnt worth it’ that really grinds my gears. As if the 56 million of us on this little island all made a little change, things would be better.

We all have different moral, environmental and ethical compasses tho, so more fool me thinking everyone would want to do their bit.

Think far more people talk about bacon and processed meat beige foods than those who talk about being vegan 😉

its the common feeling i get when discussing climate change and what can be done. Whether that’s with Randoms on the internet or with friends/work colleagues/people in real life.

Ah ok yup I’d agree that is the prevaling attitude 🙁

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/06/google-co-founder-larry-page-is-a-new-zealand-resident-government-says

The billionaire class know what is coming.

Sure I’ve read about all this somewhere…

ah yes, here we go:

‘The Earth was dying. Killed by the pursuit of money’ — rereading Ben Elton’s Stark as prophecy

First published in 1989, Elton’s debut novel offered a doubly prophetic vision. First, his depiction of environmental destruction. Second, his vision of high-stakes private space exploration.

The world of Elton’s Stark is ruled by a shadowy ultra-rich cabal (akin to the Bilderberg Group), known as the Stark Conspiracy. Members of Stark have long been aware their profit-seeking activities have caused irrevocable environmental damage. They realise the Earth’s “vanishing point”, a scenario of total environmental collapse, is imminent.

The novel begins with the world facing a mass extinction event:

The earth was dying. To be more specific, the earth was being killed. Done to death by its fond owners. Killed by the pursuit of money. For the men gathered round the table it was utterly frustrating to have inherited the earth and then have the damn thing die on you.

Rereading Elton’s dystopian fiction today is unsettling. His prediction the world would be ruled, or rather owned, by the ultra-rich is closer to reality than fiction.

In 2019, months before the Australian bushfire crisis, the United Nations observed that around 1 million plant and animal species were threatened with extinction. Californian bushfires recently ravaged 4 million hectares of land, double the 2019 record.

That we are moving closer to a vanishing point is no longer confined to the realm of fiction. The last decade was one of the hottest on record.

In Stark, Elton predicts how deforestation will lead to irreversible salinisation of the landscape:

Now the trees are gone and Western Australia — like many hot parts of the world where surface evaporation is speedy and the forests have been cleared — faces a terrible problem with the salt of the earth.

The most unnerving similarity between Elton’s novel and the world of today is the speed at which the effects of climate change and environmental degradation take place.

Species of animals that were not meant to die out until mid twenty-first century were already extinct. Trees were proving far less resilient against acid ‘die-back’ than had been hoped.

So, Elton’s dual depictions of global environmental destruction and space colonisation by the rich were light years ahead of their time. Yet the novel ends with a weary indictment of society’s unwillingness to make environmental change:

Too much money was involved, it simply wasn’t economical. Nothing had been done and now the reckoning was upon them all.

Elton’s vision is scarily poignant when re-read today. The book exemplifies the quote by Frederic Jameson:

It is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.

its the common feeling i get when discussing climate change and what can be done. Whether that’s with Randoms on the internet or with friends/work colleagues/people in real life.

Ah ok yup I’d agree that is the prevailing attitude 🙁

Ok, so you can pick holes in what others are doing, but what are you doing to help your future,

I do quite a bit but all by accident rather than based on environmental choices

Vegetarian for last 40 years (not killing animals rather than environment)
Not been in plane for 20 years (have a lot of animals so don’t go on holidays)
Drive about 3,000 miles per year (working at home more and that was most of my driving)

Kinda, I was mainly just refuting DazH’s suggestion that unless you ‘become a hermit or kill yourself’ stopping eating meat and dairy is the only useful thing you can do.

I don’t have the figures to hand (I’ll try and find them though) but I think it’s fairly well established that the only really impactful individual actions you can take are going vegan/plant-based/whatever and giving up flying. Compared to those two everything things else is neglibible in terms of CO2/methane emissions. There are plenty of other issues related to the meat industry too such as land usage, habitat destruction, water pollution, soil erosion, destruction of the rain forests etc (and that’s ignoring the animal exploitation/welfare issues) that it’s such a no-brainer that continuing to consume the products of the meat and dairy industry is less of an act of ignorance or personal preference and more like a conscious decision to conspire in your own destruction. It also has the benefit of being the easiest thing you can change as well.

The billionaire class know what is coming.

You can go down a rabbit hole on this subject, but the fact that they are planning ahead is undeniable..

https://onezero.medium.com/survival-of-the-richest-9ef6cddd0cc1

For example the meat and milk trade have done an amazing job of convincing us we need to consume these products to survive. Whereas the reality is we dont. Its the best marketing ever! (the only species to consume milk outside of infancy… and its not even our own milk… grim)

We’ve been eating meat and drinking milk for hundreds of years. Nor sure marketing departments existed 1000 years ago. There just wasn’t as many of us around back then so it was sustainable.

Logan’s Run is what we need – but perhaps 40 years of living like kings rather than 30!

We used to do a lot of things that we dont any more. Its a shame we have evolved from no longer raping and pillaging, but haven’t managed to evolve from eating sentient beings and drinking the milk that was designed for a calf.

We no longer glamorise cigarettes, but an industry that does more harm to the planet and arguably peoples health goes without scrutiny or censorship. Its an odd world we live in.

We’ve been eating meat and drinking milk for hundreds of years.

is that all?

best facebook commemt I’ve read about the weather is all the crazy lightning is because of wind farms taking all the energy out of the atmosphere…

There is no doubt that the increasing amount of energy present in the climate system is causing wider swings in weather patterns for us in our previously secure northern haven. Long, hot dry spells; then when it does rain, it does so with a fierceness that is relatively new to us in the UK.
I fear for my two sisters’ growing up kids and my 2 brother in laws’ families. All of these younger folk will have a very different world around them by the time they make it to 50, if they manage that far.
Having become aware of significant environmental problems as a student in the early 80’s, my then wife and I decided not to start a family and I’m glad we didn’t; my two sisters have produced 3 between them and adopted another. So numbers are stable, ish.. But we as a rich western society were already by then consuming far more than a sustainable portion of resources, way before modern electronics, superfluous smart tech & power useage tipped the balance much further the wrong way, destroying much of the gains from cutting out some of the most harmful habits.
Luxury is not having the latest and bestest of everything; it is often to be found in good company, in the happiness of friends and in shared experiences. In the satisfaction of a personal day well spent.
We all have to do every step that we can possibly cope with; working from home, travelling much less for work and outside work, by all means other than self-propelled. Buy local, re-use and recycle. Walk places; might take a while but can be fulfilling on its own. Keep that older car and actually look after it properly so that it lasts longer. Go to the farm shop by bike once a week; broccoli might cost you an 20p extra a head but if that promotes the farmshop to stock more stuff from local producers, all the better.. I do this occasionally, biking with a trailer and load up. It’s great phys.
Yes, avoid eating lots of meat and dairy. Or for that matter, imported soya products; the market for UK grown soy is finally making progress. We already do this but could probably do more. Look where your food comes from; if it’s mange tout from Kenya or Honduras, it has been air freighted. I’d love to see that practice banned.
Consume less, in every way.
Wherever possible, I scavenge firewood from deadfall. Once it has fallen off a tree, it’s going back into the environment as CO2 whatever happens, so if it reduces our dependancy on heating oil even a little, that’s a benefit. Buy bikes for the long term; definitely no carbon frames. Think about it, do you really need that blingtastic enduro wagon to bimble about the local woods, or is what you already have actually more than enough to have a ball on..?
God, what a preacher I am. I ain’t perfect but I am doing my best and at my advanced years, the steps I take aren’t going to help me. I probably will not witness the sea level rise by 2-3m in my lifetime. But the next generation may well, making many major cities uninhabitable while pushing tens of millions of people into forced migrations. Maybe we can hold this off a bit longer……

definitely no carbon frames.

Deep in a big post that I agree with for the most part, there is this.

For 2-3 kilos of carbon vs 2-3 kilos of aluminium, that will get used weekly for many years, why is carbon so bad?

(Said as the owner of 2 alu frames)

Climate change is real. And it is a wicked problem – keeping under 1.5 warming is a tall order now and requires systemic change not just individual change – so it is really easy to get stuck in a mindset of ‘what I do doesn’t matter’, which politicians feed off and just perpetuates the issue. The reality is that as rich (on a global scale) westerners there is a LOT we can do as individuals. Top 5 :
1) plant-rich diet. beef for special occasions (christmas turkey level of special)
2) switch your pension and any other investments to ethical funds with a specific 1.5 degree-aligned mandate
3) drive less, go electric as soon as you can afford to
4) proper insulation + electric heating + green tariff
5) get activist – write to your MP. Vote Green in all elections. You don’t have to agree with all the policies of the Green party (I certainly don’t) but by voting Green you are saying that environment (and climate change) is top of your list and signalling to the mainstream parties that environment is what it takes to get your vote. What we need is the mainstream parties to incorporate environment, voting Green (even if they are going to lose) sends the signal that that is where the votes are. (only exception is if you have a v enlightened local representative of a mainstream party already)

And for a bonus 6) spread the word. Make it normal to be concerned and to be doing what you can.

I think all of us on here could do those things and it would start to make the change.

Vegetarian for last 40 years (not killing animals rather than environment)
Not been in plane for 20 years (have a lot of animals so don’t go on holidays)
Drive about 3,000 miles per year (working at home more and that was most of my driving)

Very commendable. As anyone would agree.

I eat meat about twice a week. I eat a fair bit of pasta and have a cheese habit.
I’ve not been in a plane for 35 years
I dont drive, have never driven, nor do I take the bus or train, at least for the last 7 years, and prior maybe once a week.

Apparently not as commendable.

Lets look at the case for mass vegetarianism of the UK.

What would be required to feed 65 million people as in the arable land we would need ?.
How would we tend those farms, how many people would be required to sow and harvest ?.
Would this sowing an harvesting be done by hand or by machine ?.
Where would we get the fuel for the machinery if used ?.
Where would this gigantic workforce live in order to be accessible to the farming land we need ?.
How would this produce be distributed and by what means would it be transported ?.
How would this transportation and distribution be paid for, the operators, the drivers.
How many are required to distribute and transport enough vegetarian foodstuffs to satisfy the population.
With the loss of other industry, given we now need a great deal of people to work on these… lets call it ‘collective farms’ how would the country function in other industries like manufacturing of clothes, televisions etc.
How would we pay for those industries ?.
etc
etc
etc
Vegetarian is a hobby for some to indulge in,but it is unsuitable economically for the whole country to adopt. It can only really come about as a lifestyle if everyone else works as before to enable it for the few.

grum
Full Member
We need to dramatically reduce the earth’s population.

I really fear for my boy’s future TBH. :-/

So is this a threat? 😆 Anyone phoned the polis?

local farmers are growing far more barley than wheat recently due to lower wheat yields, it’s funny the Mesopotamians civilization collapse was “foretold” with a shift from wheat to barley (though that may well have been due to the alkalinization of the soil rather than climate change).

What would be required to feed 65 million people as in the arable land we would need ?.

Not a direct answer but there’s this claim;

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https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets

Vegetarian is a hobby for some to indulge in,but it is unsuitable economically for the whole country to adopt.

Can you explain clearly with evidence your workings to reach this conclusion. Certainly what you posted above wasn’t clear nor evidenced.

I’m certain an animal is a very poor protein generator compared to a plant.

We’ve spent too long arguing about it all and now it’s most likely too late. Individuals have done their best with recycling, conserving energy etc but as a whole the human species has not really cared. There’s no point arguing about small and medium changes, it’s now time for wholesale alterations to the very basics in how humans interact with the world. But it won’t happen. The world is starting to burn, might as well stock up on marshmallows and enjoy the final ride.

I certainly wouldn’t want to having children now.

I’ve been telling friends and family since my mid-20’s that I don’t want any kids of my own as I don’t want the responsibility of their upbringing, which is true. But the second reason is that I couldn’t be responsible for causing a new human life to enter this future we have created. The world will most likely be ruined by human actions in my lifetime so why would I force someone with no choice in the matter to enter that future? I’ve got nothing against anyone else having kids, one of them could even end up being one who finds part of any solution, but I’ll happily do my part to bring population growth down.

So is this a threat? 😆 Anyone phoned the polis?

Hilarious 🙄

So is this a threat? 😆 Anyone phoned the polis?

It appears so…

Can you explain clearly with evidence your workings to reach this conclusion. Certainly what you posted above wasn’t clear nor evidenced.

Well can you first find some charts that relate to the UK only, and not the entire planet.
We’ll take it from there then.

Waiting….

I didn’t make the claim, you did. But I can just take it you neither have evidence nor even unevidenced workings to reach the statement in question.

To repeat…

I will keep coming back to this thread periodically to say that Government action is required ( and without it we are doomed) – education, regulation, taxation and prohibition.

Pushing the responsibilities onto individual people’s actions is a way of diverting blame and avoiding action by politicians who don’t want to do unpopular stuff

The most environmentally positive thing an individual can do is agitate to government action and vote for parties which support a properly green agenda

Arguing about individual actions is pointless and has all those who profit from lack of action rubbing thier hands with glee

Whilst all you lot argue we are ****

Thats my personal opinion(remember the free speech thing ? 😉 ) you are the one attempted to refute such a notion with charts and quotes. I pointed out those relate to the whole world, not the UK as i was referring to( “Lets look at the case for mass vegetarianism of the UK.”). Now you’ve got all defensive as you cannot find data to substantiate your initial claims and are going on the attack.

But all things aside, and lets just look at it not as a statement of fact but a logical look given the perimeters of my quoted question. Can the UK sustain total vegetarianism.
I say not. my point out that to do so will need to utilize a great deal of the UK’s potential workforce and probably all the land we have and can turn over to cultivation.
I point out the logistics of that aren’t being appreciated, because its untenable to just throw the notion of mass vegetarianism out there without being to back up the claims.

Anyone who follows a vegetarian diet,are perfectly entitled to do so. This is freedom of choice.
But it is not suitable for everyone in the UK to adopt or be forced into enmasse, and not the lifestyle others would choose and that is their freedom of choice.