Like many, I do what I can in my small way, recycling, reusing, buying less stuff, trying to reduce car journeys - although having a car is essential when the nearest SM is 40minutes away - and making the right choices where possible to reduce my carbon footprint.
It drives me bonkers here, however, that it’s extremely difficult to buy clothing in non-manmade fabrics, too many foodstuffs are still packaged in non-recyclable black plastic or are made of several different materials impossible to separate, that there are insufficient charging points yet (and expensive home electricity) to warrant switching my diesel car to an electric one. Change has to be driven from the top in terms of legislation to force manufacturers to enable the the consumer.
But there’s the rub. Currently the governmental push towards heat pumps and electric cars are, imo, the new diesel scandal waiting to happen. Has there been a proper analysis of their whole lifecycle carbon footprint, their reliability and efficiency in use and for the materials used in manufacture, the ability to recycle them? Neither are suitable solutions in many circumstances. How long before these are the new polluters and we will be urged to switch again to something else? Despite the best intentions, all solutions have an environmental cost somewhere and navigating the pros and cons for an individual consumer is fraught with difficulty.
Mountainous Northern Catalunya, Spain. Hot summers, cold winters.
Greenwashing and misinformation is a massive problem. Companies that were actively trying to promote climate change denial can now just focus on making people argue among themselves to detract attention from the wrongs they are doing.
Take the 'have one less child' example. It's shaming or guilting people into having no children at all in some cases, and I've been told by child free people that I'm selfish for having children. Yet in the future my children will be working and paying taxes to help keep society running for the child free people to enjoy. Who is more selfish? We need population control and targets but if we're struggling to fill care worker jobs now how bad would it be if we let the population suddenly plummet over a single generation? The 'one fewer child' graphic that's been posted here is based on USA statisics but is being used to encourage people from other countries to have less children. An average American is responsible for 3x the emissions of a person living in the UK, and with the way that 58.6 tons of CO2/child is worked out that makes the graphic even more misleading. The statistic tells us that someone who has an extra child at 20 is responsible for less emissions than someone who has an additional child at age 40. It's the same amount of emissions just spread out over a longer lifespan.
Or let's look at meat eating. We're often told that beef is the most harmful meat and given statistics to show how bad it is. Yet the stats rarely differentiate between Welsh beef and Brazilian beef for example, and the environmental impact of those examples vary wildly.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
I think the initial question here is not very practical but it is good to see that some people are making an effort to cause less damage to the planet. The issue in my opinion is not that the individual "you" is what is changing the planet drastically but the 7.753billion people who's combined actions are. The contribution each individual makes if it was equal to everyone else's would be a very very small percentage of the almost 8000,000,000 people that make up the total number of human beings on the planet. The actions of "you" on their own will as far as I can understand from the mathematics not save the planet.
So far governments have been far from convincing in what action should be taken. Here in Ireland we have carbon taxes that are now legislated to increase every year so even those on low incomes are made pay more if they use fossil fuels even when alternatives are for many not affordable. At the same time the national grid will not buy surplus electricity from people who could install solar electric panels and construction timber is having to be imported because the relevant government department has a backlog in issuing licenses to landowners with tree crops ready to sell. I also read that one of the leaders of the national farm research organisation also sits on the board of the major nitrogen fertiliser importer and this may explain why sustainable agriculture has been just given token support for decades while high intensity more polluting methods of production have been promoted.
Neither is the planet in my opinion in need of saving. We are on course to drastically change the planet to our own detriment and the detriment of huge numbers of plants and animals that will have to adapt to change or die. Whether we can survive in a sustainable way in the numbers the population is growing to and what other types of life will also survive on the planet is the outcome of our actions but in some form I think the planet will be OK and even if it is not as pleasant an environment in future it is likely to still be a planet able to support life of some sort (just not necessarily 8billion + human beings).
Yesterday I found myself examining where the blackberries in the SM came from. Having discounted non-UK berries, I was left with West Sussex or Perthshire. My UK geography isn't bad but I struggled to work out which of those large areas would involve travelling a smaller distance to east Lancs so I plumped for the Scottish ones as they looked better and would be less likely to have experienced heavy traffic on their journey.
Overthinking? Possibly. But at least I am thinking about it now.
Of course, if the Oregon Thornless I planted in the back garden last year ever decides to offer up any fruit, problem solved
Well one thing that all of us do on this forum, presumably, is have a garden or area covered with plants of all types, taking in pollutants and releasing oxygen. So we are trying at least. My local council in Nottingham passed legislation for the construction of a new road - right through a country park they had set up a few years previously!! Down came the trees and up came the shrubs scattering wildlife everywhere. Then they have just passed permission for new houses and flats running either side of the new junction of this road on alleged scrub land. Which is actually long grass with all the benefits that brings. Difficult to take the 'powers' seriously when we are being lectured by them! Carry on doing what we love in our millions of gardens though. 🍀👍
If only that happened @Biglad. Unfortunately Supermarket produce doesn’t come direct from the grower, everything goes to a central depot then shipped out from there, I dare say when I’m particular about buying Cornish potatoes, they’ve done a thousand miles before I get them.
Surely, less children means less care or less need for hospital beds. So the need to recruit care workers will be less.
Gardening on the wild, windy west side of Dartmoor.
Being poor is a pretty good way to not consume, but it limits choices on certain things.
The last flight I took was 4 years ago for my grandmothers funeral. I've flown longhaul 3 times (return flights of course).
We have one car it's 17 years old which is better for co2 production than buying a new one. We heat with wood in a modern furnace.
We have second hand phones (8 years old), computers and all furniture, kitchen appliances, garden equipment, trailer. nothing is bought new except tools and some of them are also second hand.
We grow 50% of our vegetables, all our potatoes, jams and pickles. We don't buy local veg as we are the ones that sell it.
We don't eat out, or change anything out until it breaks. We only have one bin but we do sort our rubbish and take the recyclables to the tip ourselves.
On the flip side we have no chance of buying organic food, or of buying clothes that do not contain plastic, nor do we have any chance in the next 15 years of having an electric car or solar panels (can't have a turbine we live in an area that they are not allowed due to a huge test center) Switching to electric heating would triple the heating bill and cost over £30k to install without putting in any insulation.
We live ruraly there is no bus, so we have to have a car shopping is limited there's nowhere that does things without packaging or in bulk. (closet zero waste shop is 108 miles away) We don't have children (not by choice) we do have dogs and cats, we do eat meat and have no plans to stop, if it were to become more expensive we would have to have animals again (we have 5 acres) We don't really eat fish, but it is sometimes given to me. I consider fish the least sustainable thing to eat you really don't want to listen to fishermen it's horrific.
In the "garden" part of my land we don't use any plastic other than plant pots and I have never bought a plant pot (without a plant) in my life. On the farm side, I use a lot of plastic, silage plastic for killing weeds, greenhouse plastic, string, labels, weed membrane. plant pots, produce bags, single use gloves, ties... The list goes on, in general it's a balance between time (cost) and plastic usage. weeding would be a full time job literally 40+ hours a week without it. And without plastic bags food waste would go up by 300% they keep produce so much fresher and longer than "naked" produce.
Neither is the planet in my opinion in need of saving. .. but in some form I think the planet will be OK and even if it is not as pleasant an environment in future it is likely to still be a planet able to support life of some sort (just not necessarily 8billion + human beings).
I don't think a human-created mass extinction event of other species and people is remotely 'ok'. You are talking about avoidable planetary genocide. This is what people mean when they say "save the planet" - they mean "save the life".
"not as pleasant an environment"
The poor go first and suffer most, of course. The developing countries, the children, those on lowest lying land, those in already dry regions, those in war-prone areas already fighting over land resources.
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But there’s the rub. Currently the governmental push towards heat pumps and electric cars are, imo, the new diesel scandal waiting to happen. Has there been a proper analysis of their whole lifecycle carbon footprint, their reliability and efficiency in use and for the materials used in manufacture, the ability to recycle them? Neither are suitable solutions in many circumstances. How long before these are the new polluters and we will be urged to switch again to something else? Despite the best intentions, all solutions have an environmental cost somewhere and navigating the pros and cons for an individual consumer is fraught with difficulty.
Overthinking? Possibly. But at least I am thinking about it now.
Of course, if the Oregon Thornless I planted in the back garden last year ever decides to offer up any fruit, problem solved
My local council in Nottingham passed legislation for the construction of a new road - right through a country park they had set up a few years previously!!
Down came the trees and up came the shrubs scattering wildlife everywhere.
Then they have just passed permission for new houses and flats running either side of the new junction of this road on alleged scrub land. Which is actually long grass with all the benefits that brings.
Difficult to take the 'powers' seriously when we are being lectured by them!
Carry on doing what we love in our millions of gardens though. 🍀👍
Surely, less children means less care or less need for hospital beds. So the need to recruit care workers will be less.