Saving the planet.

[Workingman]

Greta Thunberg inspired thousands, millions, of school children to take a day off to protest about climate change, and boy did she take some flak.

Today that protest evolved into workers around the world taking a day off, also to protest - more flak.

So, more of us are getting on board.... hmm.

But are all these protesters (an many. many more of us) going to start walking to work and school? Are they going to turn the air con and heating down? Maybe they will forego their overseas holidays. Perhaps they will 'pass' on the latest fashion / phone / video game / food / entertainment / cosmetics. Will they stop having more and more children?

I ask, because they are some of the things that are going to have to be done otherwise their headline: "You'll die of old age, we'll die of climate change." will come to pass.

Going on a protest walk with a single use plastic bottle of spring water just will not cut it. Sorry.

[saundra]

Poor kids now worry about the planet while parents take them every where by car
I honestly think it's impossible to impliment all these things especially in the far East China and third world countries
I do agree we can all make small changes plastic bags and such but I fear it won't change the world

[cromwell]

Kids are being taught to worry in school, then people wonder why mental health issues are on the rise amongst the young.

Climate change. Very fashionable with the chattering classes. Probably this is why the prices for holiday rentals in Whitby have gone up.

One thing though. This country does not produce enough food to feed itself; hasn't done for many years.

So, without all those nasty polluting ships and planes, how are we going to feed ourselves? How is the food going to get to this country?

[victor]

Most of them never think past the supermarket -it's just done by magic.
Saw a few in I.O W. yesterday ,carrying their water @ phones-laughable really

[Workingman]

I got the thread title wrong..... the planet will be fine, it's us who need saving.

I have been following this stuff since my late teens and I have to say that the science is with the kids. The big problems are that the different economies and our lifestyles are not.

It has taken centuries to create the world we now live in, but the most damage has been done in the past 50 years or so. We can't undo what has already been done and I am not convinced that even if we wanted to we could succeed because we are so tied in to the system.

If you are not sure just watch the adverts on TV.... Nuff said?

[TheOstrich]

I have a conflict over this.

Yes, there is a problem with climate change. Yes, it will affect future generations, but not mine. Yes, people should be able to voice their opinions.
But no, I do not agree with Extinction Rebellion and their disruptive protests, and no, I do not want to hear from Greta Thunburg or other children skipping school and yammering into TV cameras.

Why not? Because IMO it's pointless disrupting life at a local level when both the cause and the solution are multi-national and corporate-global, and completely out of our hands.

[AliasAggers]

it's pointless disrupting life at a local level when both the cause and the solution are multi-national and corporate-global, and completely out of our hands.

I quite agree, and I can't see how the matter is to be solved. The only possible solution would be for all countries to agree to take the necessary joint action, but by the time that
comes about, (if ever), it is likely to be too late to do anything worthwhile, by which I mean abandoning many of the developments and inventions of the last 100 years.

[Workingman]

I agree with what you are all saying. We are just pi55ing in the wind to make ourselves feel good. Yesterday Amazon and Google made great claims that they would be carbon neutral by 2030 - they are not the only ones. They might be able to do it using 'offsets' for their own operations, but the tat they sell us will not be carbon or environmental damage neutral. In fact if everything was carbon / environment neutral there would be no economy and no "us".

[Suff]

I got the thread title wrong..... the planet will be fine, it's us who need saving.

Well us and a few billion species who will go extinct early. But the gist is there. The planet will adjust. After all it was hit by a bloody great big asteroid which landed in about the worst place on the planet, vapourised a huge chunk of Sulphur into the atmosphere and caused a million year long Nuclear Winter. Not to mention millions of years of ice ages.

Yet the planet is here, humming along.

I was just writing about this elsewhere. it is something that I have noticed as a direct result of the ER muppets.

Over the last decade we had, finally, de politicised Global Warming and Climate change. It was about the science and the numbers and the numbers say that for around 7bn people (when the population is around 10bn), it's game over and they are dead. It was a good move, it allowed people to accept that paying a little now was better than genocide later.

But ER and our little 16 year old, Autistic spectrum, Schoolgirl, have done the opposite. They have politicised Global Warming again. It has allowed the political argument to resurface and to start chipping away at all the reasons we need to do things and all the costs we have accepted are layered on our lives to reach a CO2 neutral lifestyle.

The second part is that the youth of today have no stamina for a cause nor for an argument. Yet those that oppose them have nothing but stamina and will never stop in their attempts to take down the steps we have made in reducing our CO2 emissions.

It is no mistake that Thunberg is doing this. Her Autism, or mental health, issues, leave her little option. This is not true of the youth of today. They will move on with their lives and have their families and consume the goods that make their lives possible.

Yes, they will make changes. Just as the protests in the 60's made real changes in real lives. But, just like the 60's, they will only achieve a very small part of what they demand.

The real issue is that the human race does not have time for half hearted faddy efforts. It needs solid movement to drive our society away from a CO2 emitting lifestyle. I believe that those who think they are being so clever, today, will eventually damn the human race.

It is fact that the western worlds are either on hold with CO2 emissions (USA), or reducing, like the UK. I'm sure most people don't know that, today, the UK emits less than 65% of the CO2 it emitted in 1990. The UK is already at the verge of being compliant with the Paris accord and will continue towards 0 Net CO2 emissions.

India, on the other hand, grew net emissions by 6% in the last year alone. India is over 450% higher in CO2 emissions, today, than it was in 1990. The population of India is on a trajectory to increase by 300m by 2050. That is very nearly the entire population of the USA.

If the UK, France and Germany reduced their emissions to net 0 by 2050, India, on it's current trajectory, would overwhelm those emissions and more.

On the climate forums I asked why Thunberg was not in Germany, who's Coal usage is growing because they shut down their Nuclear power. Nobody was really getting into it. After all it's so sexy to protest in London isn't it? Lots of useful idiots including the Government who won't even stand up and tell everyone that the UK is one of the leading lights of the world in reducing CO2 emissions. No, let's not get a bit of reality mixed up with a good protest....

I, like WM, have followed this since my teens. I was interested when I saw a program about it in the 80's and have never lost that interest.

But a bunch of left wing Vegans, bullying Vegetarian's and telling us we're doing a bad job.... Go do a political rally about something else. Global Warming is far too important for them to screw around with to make a political statement.

[Workingman]

I have just been reading an article on the BBC

It is about microplastics and it frightens me more than climate change. These little bits of plastic are now found everywhere. They are in the deepest of oceans and the highest of mountains. They have even been found in snow falling on Svalbard - so they are even in the atmosphere!

They are eaten by the tiniest of creatures which then get eaten by birds and fish, which are then eaten by bigger birds and fish, which are then eaten by us. Plastic is becoming part of our diet, but with unknown outcomes. The good news is that we can use processes to cut most of that out - if we put the effort in.

However, the biggest of big pins on the scary scale came from scientists studying sedimentary formations. These formations will at some time become rock and they will all have layers of plastic in them. And the number of pieces in each cubic metre is increasing layer upon layer. We are creating a world of plastic or, as the scientists are saying, "We re entering the Plastic Age".

Personally I think we entered it decades ago. We humans have gone from the Stone Age to Bronze Age to Iron Age to the Industrial Age and now the Plastic age in about 10,000 years. This current one might well be our last. Forget us going to the starts, they will be out of reach forever. We might manage to get a few colonies on Mars, but we will then probably screw that place up as well.