Climate Change Survey

[Jun]

New YouGov study of 30,000 people in 28 countries and regions uncovers noticeable differences in attitudes between East and West.

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/science/art ... ate_change

I wonder why Thailand is so far up the list ?

[fountainhall]

Apart from government inaction, what worries me is the fact that, as shown in the final graph, only around 55% of those surveyed believed they themselves could be dong more. Every time I visit the supermarket, I am appalled at the vast quantities of plastic bags doled out. Equally, the cashiers rarely fill them more than about one third full. It took me a month or two but now I always have two fabric bags with me when I go shopping. But I am sure I should be doing a lot more in other areas of life.

[Jun]

Every time I visit the supermarket, I am appalled at the vast quantities of plastic bags doled out. Equally, the cashiers rarely fill them more than about one third full. It took me a month or two but now I always have two fabric bags with me when I go shopping. But I am sure I should be doing a lot more in other areas of life.

I am appalled at the fuss over plastic, since it diverts attention away from the main ussues. I see people driving to the supermarket in huge 4 wheel drive vehicles and possibly re-using bags to help their conscience. The big problem there is the CO2 coming out of the exhaust, not the plastic bags.
In the UK, the plastic bag problem is mostly solved by laws requiring retailers to charge 5p for them (well done to the government!). So waste is much reduced.

As for the bigger issues, well clearly governments need to be increasing taxes on fuel for transport, heating & so on. Unfortunately this is unpopular. At one time, it was UK government policy to increase fuel taxes above the rate of inflation, until some protests put a stop to that. I believe fuel taxes resulted in protests in France. Even worse, is the US, where there are low fuel costs and people drive around in huge pickups. Then they elect a president who wants to keep fuel costs low.
Fortunately, the US is one of the parts of the world expected to suffer from rising sea levels, so perhaps that might force some change.

I suspect that no matter what we decide to do, any reduction in consumption will just depress the oil price and result in more of it getting burnt in developing countries. I'm still going to avoid excess waste.
Another issue is excess population growth in certain countries.

I also hear about young people being concerned about climate change. As far as I can see, it's complete bullshit and that concern stops before they have to do anything about it.
For instance, there is a nearby house with postgraduate students living in it. ie People who should be educated. The outside lights are often on 24-7 and some of the windows get left open for hours at a time in the winter, which must bump up the energy use for heating.
From my experience, the young postgraduate population will often run a half full washing machine twice & use the clothes drier, rather than fill the washing machine and dry outside. They fill the kettle and boil it, rather than boil what they need.
When cooking, the gas remains on the full setting after the water has already reached boiling point.

One high profile young protester sailed a yacht to the US as part of a climate change campaign. Apparently, she then flew home whilst the crew who were to sail it back to Europe flew to the US.

[fountainhall]

1. I am appalled at the fuss over plastic, since it diverts attention away from the main ussues. I see people driving to the supermarket in huge 4 wheel drive vehicles and possibly re-using bags to help their conscience. The big problem there is the CO2 coming out of the exhaust, not the plastic bags.
In the UK, the plastic bag problem is mostly solved by laws requiring retailers to charge 5p for them (well done to the government!). So waste is much reduced.

2. One high profile young protester sailed a yacht to the US as part of a climate change campaign. Apparently, she then flew home whilst the crew who were to sail it back to Europe flew to the US.

1. I do think you are being rather cynical. I have no doubt your description of the postgraduate students is accurate and I condemn them for it. And of course you are absolutely right that far more should be done about carbon emissions from cars and other vehicles, coal-fired and other plants - and so on. But it is perfectly clear that is not going to happen as long as there are politicians answerable to constituents who will be thrown out of work and affected in other ways by such political acts.

As for plastic bags, what is a 5 pence tax going to achieve for those who are spending 400 or 500 times that amount on their shopping. Hong Kong has a similar tax that is now fractionally more than 5 pence. On my visits a few times a year I rarely see anyone doing anything other than paying up and continuing to use plastic bags! £5 might have much more of an effect! I think everyone should be forced to see videos of the interiors of whales and other sea creatures which have suffered a painful death as a result of swallowing vast quantities of plastic. I fully realise that this is more an issue for the cruise line industry and others that use the seas. But it is fact that 80% of all marine plastic comes from land-based activities. The World Economic Forum estimates that by 2050 there will be more plastic in the oceans than fish. Even though it is Asian consumers that are the main culprits - 60% of the plastic waste presently dumped in the oceans comes from just 5 countries: China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam - I believe all consumers should be aware of some of the more serious the effects of the use of plastic.

https://www.futureagenda.org/insight/plastic-oceans

2. As for the "young protestor", I assume you mean the young Swede Greta Thunberg. True, she spent three weeks sailing to New York. But the boat was specially designed with no toilets, kitchens or privacy. It was also fitted with solar panels and underwater turbines to generate zero-carbon electricity on board. If this is the youngster you mean, she has not flown home. She is still in the USA where she addressed lawmakers and will visit Canada and Mexico before heading to the Climate Change Conference in Chile. She will be travelling in North America by train and bus.

Thanks to her 'challenge', millions of young people in more than 150 countries joined an estimated 2,500 protests demanding action on climate change yesterday. This generation will all be affected by the actions of our generation and that of our parents. If the world's leaders are not going to take drastic action, I think it is amazing that there are young people like Ms. Thulberg who might even shame some into doing something. Just as I congratulate the students and former students from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School who are mobilising other young people to try and force changes into America's dreadful gun laws.

[Jun]

The plastic bag charge is quite effective in the UK. People know there is a charge, they know why it is in place and, most important they probably think they should try to reuse plastic bags. Perhaps the culture in Hong Kong is different and some work is needed to change that. Plus other Asian countries.

However, the main environmental issue is CO2. Primarily from heating/aircon, transport and energy generation. Electricity generation should go 100% nuclear and renewable. Solar seems ideal for a lot of aircon demand in hotter countries, as solar power generation should he high when aircon demand is high. Trains should be electric. Heating & aircon energy use should be reduced by insulation & the use of heat pumps (once we have zero carbon electric).

As for Greta Thunberg, it is widely reported that a crew flew to the US to sail the yacht home. So that's CO2 problem number 1. Then even though she is in the US now, how do you think she will get home ? If she is permanantly emigrating, I take it back.
I think it would be much better if the young campaigners concentrated on persuading people, including their young & wasteful colleagues to use energy efficiently.

As for me, well, I'm not going to quit flying, or even think about quitting flying unless the entire world has a concerted effort to severely reduce this. There is not much point in me cutting back, if thousands of new planes are built every year for the increasing demand. However, other than that, I am fairly energy efficient & try to avoid waste. I have a >50mpg car that gets very little use & for the house, I took maximum advantage of discounted insulation schemes a few years ago.

Fundamentally, I avoid WASTE, but as I see no commitment for the planet as a whole to fix the issues, I'm not going to go as far as cutting out flights.

[Gaybutton]

I see no commitment for the planet as a whole to fix the issues

I think it depends on what is considered commitment. I think most people in the world would very much like to see pollution cleaned up and climate change and global warming dealt with. If you really want to handle pollution, I think the first step is to get rid of the global powers-that-be who are much more interested in money, along with lining their own pockets, rather than a serious interest in doing anything about these issues.

It's grab as much money as you can and to hell with pollution and the people who have to live with it. Maybe they just don't realize that if nothing is done, there won't be much left to spend all that money on and we'll all end up eating Soylent Green.

[Jun]

I think it depends on what is considered commitment. I think most people in the world would very much like to see pollution cleaned up and climate change and global warming dealt with. If you really want to handle pollution, I think the first step is to get rid of the global powers-that-be who are much more interested in money, along with lining their own pockets, rather than a serious interest in doing anything about these issues.

I don't entirely agree. In many countries, the electorate have the choice of voting for more environmentally friendly candidates and they pass it up.

Where governments have attempted to do the right thing and keep raising petrol taxes by a few percent each year, the populations have eventually tended to protest, rather than modify their own behaviour by purchasing more economical cars and using them less.

The US is a particularly bad case, since they somehow elected Trump, but that is much discussed on other threads & we don't need another one.

Whilst there is much more to do, the UK is doing relatively well at phasing coal out & in some cases, the country has gone a couple of weeks with zero coal generation. Germany is a disaster, since their government has pledged to close down nuclear plants and coal burning is at a high level. For obvious reasons, Germany has much less opportunity for offshore wind power than the UK.

[Captain Kirk]

I think we're all probably hypocrites on the climate issue. We'll all sacrifice what we want to sacrifice but some of it we won't. We'll accept a certain amount of inconvenience, a certain amount of cost but we all have our own red line. I do the plastic bag thing, some can't even be arsed doing that much. I have a car - and I'm keeping it. I'm not standing on the street in the pissing freezing rain waiting for a bus in the middle of winter nor walking to a train station in similar conditions.
Now I'm well aware that at some point the politicians will attempt to tax me out of my vehicle and it may work but that's not them trying to solve the pollution issue, that's them making rules that means they can continue to drive their vehicles because they can afford it while at the same time preaching at the rest of us. I'd have more respect for them if they simply said petrol/diesel cars are all banned. Then we're all in the same boat at least. But I know politicians, the rules won't apply to them.
Climate change (significant) will eventually arrive whether anyone likes it or not. It's also one thing for richer developed nations to say we shouldn't do this or that but how can we possibly preach to developing nations, tell them what they should and should not do? We've all benefited from fossil fuels and now we want to say to them it's all bad so you can't do it? In their place I'd be telling the world to mind their own business (or words to that effect).

I, and many of you, will not be around to witness the full effects of climate change but I will die knowing that quite dramatic changes are on their way. That's an absolute certainty.

[fountainhall]

In many countries, the electorate have the choice of voting for more environmentally friendly candidates and they pass it up.

Surely that is not really a valid argument. Almost all political parties run on a varied platform of policies of which climate will be one of the relatively minor ones. Republicans in the USA are not going to suddenly adopt environmentally friendly policies, but that does not mean those Republicans for whom the environment is a key issue will necessarily switch to voting Democrat only because it places green issues more front and centre. And if a Green Party happened to materialise, I have difficulty believing it would survive in the existing political set up. Politicians are not going to solve the environment problems, if only because the necessary changes will take decades if not longer to materialise. Look at the gun debate in the USA. Despite a large majority wanting greater gun controls, nothing has happened even though school and other massacres happen with alarming regularity.

[Gaybutton]

if they simply said petrol/diesel cars are all banned.

It won't be long before they'll have to. Everything I read tells me the world's known reserves of fossil fuels will start running out in about 50 more years. If the world doesn't go to renewable resource, non polluting fuels and engines, imagine what the price of fuel will be by then. And when it starts running out, I can even envision wars over it.

Between the pollution, climate change, global warming, over population, running out of fossil fuels, etc, I'm glad I will no longer be around to see what is going to happen unless something is done - and soon.

So far science fiction has had a way of eventually becoming science fact. All those science fiction movies about the future, when civilization has virtually come to an end because of all this - I won't be surprised if that's exactly what will really happen.

Stephen Hawking predicted the extinction of humanity in about 1000 more years. I think he was wrong. I think it will happen much sooner than that - and we will have done it to ourselves. Considering the length of time human civilizations have existed, it didn't take us long. And this world might just be a much better place without us.

Who knows? Maybe humans really will be able to inhabit other worlds - and then we can fuck up those worlds too . . .

"God made the ocean
God made the sky
God made the people
God knows why"
- Lee Marvin (Ben Rumson), 'Paint Your Wagon'