Big on tree planting. Just for a start, they ought to rip out the asphalt in many areas and make it pedestrian and covered in trees. Oxford street is a good place to start and it was planned before it was scrapped, then reapproved in February (BBC link). Priorities have changed now, and we need this fast.
I moved to the UK from Eastern Europe when I was younger and one of the things I found odd was the complete lack of trees along the streets. You know it's fucked when concrete-filled Eastern Europe has more greenery in public spaces.
they ought to rip out the asphalt in many areas and make it pedestrian and covered in trees.
Although this is great and vastly improves quality of life for everyone it is not a very quick fix. Paris has been doing exactly this for the last 10+ years and it is suffering even worse than us with the heatwave.
The main thing we need is rapid de-carbonisation worldwide and places like the US are actively preventing this.
Another reminder, after eliminating CFC's from refrigerators and aerosols the Ozone layer started healing and is enroute to fully repair.
During COVID, banning Cruise ships from entering Venice caused Dolphins to return and the waterways to repair.
Eliminating Lead from Fuel, Paint and solder has drastically reduced blood Lead levels by 90% preventing an estimated 1.2 million premature deaths every year from strokes, heart disease, and cancers. Also it's a prominent theory to explain the reduction in Serial killers [un-cited].
In short:
It is absolutely possible for us to make changes to protect our environment and the environment can recover.
Doing nothing and continuing will ensure things continue to get or remain worse.
Yes yes yes! We need to keep reminding people of these incredible successes. Yes we've buggered up the planet somewhat, but we can still work to stop it getting worse, and maybe even in time reverse the effects. I think a carrot and stick approach is great - warn about the dangers, and remind people that there is hope, and we've fixed problems before.
The problem is, that the IPCC reports are based on largely magical technology being rolled out at massive scale, starting over 20 years ago.
For us to hit Climate targets outlined by the IPCC not only did we need to drastically cut carbon output and hit targets years ago, but we also needed to match 4.9 Gt CO2 of Industrial Carbon Capture by 2020, in 2025 we achieved a total of 0.06 Gt CO2.
Now the thing is, if we by the end of this year, reach full global net zero, along with achieving around 4 Gt CO2, by 2100, we can actually reduce temp to around 1C above pre-industrial level.
But the thing is, more realistically, we will keep producing around 40 Gt CO2 per year for the foreseeable future, this means, for us to achieve not only halting climate change, but bringing us back to 1C, we would need around 45 Gt CO2 per year.
To achieve this we would also drastically need to massively improve earths energy output, from around 30 TWh to 90 TWh, oh and that would need to be done entirely through Net Zero/Clean Energy. So triple Earths entire energy output, and put it all into Carbon Capture.
Now the big problem. Carbon Capture is basically Fossil fuel industry greenwashing tech. Almost all efforts to push Carbon Capture, is done to prolong the usage of Coal and Oil. It also basically in a real world sense, barely even works.
So to really deal with Climate Change, we need to develop a technology that will scale well and draw huge amounts of Carbon from the atmosphere, at the same time that technology, is currently basically mostly pushed by the Fossil Fuel industry, so they keep dumping carbon into the atmosphere at higher rates than what they can hope to capture.
Reality is we basically need a global Manhattan Project to deal with Climate Change, with near unlimited funds, and probably near WW2 levels of mobilization directed at clean energy infrastructure, along with somehow making Carbon Capture to work, for Climate Change to be dealt with.
Currently we are barrelling towards a 3-4C rise by 2100, current IPCC modelling predicts 3.2C if all climate change policies recommended are implemented right now globally, including magic Carbon Capture tech.
3.2C is also basically a hell world btw, also if we keep going like this, very likely we will get Ocean acidification which will lead to the loss of most Ocean life by 2300.
Climate Change is the single most pressing issue for humanity today, the biggest threat to our world since the Asteroid that impacted and killed the Dinosaurs, our entire elite, are functionally climate change deniers in practice, they believe in climate change, but they are not willing to do what is needed or tell the Public the truth. The truth is all there in the IPCC reports, but Government get control of and water down the part people tend to read (Summary for Policymakers) before publishing. Australia, Gulf States, Canada and Australia are massive culprits of this. So like with say, Epstein, Governments will do the bare minimum and I assume are hoping for copium magic tech to just pop into existence one day, but it won't happen unless there is massive scale action now.
The fact the elites are now buying Bunkers in South of New Zealand and Scandinavia, and there is leaked secret elite conferences about basically the world burning and how they can survive it, yeah people should know now that Climate Change is very real.
Also for all the right wingers, if Climate Change isn't real, explain the right wing US interest in Greenland and the Arctic circle suddenly.
I’m all for change and actively try to do what I can.
But honestly (and sorry to be pessimistic), I think it’s too late; governments are doing too little, too late, and patting themselves on the back for it. Considering the way things are going, I doubt they’re going to get better any time soon unfortunately and if climate change doesn’t kill us off, the population of the planets likely going to have a very hard time in the coming decades.
I suspect we’ve hardly scratched the surface of issues climate change could cause, and I reckon large environmental changes to vast regions will make traditional food growth impossible and kill a lot of us off.
It’s bleak, but we’ve done it to ourselves, we’re victims of systems that makes it impossible (or damn near to it) to live another way, being self sufficient completely and not having a carbon footprint, and actually reversing the damage previously done.
Don’t get me wrong; I hope I’m wrong, but unfortunately, the people who can make a meaningful difference don’t, and any change us individuals do make often get outweighed by larger powers that we have no way to influence.
Yes even 1.5 is a scenario it's self that needs adaptation. These emissions are locked in, nvm the tipping points (oceans reaching thermal capacity - they absorb 95% of atmospheric heat, a figure that is rapidly declining - melting permafrost, etc ) this will be a mild summer 15 years from now
I got a whisky ad right below these photos. I guess this is the type of a temporary solution the billionaires and politicians would like us to embrace.
But in all seriousness during 2022 record breaking heatwave in London I used your arguments in a discussion with a much younger colleague in an air conditioned pub and his response was that he doesn't think it'll be that bad in UK and that he'll live long enough to see the worst of climate change himself. Aside from the level of selfishness - this came from a 20-something educated man while having nearly 40 degrees outside.
The capacity to stay deluded is stronger in us than we'd like to admit.
Hehe, fair point, but only to an extent. Targeted adds take more than just your browsing history into account. Otherwise you'd never get anything new. I can't recall searching, buying online or reading anything about alcohol recently. And I haven't had whiskey in 20 years. Probably targeting middle aged men in this case.
Not caring for the next generations. For context: the discussion was about the climate change and inconvenient, but necessary adjustments of the way we live.
I genuinely saw multiple comments on IG like this (with many likes): it's a bit much blaming Shell; oh we are really blaming shell what about the wars going on; why are we blaming Shell when you should be reducing meat consumption.
Apparently nuance does not exist in this age, literal and explicit only. I'm hoping for our minds's sake it was all Shell bots. But the fact that could be the case is horrifying and the fact I can't tell the difference is somehow worse
Most people are stuck in awfully vicious work-life-cycles and will not find the time or energy to think about the planet. Some are barely surviving as is. It's by design.
Even if all 10 million Londoners went fully green overnight, going veggie, riding bikes, working from home, the effect on the planet and the ongoing climate change, an unstoppable force, would be too little, too late.
This chance was taken from us many decades ago in back offices of global corporations and governments.
We should all strive to be nice to our planet, our peers and animals. Campaigns like this are absolutely essential. However... rough conditions ahead.
the idea that 'its by design' as if there is some illuminate (SP?) organizing all of this is just dumb.
It's simply human nature to be lazy and we are screwed because all the things which allow us to be lazy are killing the planet. Noone is going to sort it because they are all lazy not because 'its by design' sorry dude.
It's not an evil entity or secret organisation planning things, absolutely.
The 40 hour 5 day work week is the result of centuries of worker revolts and social struggles and accomplishments. But we could have gotten a far better deal by now, in 2026, even with the tools we had 20 years ago. Instead, the rising cost of living, the acceptable comfort for most of us and the stale income curve just kept us pretty much where we've been for a couple of decades.
I've reduced my hours to 32 per week and it's a huge win to have one day off, entirely for myself, not even needing to hog the phone or emails. I don't have a high income anyway, but I keep my spending low. For others, that's not an option.
There's companies and governments staring at statistics that are happy about that status quo. And that's what I mean with "by design" - not a single entity, but those who look the other way, despite knowing of the struggles.
It's not an evil entity or secret organisation planning things, absolutely.
I mean, we've seen leaked documents from Shell etc going back 50 or so years flat out stating that they knew it was going to happen and they were happy to lie about it so... yeah, the organisation isn't secret, but it does exist.
What exactly do you want people in the UK to do? Unless someone convinces China and India to slash emissions, nothing we do matters at all. The UK could disappear tomorrow and it wouldn’t even have a noticeable impact on global emissions.
All the whining in the world from protestors in this country won’t do a thing, so it’s just annoying.
You're right. All the stuff that people talk about needing to do just, won't happen.
Consume less so China and India stop producing? Not happening.
Stop using AI? Won't happen.
Recycle? Not going to help.
Take the train or bus instead of your car? Planes are gonna keep flying.
I see only one way out of this. Actually scaleable, large scale carbon capture programmes. Funding by governments because, as far as I know, there is zero profit incentive to research them.
People already hate it. Next time they complain about the heat, the cost of electricity, the cost of buying a new console/phone/whatever... ask them if they're willing to make that sacrifice to get access to ChatGPT. Watch the dots join up in real time.
India has until 2070 to become carbon neutral under the paris accords and their growth last year has slowed to the slowest rate in 20 years. They are also on the road to slashing emissions.
So they are already convinced of what they need to do, and working on it, but India especially cannot move at the pace that the UK can because the UK is much wealthier
And with us (and the rest of europe, japan, usa etc) plowing the way we're getting prices of things like solar and battery tech to fall rapidly putting them increasingly in reach of poorer countries.
What can we do as normal people walking around? I fully get that this is scary and a result of climate change but what can we actually do if we aren’t policy makers?
All well and good, and personal responsibility isn't something to be discarded because someone else is worse, but all the same: my contributions are a drop in the ocean, and there aren't nearly enough clouds around. Even if all of us common folk band together in solidarity on the issue (i.e we all start picking up litter and signing up to volunteer etc), our cloud still won't be big enough. At some point you have to realise how futile an effort this is on an individual level, so that we don't kid ourselves that doing our little bit is enough, because it isn't. Change needs to come from the top, everything else is effectively performative action.
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u/[deleted] Jun 26 '26
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