Do older people need to have global warming explained to them?

Yup

I got caught up in the comments lol

Shinamae

Bottom line is humankind have f****d this planet in less than 100 years.. quite an achievement….

Sir David Attemnborough has made some valid points about overpopulation pbut is criticised by some as being extremist.

We are like parasites honestly

CoolCoco

None seems to care about climate change or waterways or our wildlife - more concerned with a few niceties of language. I give up.

Caring about the environment and children’s use of language are not mutually exclusive.
I’m very capable of doing both.

It might just be that some older people need help to understand global warming and others do not as they understand very well. We’re all different aren’t we?

The funniest thing is that I've picked up "wanna" from children, not the other way around

Besides, of course I teach children proper English. I'm with KS1 and I challenge anyone to undo "d" or "f" when they should be saying "th"

Anyway, just so we are clear, I've reported the personal attacks. I support education and the social and emotional development of small children so I have to stand by my principles when it comes to setting a good example to children about good standards of behaviour x

Shinamae

Bottom line is humankind have f****d this planet in less than 100 years.. quite an achievement….

The planet has been being destroyed for more than 100 years. Every new invention, intended to improve human life, whether weapons for hunting for food, because plants were not enough, plastic bags to save the forests wasted on paper bags, or electric cars needing finite resources of lithium mining instead of using fossil fuels is welcomed with open arms.
The difference is that we can now see what harm has been done and consider ways to stop future harm.

Generally, people just do exactly what they want - in the laziest, most convenient way. Then, they invent 'reasons' for doing it.

I really despair at the attitudes of adults/older adults/very elderly and yes, I do think the younger generation need to educate them (yet again) about the consequences of their actions - and drive home those vital messages. No, it's not a lack of information - it's a denial, a lack of change.

I can't see how a lifetime's experience brings wisdom, either. Any examples? It's just history, it's way out of date. All there is, really, is a stubborn reluctance to change habits, a refusal to make a real effort - just token gestures. It's 'Let's recycle our plastics, eat less meat, buy fewer clothes - and surely that'll do?'.

There's that same cognitive dissonance, again, that awful conflict between beliefs/ideals and behaviour/wants, the feeling of discomfort - and the consequent wish to justify that behaviour while attacking other's views. All very predictable human nature, all so depressing:

'There are five primary types of cognitive dissonance: post-decisional dissonance, dissonance from wanting something we can’t have, dissonance due to inconsistency between attitude and behavior, dissonance due to inadequate justification, and dissonance due to inconsistency between commitment and information. People invested in a given perspective shall—when confronted with contrary evidence—expend great effort to justify retaining the challenged perspective'

courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hvcc-psychology-1/chapter/cognitive-dissonance/

Hetty58

Incredibly well written comment

Hetty58
dissonance due to inconsistency between attitude and behaviour

Exactly what I have said.
Ask a group of children, teens, young people and older people like on GN what they know about global warming or climate issues and you will be flooded with knowledge, which is thankfully spreading.

Ask the same groups what needs to be done to help, and again you will probably get knowledgeable answers.

Ask the same groups how their knowledge has made them change their behaviour and you will get meaningful answers, including some given in GN.
Tie the questions down to specifics; possessions, travel, holidays, diets, habits, awareness of sources of what you buy . . . I’m sure you can add more specifics
and the answers are not so certain.

We still have posters asking about adverts for clothes which come from China, and talking about the bargain new clothes they have bagged. That’s an area where the message needs to be driven home.

Mollygo Tie the questions down to specifics; possessions, travel, holidays, diets, habits, awareness of sources of what you buy . . . I’m sure you can add more specifics and the answers are not so certain.

Of course. Dissonance is always present. Much like the woman with a diesel car - at least it was new and more efficient than old.

People often talk the talk - but they drive older cars/ more emissions. Holiday often. Dietary habits are questionable. Etc.

maddyone

It might just be that some older people need help to understand global warming and others do not as they understand very well. We’re all different aren’t we?

I think the problem is that a whole swathe of people of all ages just don't care, maddyone.

The title of the thread includes the words "older people" How many of us (I plead guilty) took that as meaning "people as old as us or older". To the children and teenagers the article is aimed at, "older people" means anyone over the age of about 25.
Just who is in the demographic that is most ignoring all the publicised facts about global warming and needs to have it all explained to them in words of one syllable by schoolchildren?

I was a child in the 1940s during WW2, a teenager in the fifties still under rationing and shortages, and a young mother in the sixties managing on one salary and a mortgage. In all those decades, we didn't waste food, we bought mostly locally grown or british food, because there wasn't as much imported stuff as now and it was mostly expensive luxuries. so our food didn't have a lot of airmiles.
Our holidays were visiting extended family - no air trips to exotic places.
Our clothes were more expensive than modern sweatshop stuff from the third world, so it had to last. It didn't go into landfill when we were tired of it.
We didn't eat in the street, so food packaging didn't pile up in the corners.
When we bought furniture, we expected it to last for a long time, we didn't change our whole decor every couple of years and throw out the old into landfill.
Heating a house involved carting buckets of coal into the house so we didn't heat every room all the time, and we had jumpers and cardigans to add if needed - and if someone left a door open they were shouted at to "Put the wood in the hole!.

At what point did all these little economies and ways to "reduce, reuse, recycle" - and "repair" go out of common knowledge and understanding?

The title of the thread says old people but the actual article says parents.

The article isn't about "make do and mend" but about what can reasonably be done to make a difference around climate change.

It isn't about schoolchildren explaining climate change in words of one syllable to the elderly.

As long as people make a virtue out of how they were all perfect environmentalists in the thirties then nothing will get better. That's completely irrelevant.

I wonder if the way of life you describe, Elegran, a way of life I recognise very well, started to change with the easy availability of credit? We used to save for things and look after them. It’s the way I still live, albeit buying with a credit card which I pay off each month. I look after things, I keep them, I rarely buy new clothes, I don’t like waste because that’s the way I was brought up.

It is not irrelevant, Volver, and no-one was a perfect environmentalist, neither have I claimed that they were. There wasn't enough available to them for it to be wasted or spoilt, so they didn't waste anything, nor shit on their own doorsteps. It was a way that people lived when they didn't assume that there was a wealth of untapped resources lying out there just waiting for them to grab as much of it as possible and throw into landfill what they didn't use, or what was no longer the most attractive they could see and want.

We are now in a situation where we are using up the resources of our earth home faster than they can replenish themselves, cutting down hardwood forests faster than they can regrow, filling our oceans with our discarded rubbish, using up rare metals for frivolous leisure technology, and sending plants into extinction that could form the raw material for new medical treatments. We need a similar mindset to the make-do-and-mend one again to reverse that trend, we shouldn't banish it as out-of-date - unless you have a new mindset to take its place that can be guaranteed to take root more effectively in the brains of the whole global population and actually motivate the pampered and unthinking to change their approach?

You could be right, GSM We could only get a mortgage for two and a half times one salary (and paying up that mortgage when we soon were indeed living on only one salary as our children arrived proved that the lenders were quite right in not countenancing lending any more than they did)

Within a few years house the advent of a safe and effective Pill persuaded the lenders that they could lend more multiples of two salaries - which was rapidly followed by a steep rise in house prices as couples realised that they could now afford to make a higher bid, and sellers realised that they could hold out for even more because there were more people out there who would bid against one another. The same applied in other areas. You could afford more for a bigger more powerful car if you took out a loan, and banks were keen to help you. The lenders made more out of the deal, from the rising interest rates. Credit cards made it possible to buy just about everything instantly- live now, pay later.

That’s exactly how I remember things Elegran. Our first house cost £1750. House prices took off very soon after that, no credit cards then but suddenly there seemed to be invitations to buy on credit, or with a bank loan, everywhere. It seemed to be the beginning of ‘buy now, pay later’, and whilst many of our generation saw the flaw in that some didn’t, and that ethos has been adopted by many younger people. I’m thankful that my son and daughter in law aren’t amongst them.

As long as people make a virtue out of how they were all perfect environmentalists in the thirties then nothing will get better. That's completely irrelevant

Not many even here able to remember the thirties. !.

But Elegran it’s missing the point. We can’t de-evolve society to be the way it was 80 years ago. While we might have been really good at being frugal, we were polluting the world with smoke from coal fires, maybe even filling the streets with horse poo. We had oceans full of effluent (well, we still have that today around England, but we shouldn’t have.) And we were making things extinct at an alarming rate. We thought it was OK to shoot the last example of any animal we liked because we were hungry.

To me, your view of how we all lived such blameless lives just lets people off the hook. We could all iron our wrapping paper to our hearts content, but unless you want to go back to frost on the inside of the windowpanes and baths once a week, we need change at a societal level. We need to find ways to provide the standards of living that everybody is entitled to expect, at a way that doesn’t use the resources of the planet unsustainably.

And we won’t get that by not eating in the street.

I’m afraid your original post at 14:43 smacks of the “young people today don't know how to cut back” attitude that doesn’t help get us anywhere. Climate change is a result of the industrial revolution, which happened long before the 40s; people alive in the 40s are culpable too.

Foxygloves

^As long as people make a virtue out of how they were all perfect environmentalists in the thirties then nothing will get better. That's completely irrelevant^

Not many even here able to remember the thirties. !.

Foxygloves Not many even here able to remember the thirties.

Or the 40s

It isn't about schoolchildren explaining climate change in words of one syllable to the elderly.

I may have exagerated by the elderly, but it is about schoolchildren talking to people in their 50s, with the belief behind it that the older generation do vaguely know about climate change but have no idea what they can do about it.

Which frankly is absolutely ludicrous because climate change has been of real concern for 35 years theconversation.com/30-years-ago-global-warming-became-front-page-news-and-both-republicans-and-democrats-took-it-seriously-97658 and we have heard more and more about itas time progresses, it fills the media on a daily basis with hints and tips about how to make small changes to our lives to reduce our carbon foot prints, while on a wider scale, scientists and engineers first involved in developing windfarms, making anything using electricity more energy efficient are now reaching retirement age.

So news features like this that encourage young people to teach their parents how to suck eggs are agist and patronising because many parents and grandparents know far more about the subject than the child trying to instruct them.

https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202304/medium-798201-screenshot-2023-04-23-194714.jpg https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202304/medium-178407-screenshot-2023-04-23-194655.jpg https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202304/medium-450315-screenshot-2023-04-23-194616.jpg

I may have exaggerated by the elderly, but it is about schoolchildren talking to people in their 50s, with the belief behind it that the older generation do vaguely know about climate change but have no idea what they can do about it.

No its not.

These are the parents in the article. One of their children is 17, one is 20 and one is 21.

Why are people so intent on misrepresenting the message behind this? Why is everybody talking it as a personal insult?

If anything, it's a warning

It's for the benefit our descendants

We each leave a legacy, shouldn't it be one where as little harm was caused as possible?