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

Governments could help by banning the use of private jets. If people fly, they should at least fly on a full carrier, not take a huge jet just for themselves.

volver3

^What are you doing to save the planet?^

Vegetarian for 30 years.
All the usual recycle/reuse stuff.
Inventing a new solar panel material.
Marrying someone who created a new system for measuring tree cover.

What are you doing?

It is rather short notice to retrain for a useful new career like yours or your husband's, Volver. I am not sure we would achieve very much from a standing start. Sorry, but I think most of us will have to confine our contributions to yoghurt cartons and trying to find a politician brave enough and trustworthy enough to get voted in on a platform of global warming and then stick to his guns to get it through.

How much CO2 does the internet produce per year?

According to a study by the Boston Consulting Group, the internet is responsible for roughly one billion tonnes of greenhouse gases a year, or around two per cent of world emissions.

For everybody except Mollygo.:

I generally try to ignore her.

It's my failing that sometimes I don't

Must try harder.

I’m laughing at you V3. You shouldn’t be surprised. You are so funny.

Mollygo

volver3

What are you doing to save the planet?

Vegetarian for 30 years.
All the usual recycle/reuse stuff.
Inventing a new solar panel material.
Marrying someone who created a new system for measuring tree cover.

What are you doing?

🤣🤣🤣

What are you doing?

Laughing.

Yes, why am I not surprised.

Germanshepherdsmum

I expect he would have created his new system whether you had married him or not so that claim fails.

Well you might think so but I couldn't possibly comment.

And has anyone, in this thread about conversations between generations, posted that what Greta Thunberg (and David Attenburgh and others) have said is NOT the right thing? I may have missed something while I was away from the screen?

volver3

^What are you doing to save the planet?^

Vegetarian for 30 years.
All the usual recycle/reuse stuff.
Inventing a new solar panel material.
Marrying someone who created a new system for measuring tree cover.

What are you doing?

🤣🤣🤣

I expect he would have created his new system whether you had married him or not so that claim fails.

Action and legislation by governments is essential. Their decisions are made in parliament by our elected representatives. We put our cross opposite the candidate we believe will vote for what we think is the right thing to do, and who seems to be capable of sticking to his campaigning promises. After that, if we wish to and are capable of it, we can demonstrate, write to MPs or to the media and do whatever else seems likely to influence our beloved leaders to act for the benefit of the whole globe instead of the bank balances of themselves and their party donors.

However, not everyone is capable of going on demonstrations, nor of being a keyboard warrior, or of growing their own vegetables. Recycling yoghurt pots is is easy to deride, but it is only shorthand for the things that those other people could be doing. What they don't do can also contribute. If no-one flew halfway round the world to holiday in an exotic destination several times a year, it would be a great help to reducing the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Not buying replacements for stuff that is almost new would cut down the amount produced by manufacturing. Using public transport instead of a car with one person in it would use less fuel and produce fewer emissions. And so on and so forth.

What are you doing to save the planet?

Vegetarian for 30 years.
All the usual recycle/reuse stuff.
Inventing a new solar panel material.
Marrying someone who created a new system for measuring tree cover.

What are you doing?

volver3

You have no idea what I believe. Stop trying to pretend you do.

Try to get past the paranoia, that would be a start.

You make grand assumptions about others.🤣🤣🤣
What are you doing to save the planet?

We will never be able to get this fixed while people cry "it wasn't me and you're trying to make out its all my fault."

Keep recycling your yogurt pots folks, but alongside that accept what Greta Thunberg says might just be the right thing and that vicars sitting in the middle to the road aren't trying to ruin your life.

I'm so angry.

To think I said otherwise is just that paranoia showing again
I don’t think it is appropriate for anybody to be making (hysterical) accusations about paranoia.

You have no idea what I believe. Stop trying to pretend you do.

Try to get past the paranoia, that would be a start.

Whereas you don't believe that middle generations could be diverting guilt onto older generations who were not psychic enough to predict the future?

In my own defence, just this - I didn't say the problems were known about then, I said the root causes had started then.

To think I said otherwise is just that paranoia showing again.

don't read this thread as saying it is pointless and purposeless. That is your negative view of the reactions of the (dare I say it, the older ) posters on here.

Those are the actual words M0nica used!!!! Not me!!!

I was wording a sensible reply to your earlier post, but instead I'll just say, pay attention to what's said and try to recognise that as lot of the complaints about this topic are born out of the guilt of some posters and the attempted diversion of responsibility to younger generations.

I don't read this thread as saying it is pointless and purposeless. That is your negative view of the reactions of the (dare I say it, the older ) posters on here. The article is fine, if you read it right through, but *Monica might have chosen a better title.

We read the title, which referred to "older people" As those "older people" we replied that we had for almost a lifetime been doing a lot of the sensible things that are being pushed at the moment as a new initiative, aimed at righting the sins that "older people" committed. Those "older people" have been laughed at for decades by "younger people" for our "hoarding" of the supplies in our cupboards and our old-fashioned way of re-using things like plastic food contaners in our fridges and freezers instead of throwing them efficiently straight into the dustbin as modern youg people did. It is not the crumblies who need re-educating about reducing, re-using and re-cycling, it is the middle generations, in between us and the schoolchildren.

We don't think that discussions between the generations are useless, we would just like it to be two-way and non-patronising. There are things to learn in both directions. One of them is how previous generations actually lived.

volver3

M0nica

volver My DGC are 12 and 15. Their parents are both in their 50s. The average age for a first child in the UK is now 31, and the number of women giving birth at well over 30 has been rising for several decades. My DDiL was not exceptional when, 15 years ago, she had her first child in her late 30s. - and where does it say that the children featured are the eldest in their family?

Lookat the figures in this link www.comparethemarket.com/life-insurance/content/changing-age-of-uk-parents/ It shows that between 2000 and 2018 the number of babies born to women over 35 has risen from 100,000 to 153,000

You ask also why people are misinterpreting this article, what is your interpretation and why are you so sure that you have the right interpretation?

My interpretation is in my OP.

Your interpretation: schoolchildren teach their elderly/50-ish parents how to suck eggs about something everybody has known about for decades.

My interpretation, which is what the article actually says: young people learn how to discuss lifestyle changes with their parents, who are of indeterminate age.

Then you say that people in the 40s must share the blame, because the problems were known about then. Who to? The general public or theoretical researchers?

Were you there, spreading the predictions and training the public in how they should be making sure that their grandchildren didn't take advantage of the new labour-saving materials and disposable nappies that were going to be flooding the market in the future, or having central heating in their so-far-unbuilt matching shoebox houses?

They had radios with Itma and Vera Lynn, but no TV, no digital phones or laptops to hammer the message whenever they sat down to browse. They were getting air-raid warnings nightly, dodging flying bombs that demolished homes with hardly any warning, living out of ration books for food and clothing, standing in queues at multiple shops hoping to add some unrationed stuff to their tables. When the bombs stopped, the peace brought damaged and traumatised demobbed fathers home, to temporary homes and the same ration restrictions as when the merchant navy supply ships had been running the gauntlet of submarines during the war.

They would have laughed at you. Peace was going to be Nirvana. Nae problems.

I'm not a "children" person. I don't get it sometimes, the adulation that they seem to inspire.

But the BBC run an article about how young people can approach their parents about a topic that's important to them, and I'm not the one calling it pointless and purposeless.

Jeezy peeps. 🙄

My interpretation, which is what the article actually says: young people learn how to discuss lifestyle changes with their parents, who are of indeterminate age.

But that is pointless and purposeless. Young people and the adults in their lives have always discussed changes in lifestyles. It is part and parcel of ordinary chit chat of family life not some big deal.

Are you suggesting that children now are incapable of talking to their parents and vice versa?

Of course we need governments to take drastic action, we need controls on manufacture, responsibility for what is created, it's use/reuse/recycle and disposal.

Incentives for planet-friendly (well, less damaging) alternatives to everyday items, building regulations, heating, water and transport use - all need to come from legislation.

Still, I dislike the 'What's the point in little old me doing stuff when the government isn't?' excuse. It reminds me of that saying:

'The only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the world is that good men do nothing'