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

OK, Nowt to do with us then. We can just carry on destroying the planet, eh?

Well quite honestly you could be as profligate as you like but unless the governments of the world get their act together on energy generation and biodiversity, its won't make the blindest bit of difference.

My yogurt pot recycling isn't going to change the world.

No Volver I am not missing the point,you are. I have never suggested that everyone should go back to the thirties or live in the cinders eating rotting turnips before going to bed with newspaper over them, or that doing that would turn everyone into plaster saints.

I never even mentioned the thirties because I wasn't there! (Though if I repeated things I heard from those who WERE there it would make your hair stand on end) - I am not even demanding that we go back to the forties, fifties or sixties, which I do have experience of. A more frugal life was not a choice then, it was forced upon us, but now material goods are more readily available to more people, so there are more by-products to dispose of environmentally. The details now have changed, but the general attitude of making maximum use of what you do have and being aware of the effects of how you dispose of your waste is the same, from the carbon dioxide in your car exhaust, through the mountain of "disposable" nappies with plastic backing that you consign weekly to landfill to the 5-year-old kitchen that you replace because the black marble top is now out of fashion

What I am saying is that "society" ( an umbrella word for "people in general") needs a can-do attitude instead of a "someone should be providing xxxx for me but I don't need to look after it it" one. Why do they expect to have modern standards of living laid on but not expect to turn off the hot water tap when they have enough water? to have flush toilets that magically remove all the waste but a lot of people still haven't got the message that wet wipes do not disintegrate when flushed and will eventually clog a drain somewhere.

Ordinary people in the 40s didn't know that the population was going to expand as exponenially as it did, or that the world would welcome easy-life, plastic, disposable everything so enthusiastically that the debris will be around long after mankind has become another failed civilisation.

I knew this quote (Mark Twain, unsurprisingly) was skulking at the back of my mind so I looked it up and IMO is both applicable and relevant to this argument;

“ When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years .”

So we need to vote for Governments that do get their act together and stop voting by whether are going to raise or lower our taxes by a fraction of a penny. Then we have to pay attention to the limits they will place on all the things that are well-known to be contributing to global warming.

Elegran

So we need to vote for Governments that do get their act together and stop voting by whether are going to raise or lower our taxes by a fraction of a penny. Then we have to pay attention to the limits they will place on all the things that are well-known to be contributing to global warming.

This, we agree on.

The parents in the article or the photo could well be in their fifties. You can't tell from their looks - clothes, makeup and hairdyes render people ageless It isn't just 20 year-olds who have children, you know. To have children of 17, 20 and 21, they could be a mix of anything between 35 and 60.

So they could be 35 and their children aren't schoolchildren teaching them to suck eggs.

Again, why are people so intent on misrepresenting this article?

Because they were answering the original post with the title including the words "older people" ?

Not everyone answers the statements made in the article that is referred to in the post, for various reasons, some more valid than others. Instead, they answer what they can read on the thread and in the thread title. It is better to read the text at the horse's mouth, but it isn't a cardinal sin to skip that and rely on the original poster instead.

...and propagate the misinformation and perpetuate the myth.

volver3

...and propagate the misinformation and perpetuate the myth.

✂️✂️✂️

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.

Elegran

No Volver I am not missing the point,you are. I have never suggested that everyone should go back to the thirties or live in the cinders eating rotting turnips before going to bed with newspaper over them, or that doing that would turn everyone into plaster saints.

I never even mentioned the thirties because I wasn't there! (Though if I repeated things I heard from those who WERE there it would make your hair stand on end) - I am not even demanding that we go back to the forties, fifties or sixties, which I do have experience of. A more frugal life was not a choice then, it was forced upon us, but now material goods are more readily available to more people, so there are more by-products to dispose of environmentally. The details now have changed, but the general attitude of making maximum use of what you do have and being aware of the effects of how you dispose of your waste is the same, from the carbon dioxide in your car exhaust, through the mountain of "disposable" nappies with plastic backing that you consign weekly to landfill to the 5-year-old kitchen that you replace because the black marble top is now out of fashion

What I am saying is that "society" ( an umbrella word for "people in general") needs a can-do attitude instead of a "someone should be providing xxxx for me but I don't need to look after it it" one. Why do they expect to have modern standards of living laid on but not expect to turn off the hot water tap when they have enough water? to have flush toilets that magically remove all the waste but a lot of people still haven't got the message that wet wipes do not disintegrate when flushed and will eventually clog a drain somewhere.

Ordinary people in the 40s didn't know that the population was going to expand as exponenially as it did, or that the world would welcome easy-life, plastic, disposable everything so enthusiastically that the debris will be around long after mankind has become another failed civilisation.

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

We're pushing 80, have daughters 60 to 40, GC / GGC/ GGGC pushing 40 to newborn. Ages people have children vary.

It seems the parents in the article are our GC/GGC age.

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.

All governments today are obsessed with growth. We must have growth. If we don’t have growth apparently it’s a bad thing. Growth means that the public have to buy things. They have to buy more and more things. Buying more and more things leads to the use of more raw materials and more manufactured materials. Massive consumption is what governments want, but it leads to further global warming and pollution. We do need to learn to live without the conspicuous waste that we see around us every day. Recycling is good, reusing is good, fewer miles travelled is good, but until all governments really grasp the mettle, little will change globally.

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'

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?

Jeezy peeps. 🙄

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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