[Wellsy]

It is but the UK is one of the few European countries whose population is not projected to have collapsed by 2100, in fact it's projected to grow to make the UK the largest European nation (at over 80 million, with France in second place at over 70 million).

Most of the are looking at a big population decrease, only France and the UK of the big nations aren't looking at a population that's lower in 2100 than it is now.

[ali k]

The solutions won't be hydrogen planes or whatever bullshit Johnson can dream up next, it will be not flying. It wont be electric cars it will be not having a car at all.

The trouble is everyone seems to be focused on the future of EV cars or the evils of travel at the moment. But we all live in shockingly inefficient homes heated mainly by gas boilers at the moment. I read recently that assuming we started building incredibly low energy buildings tomorrow (passive house standard - including air source heat pumps, heat recovery ventilation etc), and retrofitted every existing home in the country to the same standard, which is basically impossible, then by 2050 we still wouldn't have enough energy from renewables or nuclear to power them (based on national grid projections). We're so far off hitting the govt's target of net zero by 2050 it's just a joke.

And is it any wonder that the govt continues to allow the volume house-builders to throw up the shite they do when the Tory party is funded by property developers? Is this going to change any time soon? Doesn't look like it. But equally - are we all going to spend £100k on retrofitting our own homes with masses of insulation, triple glazed windows, or heat recovery systems - even if that were possible? Probably not.

Basically we're fucked. That's my conclusion. Smiley face.

[TobyD]

The solutions won't be hydrogen planes or whatever bullshit Johnson can dream up next, it will be not flying. It wont be electric cars it will be not having a car at all.

The trouble is everyone seems to be focused on the future of EV cars or the evils of travel at the moment. But we all live in shockingly inefficient homes heated mainly by gas boilers at the moment. I read recently that assuming we started building incredibly low energy buildings tomorrow (passive house standard - including air source heat pumps, heat recovery ventilation etc), and retrofitted every existing home in the country to the same standard, which is basically impossible, then by 2050 we still wouldn't have enough energy from renewables or nuclear to power them (based on national grid projections). We're so far off hitting the govt's target of net zero by 2050 it's just a joke.

And is it any wonder that the govt continues to allow the volume house-builders to throw up the shite they do when the Tory party is funded by property developers? Is this going to change any time soon? Doesn't look like it. But equally - are we all going to spend £100k on retrofitting our own homes with masses of insulation, triple glazed windows, or heat recovery systems - even if that were possible? Probably not.

Basically we're fucked. That's my conclusion. Smiley face.

Erm yes I agree entirely, I was making a slightly flippant example. Johnson wants to rely on technology which doesn't exist yet to solve a real current problem (as he did with the Irish border, and that went well).
I don't think my contention was hair shirt to answer Pete's point, I'm not saying it's immediately realistic, but it soon would be if major cities were threatened by rising sea levels, or migration became 1000% worse due to exodus from equatorial countries that had become uninhabitable, surely? These things aren't immediately likely, clearly, but possible results of it getting a lot worse?

[teestub]

Basically we're fucked. That's my conclusion. Smiley face.

I tend to agree, Covid has shown that vast tracts of the population won’t take mild inconvenience in the face of an imminent threat. I can’t see any way of getting people to take inconvenience to combat a slightly nebulous but very serious future threat.

[ali k]

Sorry Toby I replied to you but it wasn’t aimed at you. Should have made that clear.

[Yossarian]

Re Chris's very tentative appeal to be allowed a trip or so a year. Having recently been dipping my toes into the current world of internet dating recently, I've been completely astounded by the almost absolute disregard for international travel as anything other than a massive jolly. Almost every other person is 80 countries and counting / I live for that next flight / identikit pictures in Petra, Dubai, groping a drugged lion somewhere in Africa, listing their Maldivian beach bucket list. And these are the women - I imagine the blokes are far worse. None of these people are going to curb their behaviour unless there's a serious disincentive. I head something on Today a while back about individual flight logging, with increased flight taxes based on how many trips / miles you do a year, which sounds like a good start...

[Steve R]

I tend to agree, Covid has shown that vast tracts of the population won’t take mild inconvenience in the face of an imminent threat. I can’t see any way of getting people to take inconvenience to combat a slightly nebulous but very serious future threat.

Agree with this sentiment.  Covid also highlighted a lack of resilience in systems and institutions as well as lack of global cooperation between nation states on what has 'mercifully' (overall perspective, lots of personal tragedies obviously) amounted to a relatively benign and relatively easy global coordination problem.  Climate change slower but a much harder coordination problem.  So lots to be pessimistic about but also a lot of hope and optimism to be had re. climate.  Even with just the current (ultimately clearly inadequate) mitigation measures, there's a reasonable amount of runway before things get really bad.  A pinch of futurist optimism looking how the exponential rate of progress on earth is ramping up fast now, it's not too difficult to imagine climate being solved in a fairly short time horizon.  There're also promising looking runway extension measures in the offing - the impressive Kelly Wanser on a few ideas here: https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/kelly-wanser-climate-interventions/
2050 is long way off, various game changing mitigation, pipeline tech and power gen likely to arrive before then?  probably maybe.  As for 2100?  I'd say all bets off -  AGI and attendant intelligence explosion more likely than not before then?
In an optimistic mood, seems to me there's probably sufficient runway (and currently feasible runway extension measures) for future innovation to solve climate or at least continue to extend the runway sufficiently so that, admittedly more by chance than measure, humanity and the planet has an escape velocity away from significant climate disaster.  Climate change and it's knock on effects clearly well worth worrying about but in the hierarchy of things imperilling humanity and the planet, my sense is it's probably a good few places off the top spot.   

[Bradders]

Re Chris's very tentative appeal to be allowed a trip or so a year. Having recently been dipping my toes into the current world of internet dating recently, I've been completely astounded by the almost absolute disregard for international travel as anything other than a massive jolly. Almost every other person is 80 countries and counting / I live for that next flight / identikit pictures in Petra, Dubai, groping a drugged lion somewhere in Africa, listing their Maldivian beach bucket list. And these are the women - I imagine the blokes are far worse. None of these people are going to curb their behaviour unless there's a serious disincentive. I head something on Today a while back about individual flight logging, with increased flight taxes based on how many trips / miles you do a year, which sounds like a good start...

Not wrong. The people I work with (FTSE 100 financial services firm) are terrible for it, constantly jetting off every which way. Not one of them have yet expressed a viewpoint that would indicate they intend to curb that activity, despite all sorts of new governance structures and initiatives coming in with a climate change prevention basis (I.e. they certainly should be conscious of it).

Let's face it though, climbers are generally no better!

[ali k]

So, what about new little humans aka kids? Should people go without them? They're by far the biggest contributor of CO2 compared to every other contributor

Our exalted leader had a few words to say on this subject back in 2007:

”The primary challenge facing our species is the reproduction of our species itself.

As someone who has now been travelling around the world for decades, I see this change, and I feel it. You can smell it in the traffic jams of the Middle East. You can see it as you fly over Mexico City, a vast checkerboard of smog-bound, low-rise dwellings stretching from one horizon to the other; and when you look down on what we are doing to the planet, you have a horrifying vision of habitations multiplying and replicating like bacilli in a Petri dish.

The UN last year revised its forecasts upwards, predicting that there will be 9.2 billion people by 2050, and I simply cannot understand why no one discusses this impending calamity, and why no world statesmen have the guts to treat the issue with the seriousness it deserves.

How the hell can we witter on about tackling global warming, and reducing consumption, when we are continuing to add so relentlessly to the number of consumers? The answer is politics, and political cowardice.

It is time we had a grown-up discussion about the optimum quantity of human beings in this country and on this planet. Do we want the south-east of Britain, already the most densely populated major country in Europe, to resemble a giant suburbia?

All the evidence shows that we can help reduce population growth, and world poverty, by promoting literacy and female emancipation and access to birth control.”

Said a man who went on to father seven children (that he admits to). But I guess if they’re all with different literate and emancipated females that doesn’t count, right? 

[petejh]

Are you intimating that he should have stuck to masturbation?

[TobyD]

Are you intimating that he should have stuck to masturbation?

Being a total wanker is the only thing that Boris Johnson appears to possess a competence for.

[mrjonathanr]

Not quite, being repressed and despising the lower orders also figure highly I expect. I have read similar articles before, but this one about the Eton experience is particularly well written:
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/aug/08/public-schoolboys-boris-johnson-sad-little-boys-richard-beard

(Off topic, but it seems the obvious place).

[ali k]

Are you intimating that he should have stuck to masturbation?

I wish his dad had!

Just pointing out the spectacular hypocrisy of the man we have at the helm - leading by example as we navigate the climate challenge. Birth control is just for the feckless mothers on council estates and brown people. Need to get from London to Cornwall?…maybe I’ll take a private jet. Approving a new oil field in the North Sea sounds like a good way to hit my net zero target and set a good example ahead of Cop26

[seankenny]

Basically we're fucked. That's my conclusion. Smiley face.

This is the other framing that we need to ditch, and as soon as possible - seeing climate change as an absolutist, either/or situation. If each degree or fraction of a degree of warming represents extra human suffering, then clearly any positive change is going to be better than nothing. Better as in reducing the suffering of your children, your grandchildren and probably yourself. Taking a "we're fucked because it's not perfect" is of course an invitation to do nothing because the problem is so overwhelming. I fully expect this will be a common right wing talking point in the coming years. I guess I also expect some people to succumb to a kind of climate-related despair and for climate-induced suicide to be another mental health issue affecting the young. The current generation of over-65s clearly care little for the mental health of younger cohorts (or themselves, to be fair) but I'd like to think the age group prevalent on UKB has a slightly more enlightened approach. What are we willing to do to help them?

I read recently that assuming we started building incredibly low energy buildings tomorrow (passive house standard - including air source heat pumps, heat recovery ventilation etc), and retrofitted every existing home in the country to the same standard, which is basically impossible, then by 2050 we still wouldn't have enough energy from renewables or nuclear to power them (based on national grid projections). We're so far off hitting the govt's target of net zero by 2050 it's just a joke.

And is it any wonder that the govt continues to allow the volume house-builders to throw up the shite they do when the Tory party is funded by property developers? Is this going to change any time soon? Doesn't look like it. But equally - are we all going to spend £100k on retrofitting our own homes with masses of insulation, triple glazed windows, or heat recovery systems - even if that were possible? Probably not.

This ties back into the article I linked to above - our response to climate change, either actual or conceptual - utterly lags behind the scale of the crisis we face. It's quite clear that we're going to take a massive financial hit whatever we do. What percentage of world output are we going to be spending on climate change? The OECD reckons 5.5% of GDP in 2050 if we act, but maybe 14% of world GDP* if we don't. That's a lot! To put that in context, the loss of world GDP 1929 - 32 was very similar. And of course the bills don't suddenly all come due on 1 Jan 2050. So for those that truly care about the bottom line, mitigation is your thing.

But of course, we don't think like that yet.

Many of the technologically minded posts on this thread kind of miss the point (to me). I have a degree of faith in mankind's ability to find clever technical solutions to problems, but that's not the issue. It's having a change of mindset that's vital - and really fucking hard. Building the kind of long-term institutional change we need is not going to come naturally to our politicians, not because they are awful but because they face certain incentives. The demands have to come from us.

I see something like Steve's post that climate change isn't our most serious threat as the kind of sophisticated bargainning we're all going through (or are going to start going through), that technology will save us. It's only half the story - and there's the obvious kind of bootstrapping problem that if we are going to knock climate change off the top spot we have to admit that it's there right now, otherwise we don't invest at the scale we need.

As for the pandemic, I think we've seen a majority of people take on board the seriousness of the problem and take something approaching the correct measures. This is in the face of piss poor government policy and messaging and a torrent of misinformation. There are always going to be idiots who can't see anything approaching the greater good, no matter how severe or imminent the threat. I saw something on Twitter the other day suggesting that in WW2 there were 950,000 blackout breaches (there was a link to a PhD thesis on this but alas I've lost the link so might be wrong).

I obviously agree with all the Johnson-related angst on this thread! The man's an idiotic monster.



* Source: https://www.oecd.org/env/indicators-modelling-outlooks/oecdenvironmentaloutlookto2050theconsequencesofinaction-keyfactsandfigures.htm

[petejh]

Let's face it though, climbers are generally no better!

All the steel alloy you ever used in your climbing life was probably made by burning metallurgical coal, of the type from the proposed mine in Cumbria. But in future that steel could be made by electric arc furnace from scrap steel. Prices for steel alloys likely to rise though - £25 quickdraws...

[Fultonius]

Let's face it though, climbers are generally no better!

All the steel alloy you ever used in your climbing life was probably made by burning metallurgical coal, of the type from the proposed mine in Cumbria. But in future that steel could be made by electric arc furnace from scrap steel. Prices for steel alloys likely to rise though - £25 quickdraws...

Not often you get eh chance to correct Pete. Making me doubt myself.... But they ain't steel (well, haven't been for a while - maybe your rack still is???)

[petejh]

Ha! No you're correct 
I was thinking of the rope access stuff we use, not thinking that all the stuff I use recreationally is aluminium alloy. As you were. Still.. aluminium...

[SA Chris]

I've been completely astounded by the almost absolute disregard for international travel as anything other than a massive jolly. Almost every other person is 80 countries and counting / I live for that next flight / identikit pictures in Petra, Dubai, groping a drugged lion somewhere in Africa, listing their Maldivian beach bucket list. And these are the women - I imagine the blokes are far worse. None of these people are going to curb their behaviour unless there's a serious disincentive. I head something on Today a while back about individual flight logging, with increased flight taxes based on how many trips / miles you do a year, which sounds like a good start...

This. As well as things like the competitive surf tour. And business; at the company I once worked for the CEO flew to NY for the day to sign a pledge to reduce carbon emissions in the shipping industry...

[Falling Down]

Just in case no-one is paying attention to the news, the sixth IPCC report is out today.  The last one I think was published in 2013. 

I can recommend Alastair McIntosh’s book Riders on the Storm to help understand what’s going on and what we might do about it.  The first half looks at the science and the positions of the denial lobby and the “we’re doomed”, deep adaptation camp.  The second looks at the options and choices we have, both as individuals and institutions to navigate the future.  It’s a good, thought provoking read.

Personally, I’m trying to make as many changes as I can to limit my own impact but also contribute locally and influence the business I work for as far as possible.

[Fultonius]

I've been quite enjoying this series on R4:

https://podcasts.files.bbci.co.uk/m000qwt3.rss

39 ways to save the planet. (in the case the link doesn't work).

[andy popp]

I find this idea that people, for example, shouldn't have a car in future nonsensical as that approach to the problem of climate change is completely counter to thousands of years of human development and human instinct itself.

This is a highly teleological take on human history - neither evolution nor instinct have fated us to become automotive societies. We have been automotive societies (societies significantly structured around personal ownhership of cars) for, at best, a century and that outcome was not determined but was the result of choice (in reality, a huge complex of choices, but choices nonetheless). Choices are always available to us as societies.

The US is the ultimate example of this. At the start of the C20th the US was a nation built by railroads - it was railroads that had created the possibility of a national market and economy rather, for example. American cities were amply equipped with public transport systems. The car destroyed that (often also physically destroying communities as highways connecting suburbs and downtowns were driven through poor neighbourhoods). This didn't happen simply because people preferred cars but because of regulatory choices that privileged the car (and the trucking industry). Intercity rail networks evaporated, over time, and cities themselves became choked with cars. This is true of British cities too, though perhaps to a less extreme degree. Increasingly, we have restructured them and our lives around personal car ownership. Now we believe they are a right and a necessity. No-one living in a city should need a car simply to function.

I find the idea that it will be impossible to persuade people to imagine living without owning a car to be as fatalistic as the hairshirt, we're all doomed perspective.

[teestub]

Great post Andy.

On the wider point of altering people’s behaviour, in terms of flying for example, what other ‘sticks’ are available to the government besides taxing things to an extent to stop them being an option for anyone but the rich? Any sort of personal ‘carbon allowance’ seems like it would be impossible to implement.

[i.munro]

Great post Andy.

On the wider point of altering people’s behaviour, in terms of flying for example, what other ‘sticks’ are available to the government besides taxing things to an extent to stop them being an option for anyone but the rich? Any sort of personal ‘carbon allowance’ seems like it would be impossible to implement.

Surely a simple - each person has a limit if x miles per year can't be that hard to implement for flights.
Personally I think x must be zero.

[petejh]

Timely.. pasted from the Telegraph. Covid travel restrictions being a dry-run for climate travel restrictions. Posted without comment.. other than absolutely fuck being poor in climate-zealots world.


https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/08/06/covid-used-excuse-stop-cheap-travel/?WT.mc_id=e_DM1475451&WT.tsrc=email&etype=Loy_Dig_Tri_200526_TopStories&utmsource=email&utm_medium=Loy_Dig_Tri_200526_TopStories20210807&utm_campaign=DM1475451
Prior to the launch of the first package holiday (London Gatwick to Corsica in 1950, six hours via Lyon), most ordinary folk had a fortnight at a British seaside resort, enduring long car or coach journeys, inadequate service stations and challenging B&Bs.

But once you could buy an entire holiday in a shop on the high street, complete with paper vouchers and luggage labels, the world turned upside down.

Thousands of Britons were soon flying chartered planes to Majorca, the Costa Brava, and Sardinia, courtesy of the first mass travel company Horizon.

Competition came quickly:  Wings, set up in 1955 by the Ramblers’ Association, advertised package holidays to Portugal costing 49 guineas for two weeks (about £1,180 today).

By the 1960s, demand from tourists was boosting airport growth; Luton was one of the first to capitalise on the opportunity. (Later, the airport’s role in mass tourism would be immortalised in an award-winning ad for Campari and lemonade, the ultimate package holiday drink.)

The annual shiny Lunn Poly or Thomas Cook brochure could be collected from  your high street travel agent and pored over at home, en famille. Each year, there were new and ever-more exotic destinations: Corfu Town, Albufeira, Naples, Dubrovnik. The hotels promised in-room TVs, three-star dining, local entertainment and day trips. Package holidays went upmarket with Roman ruins and butterfly farms, while souvenir shops offered cheesecloth dresses and hand-woven bedspreads.

Yet still for most the main idea was to spend as much time as possible in the sun.  Night times were for fun at the disco, retsina and waterside dining watched by a horde of feral cats.

Over time two tiers of fliers emerged: the ones who “travel”, and then everyone else, who “go on holiday”. The former look down on the latter, sneering at the way they buy flight and accommodation as a unit, rather than – the ultimate virtue signalling – booking one’s own flight and calling that charming hotel your best pal told you about, in the sort of exotic destination that requires at least three vaccinations – and this pre-Covid. While no one seems to begrudge this kind of thoughtful traveller – casually offsetting their CO2 via an app, cheerful Costa-mongers are another matter. And have been for quite a while.

And so Covid may now have become an excuse for doing what some of our elitist leaders have perhaps dreamed of for years: putting an end to the cheap package holiday.

But while the talk now is of the need to keep expensive testing and complicated rules – in place, this undeclared war on cheap travel is unlikely to end with Covid. There will be others looking to stop the bargain-bucket Benidorm crowd for environmental reasons.

Already, powerful government advisers have mass travel in their sights as they ponder how Britain can meet the government’s legally binding target of reducing carbon emissions to net zero by 2050. For them, Covid restrictions have been a dry run for how our lifestyles might be curtailed in future for the good of the planet.

Yes, that would mean turning the clock back to the era when travel was so complicated and expensive that only the most dedicated and economically blessed among us would consider getting away. And as the numbers of putative passengers to Spain, say, fell, then there would be fewer flights, and those would be offered at higher prices. Throw in testing that costs as much as the holiday itself and suddenly, the sort of ordinary Brit who has come to depend on their annual dose of vitamin D wouldn’t be able to afford it anyway.

Keeping the masses off planes would delight well-off travellers - the sort who assuage their own guilt by buying carbon offsets and who shudder at the fly-and-flop crowd at the boarding gate.

Among those who see Covid as a dry run for restricting our freedom to travel is Dr Susan Michie, member of the Sage committee and director of the Centre for Behaviour Change at UCL. 

In a Channel 5 News interview in June, she said: “We need to think about the way we plan our cities, our transport, our lifestyles – instead of going back to huge long commutes, we have more local hubs where people don’t have to travel so much – good not only for health but for the environment – the environmental crisis is the next one down the road.”

In other words, now we have conditioned the public to expect lockdowns and other restrictions, let’s use them to cut carbon emissions. 

Sir David King, the former chief Scientific Adviser who set up the shadow “independent Sage” committee and the similar Climate Change Advisory Group, is another who might not want to let the opportunity slip.

Last September, he wrote in The Washington Post: “The pandemic ought to make fighting climate change easier, serving as a model for responding to the climate crisis. While it did so at a huge cost to the economy, it has proved that large swaths of the population could change their behaviour and lower the trajectory of emissions — not over decades but in a matter of weeks.”

His argument somewhat ignores an important point: the public supported restrictions on the basis it was a brief response to a disease threatening to kill large numbers of people in a short time.

However much you dress up the dangers of climate change, it isn’t going to be solved with restrictive measures over weeks or months. If a government was going to try to cut carbon emissions by announcing a ban on, say, holiday flights, it would have to stay indefinitely, or until some alternative technology was invented.

The public might be a little less keen to accept that. Except, perhaps, if they can be either put off going away (the cost, the effort) or frightened into changing behaviour (disease, global warming) forever. 

So the culture war over travel has begun.  Government ministers from Johnson and Sunak down are already modelling the responsible, patriotic and green style of holiday: a sodden staycation in wellies and a coat. It’s one that would suit the World Economic Forum (WEF), which carries on its website a piece by Arthur Wyns, former climate adviser to the World Health Organisation, saying: “The global health crisis we find ourselves in has forced us to dramatically change our behaviour in order to protect ourselves and those around us, to a degree most of us have never experienced before. This temporary shift of gears could lead to a long-term shift in old behaviours and assumptions, which could lead to a public drive for collective action and effective risk management.” 

Can we take that as a promise that the WEF will no longer be inviting the great and good to fly to Davos in their private jets? I fear not. You can be sure the wealthy will carry on travelling, while lecturing the rest of us on climate change. I don’t doubt that, given half a chance, the PM will be jetting off to some borrowed villa in the Caribbean once again.

Covid will be used to justify interference in the lifestyles of ordinary people – by a global elite which, to judge from the fact that G7, COP26 and other beanfeasts are carrying on regardless, are immune to changing behaviour. Life is returning to normal for those important people, who get swept through empty airports without being imprisoned for 10 days at the Holiday Inn. But for the rest of us, the byzantine rules on travel and the cost of complying with them are a foretaste of what is to come. 

[SA Chris]

Engineer another coronavirus seeing they did such a good job on the first?

Personal travel - I don't think much else other than taxation.

For corporate / industry there can surely be heavier taxation / carbon limitation / subsidies for not using as much? I'd like to think a result of the remote working over the last would be the realisation that you don't need to go halfway round the world to shake hands on something and then go out for lunch?

This culture needs to be instilled in largest organisations as part of their environmental initiatives, and then their suppliers and sub-suppliers will hopefully follow suit.

(this was a reply to teesub)