>I don't doubt the legitimate concern of her generation over climate change

How can they have any other, it's pumped into them from birth along with whatever else is flavour of the month. When some little kid starts talking in line with what the adults are saying, the approval is just that of how successful their conditioning has been on the younger generation. I'm not being funny but kids are pretty idiotic when it comes to the wider world (not that they can't be highly intuitive).

The cult being built up around her is just another cog in the propaganda machine, the same machine that trained her to say it in the first place.

>>425686
You're so cool, thinking for yourself.

>>425686

Read the IPCC report. This is not a fad, this is not propaganda, this is not conditioning, it is an irrefutable catastrophe. If we do not act now, young people will inherit a climate that is irreparably damaged and drastically more hostile to human life.

https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/

>>425687
If you think a little kid knows bugger all about the world other than what its been told, you're a moron

>>425688
Flavour of the month or set in stone fact, it doesn't make a difference. I'm not being conspiratorial here, I don't care one way or the other but the narrative is being pushed and the girl is simply part of the narrative.

>>425688

> and drastically more hostile to human life

Worth noting that this is mainly something that concerns our species. A planet that has bounced back from several global extinction events in its history will shake off the human impact to it without a problem no matter what we do to it. It is us who depend on global climate conditions remaining within a very narrow corridor of tolerable temperatures, rainfall, and sea levels and polar ice cap extension. And even just 15,000 years ago towards the end of the last ice age, the global climate would never have supported a human population of seven billion even with our current technology because it was far too cold. Conversely, during much of the Mesozoic, sea levels were tens of metres higher and there were probably no ice caps at all and global average temperature was in the mid-20s Celsius. Life was doing just fine with all that going on. And life will adapt eventually even to the very sudden climatic changes of the last 300 years. But human life and human existence and civilisation will be disrupted by a one-metre sea level rise or the Gulfstream dying down or widespread drought and soil erosion, and that is the point. In the greater scheme of things, it's about saving our own arses, while life itself in the long run, like I said, will be almost entirely unaffected on a time scale of millions of years.

I have no idea who she is but then I don't own a tv so not being in tune with the zeitguiest isn't much of a revelation.

>>425686

I remember when I was young I used to get praise like I was a genius when I repeated back the opinions of adults around me. When I started to form ideas of my own suddenly I didn't know what I was talking about and was stupid. I presume this child is just doing that.

>>425689

I don't think most adults know much about the world other than what they have been told. When was the last time you performed a scientific experiment to verify a peer reviewed paper, charted the path of the planet's to confirm their course is consistent with going around the sun or visited a war zone to verify the situation on the ground.

Shifts of perspective are rare and most people are far too close minded to consider anything beyond the culture they grew up in and I doubt she has lived a varied enough life yet to update and review her beliefs.

>>425690
>the narrative is being pushed
The idea that it's being pushed reveals a conspirational mindset. That may not be a specific conspiracy theory, but still. The line of self-interest is much less clear than with the converse argument: That we're going to be fine.

The next few decades are going to be incredibly grim and incredibly stupid if current trends continue unabated. If you want a vision of the future, imagine the crew of a destroyer livestreaming themselves flossing in front of a torpedoed refugee ship, forever.

>>425692

>and I doubt she has lived a varied enough life yet to update and review her beliefs.

That's kind of asking a lot from a 16-year-old though.

I just read that she has Asperger's. Not sure what to really do with that information. She apparently said that without Aspergers, she would not have her dogged determination.

>>425691

Quite when algie first stalked the the earth they poisoned and killed practically every living thing that had come before them by releasing a highly volatile corrosive chemical called oxygen. Once they finished polluting the sea they then fillies the atmosphere with it causing massive climate change that covered the entire surface of the earth with ice for several million years.

When plants came about they formed cellar structure that had never existed before that couldn't be chemically broken down and their dead matter covered the entire earth to a level several meters deep.

People who think we are capable of fucking up the earth as badly as they did and that life on earth won't adapt to carry on are quite presumptive about their significance.

It is also with mentioning the current sea level is in a geological sense absurdly low. The average sea level across most of the time we have been able to chart is about 100 meters higher than it is now. We are basically operating on the good fortune of the current location of Antarctica and presuming that to be the norm.

>>425693

There is nothing conspiratorial about acknowledging that you get consensus in beliefs regardless of their validity.

I grew up in a time where food products were purposely fat free and you should avoid eating eggs that trend has entirely reversed. I have seen nuclear power switch from being the thing environmentalism was against to to something seriously considered for it's 'green' virtues.

No one is free from bias everyone has their beliefs it later turns out aren't true, and regularly the momentum is decades behind the cutting edge of knowledge.

>>425695

Like I said, our species and our civilisation depend on conditions on this planet remaining within a very narrow corridor of parameters. While the Earth has looked radically different from the way it does now at different times in its history, and at least in the last 500 million years was never completely inhospitable to complex life. To life as such, it really does not matter in any way, shape, or form if sea levels are one, two, or even ten metres higher.

>>425694

If it is asking a lot for a 16 year old then I don't think it is unreasonable to dismiss her opinion as not well thought out and popularist, and therefore no different to asking Russell Brand about his political views.

>>425692
>I don't think most adults know much about the world other than what they have been told.

I don't disagree but I'll leave that judgement until I've heard what they have to say and how they say it. With a 16 year old, unless they're supernatural or are an 160iq savant I can say almost with certainty that they don't have a scooby doo.

>>425693
>The idea that it's being pushed reveals a conspirational mindset.
Not at all, we can call agree greens and exercise and fresh air are good things and not an plot to poison us but when some government agency comes up with an idea to promote that, or an advertising agency plasters a pair of wobbly tits next to can of coke with the suggestion that sipping a sickly brown syrup will have those badboys bouncing on your bonce, they're pushing that idea, that's the narrative.

There's certainly a lot of that going on from lots of sources, you can't turn around without getting a facefull of impending global disaster and the girl is a good avatar to promote that message, she's cute and a sperg and everyone can coo and pinch her cheek and nod along because she's saying what they were already thinking.

Now you're going to think i'm some cunt who wants to have the freedom to burn piles of tires next to a primary school.
The whole climate change thing as it stands in the west seems like a bit of a moot point really, i'm really all for eco fascism in a way but the way it's utilised is just as a means of control.
The yellow vests thing in France was a prime example, they used climate change to pile on more taxes on diesel drivers, while all the diesel cars in France pump out less pollution per year than a single large container ship loaded with crap sailing back and fourth between Shanghai and Marseilles.

It's a matter of scales, if the UK just stopped using all fossil fuels tomorrow, no coal power, no cars, no heavy industry, went back to some Arcadian agrarian existence or just disappeared into a black hole, it'd take just a year or so for China alone to make up that pollution shortfall with their own increased pollution output.

It's basically all pointless and not really about stopping climate change or it somewhat is and they just think it's also a great excuse to coerce and fuck you up the bum.

>>425698

Nobody's opinion matters on questions of fact. Climate change is happening and it will have catastrophic effects on humanity unless we act urgently. I think this girl deserves some degree of praise for bringing attention to these facts, but it's ultimately irrelevant either way.

>>425699

China's CO2 emissions peaked in 2013. They are a global leader in renewable energy and buy more electric cars than the rest of the world combined. China emits about the same amount of CO2 as the US and the EU combined, but their population is almost twice as large and we've outsourced our most polluting manufacturing to China. They're doing the hard work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/09/business/china-hastens-the-world-toward-an-electric-car-future.html

Per-capita emissions in the west are dramatically higher than in the developing world; it is incumbent on us to take moral leadership and meet them in the middle rather than expecting them to bear the costs of CO2 abatement without enjoying any of the benefits. It is also incumbent on us to invest in the development of sustainable technologies.

>>425700
>Nobody's opinion matters on questions of fact. Climate change is happening and it will have catastrophic effects on humanity unless we act urgently. I think this girl deserves some degree of praise for bringing attention to these facts, but it's ultimately irrelevant either way.

Firstly I don't think you know what facts are and how they relate to option and truth. Global warming is a 'fact' because it is the 'opinion' of a majority of climate change scientist that it is the 'truth'. It is entirely possible that the current models are wrong because of some additional factor not considered. Or one of the minority theories is true. What is in the popular arena as a 'fact is just a consensus of opinion and interpretation. Literally look at any 'fact' or theory that has been debunked that was once the forerunner to demonstrate this point.

Which brings on to the second and more important point. This girl is not an expert she has no professional reputation. She is just believing what she was told by someone else who was told by someone else.
Does she have a reasoned explanation for why the ice volume on Antarctica is currently growing and what that means to the predictions? Is she aware of the latest data at all? No she is not an expert and is therefore not a idea champion for any cause. I would much rather we listen to scientists directly then use the hunger games as an instruction manual for how to do politics. I would much rather that we live in a technocracy then we treat normal peoples opinions as mattering and informing policy on these things.

>>425699
>The yellow vests thing in France was a prime example, they used climate change to pile on more taxes on diesel drivers, while all the diesel cars in France pump out less pollution per year than a single large container ship loaded with crap sailing back and fourth between Shanghai and Marseilles.
Honestly I'd say this is less part of the narrative, and more just because of our cack-handed political institutions
If we accept global warming is real and needs action to avoid or mitigate, but also have a current consensus on the role of the state, etc and few current environmental problems, we run into a problem pretty quickly: The consensus role of the state differs from the role the state has to take to be the primary actor against climate change. Politicians can't really consciously turn the state around or give it much more power in the market without a crisis to justify it, so they can only use existing powers. By the time the crisis that would justify expanded powers arrives, it will be too late. The existing powers can only do wanky things like impose petrol taxes, rather than something serious like throwing billions of pounds at developing environmentally friendly technologies and infrastructure. That may have been perfectly acceptable in our pre-1980s vision of the state, but it's no longer the done thing. (Except in defence procurement, har-har.)

So what's left is for the state to pray to god the private sector does it alone, which doesn't appear to be happening. So you get the spectacle of the government decrying global warming without actually taking radical action.
(That probably sounds like I'm pushing for a big lefty solution. I'm not, I've already basically accepted we're doing nothing. It's just to illustrate the kind of choice-problem faced. The same kind of thing probably happens inside companies. Shareholders want high returns and to be alive. Now if only every other shareholder would take lower returns, I could boost mine a bit in the short term...)

I think the debate should be reframed. Most people want to breathe clean air. Most people want to drink clean water. Most people don't want to drive animals to extinction. Most people do not want to fill the seas with plastic. The way the debate is framed at the moment it makes most people feel like helpless bystanders who can't make a difference rather than encouraging them to take their own little part.

An increasing number of people are eating meat alternatives and Quorn have found that this is largely driven by health concerns rather than not eating meat for ethical reasons. Rather than scaremongering or talking in vast terms that make people feel insignificant it needs to be framed in a way where people can see a direct and tangible positive change.

>>425688
>If we do not act now

>>425700
>unless we act urgently

I loathe language like this, but I think that may be because the type of people I've encountered IRL who use it tend to be rather clueless so they rely on vague and emotive platitudes that make them feel nice and fuzzy inside, despite the fact they're not really doing anything practical about the issue, because it "raises awareness" and they want to be able to take credit for doing their part when those actually being constructive manage to achieve something.

>>425699

>The yellow vests thing in France was a prime example, they used climate change to pile on more taxes on diesel drivers, while all the diesel cars in France pump out less pollution per year than a single large container ship loaded with crap sailing back and fourth between Shanghai and Marseilles. 

Similarly, in Germany, the old debate of a speed limit on the famous Autobahns is being touted again at the moment as a simple and effective means of cutting back CO2 emission. There are estimates that a 130 kph/80 mph speed limit will reduce CO2 emission by two to three million tons a year over the current status where some 60 percent of German motorways are still unregulated. In the greater scheme of things though, that is not even a drop in the ocean, considering that the U.S. alone releases five billion tons a year into the atmosphere, and China twice that even.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions

Luckily, ze Germans aren't easily swayed. When the debate unfolded again a couple of months ago, after years of dormancy, protest was fierce and the ruling coalition parties are mostly afraid to even touch the issue lest they incur the wrath of tens of millions of voters.

I've got close friends in Germany that I visit regularly, and driving on the Autobahn there is just a joy. Road discipline is incredible, and even at 110 mph, traffic runs efficiently and orderly in a way that only the Germans seem to be able to pull off. If ever there was a people who were meant to drive fast, it's truly the Germans.

>>425706

Makes sense I too sacrifice goats to please the gods and bring about the rains, just in case.

>>425702

>Firstly I don't think you know what facts are and how they relate to option and truth. Global warming is a 'fact' because it is the 'opinion' of a majority of climate change scientist that it is the 'truth'.

That's not how it works. The data says that atmospheric CO2 levels are rising well beyond usual trends. The data also says that global temperatures (particularly ocean temperatures) are rising well beyond usual trends, in a manner that is correlated with CO2 levels. The opinion of climate scientists isn't particularly relevant; there simply isn't any alternative explanation for the data that makes any mathematical sense. All of that data is in the public domain, as is a full explanation of how that data was gathered. It has been checked and re-checked and re-checked for methodological validity and nobody has found any significant errors. You're welcome to come up with your own explanation, but that explanation is only valid if it accounts for the full picture of evidence.

>why the ice volume on Antarctica is currently growing and what that means to the predictions?

That's not true. Antarctica is gaining sea ice but losing land ice, with a net result of rising sea levels. The rate of loss of land ice is accelerating. The total global glacier volume has fallen by about 18%.

https://skepticalscience.com/antarctica-gaining-ice-intermediate.htm

https://phys.org/news/2019-02-ice-volume-anew.html

>I would much rather we listen to scientists directly

But you aren't listening to scientists, nor (more importantly) are you basing your conclusions on the overall picture given by the best available data. You're cherry-picking data points and blatantly misinterpreting the process of science to support a specious argument.

>>425705

>it needs to be framed in a way where people can see a direct and tangible positive change.

I'm not sure how we can do that in any way that isn't blatantly deceptive. We're beyond the point of positive change - we're now in damage limitation territory. Things are going to get worse, the only question is whether they get a bit worse or catastrophically worse. Personally, I think the only emotionally appealing argument that is concordant with the evidence is something akin to the Blitz spirit - we're in the shit, but we might just get through it if we all pull together.

If we don't do something drastic now, Norfolk and the Netherlands will disappear, as will cities in the Pacific Rim with a total population of ~400m. If we don't seriously cut CO2 emissions, we're likely to see around a billion refugees due to drought and resource conflicts. It's pretty hard to put a positive spin on that.

>>425707

I think that focusing on per-country rather than per-capita emissions is a dangerous trap. China's population is more than that of Europe and North America combined. We can't reasonably expect that Chinese people should live like medieval peasants just because there's a lot of them. On a per-capita basis, China is doing pretty well, especially when you consider their level of economic development. The average Chinese person produces about half the CO2 emissions of the average American.

China still needs to cut their emissions, but it seems blatantly unfair to dump the responsibility solely on them. Why should they bother if we aren't even trying? It's like a billionaire saying that he shouldn't have to pay taxes because there's only one of him but loads of poor people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita

I feel like a big issue is that our current way of life should have ended years ago, now people just don't want to let go of it but a lot needs to change to ensure our survival. Too many people are out there thinking "Nah it'll be fine they're just exaggerating it all", they'll only really care when it actually impacts them and by then it'll be too late.

>>425710
How has the dramatically high CO2 emission rate per capita of developing countries been derived?

>>425709

>I think that focusing on per-country rather than per-capita emissions is a dangerous trap.

Then again, if you actually go by the per-capita chart at the top of that wikipedia article, suddenly you have Saudi Arabia and the Middle East with a per capita CO2 production that dwarfs that of many known notorious CO2 producing nations, while at the same time Saudi Arabia only has a population of 33 million or 0.7 percent of the entire world population. It's swings and roundabouts really with this kind of statistical climate data.

And China really only has a below average per capita CO2 footprint because despite decates of industrial growth, vast swaths of its population still live a largely agricultural lifestyle the way we did in the UK over 300 years ago. As industrial growth and progress will continue to spread, so will more and more Chinese peasants adopt technologies and lifestyles that will ramp up their per capita CO2 production.

I think we are fucked either way at this point. Our global civilisation depends on fossil fuels in a way that means that it will simply collapse if we stop producing CO2. And it's not just cars or factories, but also things like aviation or global shipping or the Internet itself.

The only way we can maintain levels of energy consumption that we need to sustain our civilisation will be to have working hydrogen fusion reactors in the future IMO. Once we've mastered the technology, a second or third generation fusion reactor could likely be made small enough to power anything from your entire home to a car or an aircraft. Considering that battery powered cars need rare earths and other minerals that simply don't exist in enough quantity globally to go fully electric, I think that is going to be the only viable option in the long-term future.

But with even the most optimistic projections not expecting working and commercially viable fusion reactors before the year 2050, it's kind of a safe bet to assume that we are just going to fuck up the Earth's climate even more in the mean time.

>>425709

>The opinion of climate scientists isn't particularly relevant; there simply isn't any alternative explanation for the data that makes any mathematical sense.

There was a time when data indicating climate change was more or less made up of statistical outliers, meaning measurements outside the norm but which could still by and large be explained by erratic fluctuations of the long-term climate. And then you also had certain fluctuations over a few thousand years since the last Ice Age, with the Atlantic Period (ca. 8000-5000 before present) being the warmest. Which, interestingly, had even higher temperatures than we see today. But what is very unique, and scientists know this from sea ice core samples and also from terrestrial sediments such as river beds and lake bottoms, is the pace at which temperatures are now rising. Before the Atlantic Period, there was the Boreal Period, also lasting around 2000 to 3000 years, which had a global climate similar to ours today, but the shift from Boreal to Atlantic was quite gradual and occurred within the space of around 500 to a thousand years. Whereas today's climate change has happened in a time period of less than 200 years. Even when considering that global warming was preceded by the Little Ice Age which lasted from ca. 1300 to 1850, the steep gradient of increase in temperatures that we have today is simply unseen in all of recorded climate history of the last ten thousand years.

When measurements and data start to leave the scope of your preceding statistical data, there is always a point where you can still think "This could go either way", and that's when scientists' opinions actually matter, because it will not be an open and shut case, yet. During the 1960s to 1980s, global warming was a theory that was being circulated increasingly among scientists, and there was data beginning to come in that was suggesting that climate change could be starting to happen. But when you look at the graph, it still could have gone either way at that time. By now though, fifty years on, you simply have no way of denying anymore that something extraordinary is going on, and something where indeed an individual scientist's personal opinion becomes largely irrelevant.

>>425725
It seems odd to imagine that anyone could take into account that there are billions of humans all producing various waste products in a closed system and think that it would all work itself out perpetually the way it is and be fine. Yet most people apparently do think that and have for a long time.

>>425732

Firstly it isn't a closed system there is that big ball of fire in the sky, along with the gases that escape the atmosphere and the things that crash into the earth and the times the earth quite literally throws up on itself.


>and think that it would all work itself out perpetually the way it is and be fine. Yet most people apparently do think that and have for a long time.

you are reasoning back to front from already knowing the conclusion, there would be no reason to assume that plants and algae wouldn't start thriving in a warmer CO2 rich environment and multiply in a way that compensates for the changes and therefore the system would naturally correct. After all that is what usually happens in a food chain when the food supply increases.

>>425733
>Firstly it isn't a closed system
It's a closed system in the ways that are relevant to the matter.
>you are reasoning back to front from already knowing the conclusion
I know the conclusion because it's observable in nature for me as it is for everyone else. Like when plants and algae multiply so much they choke ponds, killing all the other life in them.

>>425732

A lot of people just badly over-estimate the resilience of human civilisation, or under-estimate the human impacts. You see the same train of thought from many Brexiteers, e.g. "we survived the war so we can survive this" - true, but a lot of people didn't survive the war and pretty much everyone had a miserable time.

>>425733

Look, just read the IPCC report or fuck off. All the points you're raising have been thoroughly addressed by people infinitely more knowledgeable than me and I really can't be bothered re-hashing them for your benefit. You're confusing your own ignorance for a lack of evidence.

https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/

>>425736
And the IPCC can't ever be wrong!

>>425733

The earth can cope well enough no matter how much CO2 is in the air. Algae and plants and deep sea dwelling squids and so on will be just fine whether there's an ice age or an asteroid hits. Humans and the vast majority of land based animals, on the other hand, will more than likely be fucked.

We've built ourselves into a deep reliance on what is really a very fragile ecological-economy, and even before global warming starts causing serious trouble, we're rapidly out breeding what the capacity of the planet to supply us with resources. If we carry on at our current rate we'll be nothing more than an intriguing archaeological curiosity for the bird-people who rule the planet a billion years from now.

>>425738
You know better do you?

>>425733

>there would be no reason to assume that plants and algae wouldn't start thriving in a warmer CO2 rich environment and multiply in a way that compensates for the changes and therefore the system would naturally correct.

There are already some scientific findings that suggest that, provided that the ambient air has low levels of growth inhibiting pollutants, plants actually grow stronger and faster in an atmosphere with increased levels of CO2. So on a large enough time scale, if we stopped producing any CO2 from fossil and other fuels today, the excess carbon dioxide would be reabsorbed into the Earth's vegetation, and within geological timescales would then even be redeposited in the Earth's crust as new coal and crude oil.

The problem is that plants will simply not grow fast enough to catch all the CO2 that humans release. Especially with all the deforestation that tropical rainforests but also forests in temperate and arctic regions have seen in the last few decades. There are estimates that the Earth would need three million years to produce the quantity of crude oil that we burn every year globally.


>>425735

>A lot of people just badly over-estimate the resilience of human civilisation, or under-estimate the human impacts.

It depends on what you mean by resilience. Probably even in the worst case scenario of global warming, human civilisation will not be wiped out as such. You will always have pockets of surviving populations that live in relatively favourable conditions and will be able to sustain themselves. What seems a given though is that civilisation as we know it today will not be sustainable even in less-than-worst-case scenarios.

Either we really manage to turn things around for us, or we are going to need to go through another cataclysmic event like the Great Plague which wiped out almost half of Europe's population. At the time, it indeed had a positive effect on resource sustainability. In the early Middle Ages, Europe was actually overpopulated, at least with regards to agricultural technology and the ability to produce food for the people. Deforestation in many European countries was much higher than it is today, with nearly every speck of land used for agriculture, again, with the low agricultural yields of the time. And then when half the population was wiped out in the Great Plague, many fields lay fallow and after about a generation or two saw a widespread return of dense forests. Some even believe that the Little Ice Age was caused in part by a reduced human population and nature being able to recover from human activity.

>>425736

You misunderstand my position, I'm not arguing against global warming I'm arguing against the ignorance of concluding that the current position was the inevitable conclusion and how could anyone have ever thought differently.

It is kind of like saying “how could the people of the past be so dumb to not know X" for a long time there were very respectable scientific beliefs we were heading towards global freezing, or that current environmental factors were caused by the earth expanding we obviously now have more information which has led to the current scientific consensus.

>>425742

> I'm arguing against the ignorance of concluding that the current position was the inevitable conclusion and how could anyone have ever thought differently.

Except, they didn't think differently. The big oil companies knew very definitely through projections from their own scientists, from about the early 1980s or perhaps even earlier, that the CO2 that was being released by burning their products would lead to quite dramatic global warming:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/sep/19/shell-and-exxons-secret-1980s-climate-change-warnings


>It is kind of like saying “how could the people of the past be so dumb to not know X" for a long time there were very respectable scientific beliefs we were heading towards global freezing

Again, this may have been commonly accepted pop science until the late 70s (my mum told me that she was indeed taught in geography in school that there would be another ice age in the not too distant future), but the accepted truth at least from about 1980 among a growing number of reputable scientists was that global warming was a more than likely consequence of fossil fuel consumption.

The oil industry's fault really is that it knew what was coming but did nothing, and if you read the Guardian article, spent millions over the following decades bribing politicians and lawmakers and blocking eco friendly laws and initiatives around the globe as they saw fit. In that respect, it's not entirely unlike the tobacco industry, which also knew for decades that their products were giving people cancer and spent years lobbying against anti-smoking laws, until it was left with no choice but to admit to the harmful effects of smoking from the 1960s and 70s onwards. The obvious problem being that while you can make a population healthier and undo a lot of the damage of smoking within just a few years by encouraging people to quit smoking, all the CO2 that we've already blown into the atmosphere is going to stay there for quite some time in the future, and our entire civilisation is so heavily dependent on fossil fuel now that we can't just go cold turkey now. Our alternative energy carriers are nowhere near as advanced and developed as they would have to be to replace oil and coal from one day to the next, which could also be seen as a direct consequence of oil companies both keeping the public uninformed and blocking eco friendly laws.

If it hadn't been both for the convenience, abundance and energy density of petrol and the industry's lobbying, it's not unlikely that the car industry would have spent the last 100 years perfecting electric energy and we would now have cars that could run 600 miles on a single charge, with batteries that could be topped up within minutes, and which would barely take up one corner of your boot.

>>425745


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=https://youtu.be/vTlYYlRN0LY[/yt]

The fact that Shell made a video like this speaks volumes. They've known for decades what they were doing, bit of a nail in the coffin for anthropomorphic climate change deniers when the energy companies themselves even admit to it.

This makes me sad in a very deep way.

I'm fascinated by how often modern-history trends towards the following story:
"We knew about the problem in the 1970s-80s, and there were several good solutions proposed, but they weren't used and now the hack-job solutions we used at the time are both too embedded to displace while also causing us an increasing amount of trouble."
From politics, to economics, to the climate and in several other fields, that same timeframe comes up. The 1960s are consistently too early, the 1990s consistently too late, but in the 1970s-80s everything of significance that ever was and ever will be was seemingly set in stone.

I quite like this piece: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/climate-change-losing-earth.html
While it's probably objectionably narrative for some, the note that oil companies did take the problem seriously for a while and consider alternative approaches for the future before deciding to break for propaganda and the status-quo is fascinating. Perhaps it was simply the path of least resistance once the fears of oil running out post-1973 had subsided into the 1980s oil-glut.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08042019/arctic-climate-change-temperature-permafrost-sea-ice-wildilfe-ecology-study

Ahh....Shit.

>>425750

There was still consensus among many scientists in the late 70s that a new ice age was imminent. And by and large, it seemed to make sense, because the 1970s saw a few very drastic winters, and the previous ice ages were known to have begun quite suddenly and within the space of a single human lifetime. More than that, the interglacial warm periods between two ice ages always lasted about 10,000 to 15,000 years, which was yet more reason to believe that we were due another ice age soon.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_861us8D9M

Climatologists now actually believe that we may well have altered the Earth's climate trajectory, and that by releasing all the greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, we have broken the natural cycle of ice ages and interglacial periods.

As the documentary says, even though it wrongly assumes another ice age - the problem is that our global civilisation depends on environmental parameters remaining within a quite narrow band. For life on Earth as such, things like a 70-metre sea level rise or higher temperatures or polarification in some regions of the globe are irrelevant. Biological life on the whole always prevails in some shape or form and has survived far bigger disasters.

https://youtu.be/_5_ZvHatBVY

This is quite scary, to be honest. It looks like Greta is being manipulated by somebody for some reasons.

>>425913
It looks like that because it benefits someone for it to look like that.

>>425914

Probably a paedo.

She must be a wet dream for wronguns... looks like a ten year old, but is verifiably over the age of consent...

>>425918

... right.

>>425918

I guess.... if you have a thing for 'spergs...

>>425920
Nobody fucks kids for their personality.

>>425918
Paedomorphs. I was with one a couple of years ago, into her mid 20s but my mum saw her picture and was worried I was gonna be done for shagging a 14 year old. Felt weird and uncomfortable walking round with her. She was a grumpy cow to be around and not happy about looking how she does. I wasn't happy feeling like a carpetbagger but it was a brief and intense relationship.

>>425922

One of my female friends at uni was like that. She was 18, almost 19 when we first met, and she honestly looked like a 12-year-old. She was studying to be a primary school teacher, and the first time she went to visit a primary school as a student, some teachers at first glance almost thought she was one of the pupils.

Curiously, her boyfriend, now husband, that she also met around the same time was a mature student and ten years older than her, and he really looked like most 29-year-olds do, more or less. So when the two went out on dates together, occasionally they had people giving them bad or shocked looks in the street.

>>425921

>Nobody fucks kids for their personality

True enough. Most people barely even fuck other adults for that reason.

>>425913
No it doesn't.

Also what the hell are you oddballs talking about now?

>>425925

> Also what the hell are you oddballs talking about now?


Spergs.

Just spergs.

What do you lads make of them goings on what are happening in that London?

>>425944
Not sure how any one could be against the message, really.

>>425945

Their medium, on the other hand, is pretty obviously objectionable.

>>425946
It's difficult to know where to start with the problem with Extinction Rebellion. The only good thing about them, it seems, is their ability to mobilise a huge number of activists in a way previously unseen.

>>425944

Feckin Millennials.

I'm not sure the world will really be in good hands when their generation takes over.

>>425946
What alternative would you suggest?

>>425948
Because it's been so well-managed before?

>>425954

I'm not saying that we as Generation X have been managing it well.

But I doubt that a generation that breaks down in a crying fit whenever the Internet is down or when somebody uses gender insensitive language in a tweet can be trusted to go on to do great things.

We fucked up, in short, otherwise we wouldn't still be having all these environmental debates. But again, I don't see how this generation will do any better once it is settled down in its ways. You don't see many people with a mortgage and a Passat in the driveway taking time off their day job to go and protest, is what I am saying. And today's youngsters will end up no different.

>>425955
If a wholesale upheaval of the binary model of gender which has persisted in most human societies for millennia is not a 'great thing' then I'm not entirely sure would meet your definition.

Also your parents would definitely have spoken about how well they coped without multi-channel television/computer games/cassette tapes/the end of the Cold War etc. etc. so don't give me your hackneyed 'entitled kids' bullshit.

>>425956

>wholesale upheaval of the binary model of gender which has persisted in most human societies for millennia 

Take a minute to think about that again, lad.

>so don't give me your hackneyed 'entitled kids' bullshit.

It's not bullshit. I don't think there has ever been a generation with more entitlement issues than Millennials, which at the same time puts so little effort into actually deserving the things they feel entitled to.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXItLdGwLUY

>>425956
I can't tell whether or not this post is supposed to be a parody.

>>425956
>If a wholesale upheaval of the binary model of gender which has persisted in most human societies for millennia is not a 'great thing' then I'm not entirely sure would meet your definition.

I've read this several times and I still don't know what it's actually saying.

>>425959
It's saying the poster is a mental.

>>425959

That poster is either trolling very well, or completely full of shit. Non binary sexual behaviour has existed and was documented since the dawn of time.

>>425962

>or completely full of shit.

Careful lad, kind of sounds like you are outshitting that poster.

>>425957
>Entitled.
All I want is a house at a price that doesn't fuck me without people calling me entitled for expecting to be able to afford basic shelter without swearing my life away.

Now stop blaming me and either go build some fucking houses or hurry up and die, other people need your house.

>>425963

I am just hoping that he is either trolling or impossibly ignorant. People has been out of the binary model of gender from the dawn of time:

https://www.britannica.com/topic/berdache


Now it is being hyped and talked about "ad nauseam", but it was always there.

>>425965

I believe a lot of people in the weird gender bubble think there's been some magnificent explosion in gender expression and free love, when in actuality outside of a few bubbles most people are happy enough in the gender binary and maybe there's a few more of the gays open about their life these days.

I mean good for you if you want to identify as something other than male but it's not really important is it.

>>425964
Move to a part of the country that isn't London. Problem solved.

>>425973

>when in actuality outside of a few bubbles most people are happy enough in the gender binary

This. Breaking up the "gender binary" is really only an issue for a small minority of the population, when the majority really couldn't give a toss. But gender studies and certain strands of fishing will have you believe that the exact opposite is true.

>>425964

Well that should have bern a consideration at the end of the last housing bubble circa 2008-09. House prices don't always just rise, they oscillate in an upward long-term trend. And the next time the property market goes tits up, there will be another opportunity to buy an affordable house.

Various London XR encampments seem to be thriving as of about an hour ago. Internet grumps who like to whine about being potentially mildly inconvenienced don't seem to have had much of an impact. Protesters from quite a wide range of backgrounds though more people who can take time off easily than not because obviously that's going to happen with any sort of week day protest. I'll head back down tomorrow evening, stay over night perhaps.

>>425985
>And the next time the property market goes tits up, there will be another opportunity to buy an affordable house.
It's almost as if you don't understand the reason why the market went tits up.

I just don't understand how people can observe and be aware of how our governing classes function and yet still genuinely believe they can cause them to change their ways by doing anything like this. It's already too late and nothing peaceful or of this relatively tiny magnitude will do anything to change the people in power who make too much money and are too old to care about the trajectory of our ecosystem.

>>426019
“We are running out of time but there is still hope…” - Sir David Attenborough. Do you think he understands or nah?

>>426020
Everyone campaigning to end climate change, by definition, either believes the planet can be saved or publicly claims the planet can be saved for other political means. And I don't mean to make the latter sound conspiracist - for instance if Attenborough genuinely thinks we are past the point of no return, maybe he just doesn't say so because he doesn't want society to panic and break down.

>>426021
>Everyone campaigning to end climate change, by definition, either believes the planet can be saved or publicly claims the planet can be saved for other political means.
Neither of those sweeping generalisations apply to me, so you're wrong. No doubt there are other exceptions.
If Attenborough didn't want people to panic then maybe he wouldn't be so heavily involved in creating programs about climate change. That wouldn't make any sense at all.

The problem with Extinction Rebellion is that they're not extreme enough. What they need to do is behave like absolute dickheads, preferably in London because that's far away from my house, so that once they've brought sufficient attention to the issue another group with actual broad appeal can then start to constructively address the issue with the powers that be.

Instead we've got flaccid cocks like Robin Boardman-Pattison or luvvies like Emma Thompson flying thousands of miles to join the demonstration, which consists of middle class people knitting, doing yoga and crying because they didn't disrupt any flights from Heathrow or because Jeremy Corbyn didn't want to eat any of the chocolates they brought for him. It's preaching to the choir. Too middle class. Too cosy. Too hypocritical. Too easily dismissed. If they don't arrange something for the next bank holiday weekend entitled "The Great Climate Cunt-Off" then it's clear they won't amount to much other than ego stroking.

>>426024
>Luvvies
Oh, hello, Noel Coward.

>>426021

The planet is fine, it's us that are in trouble. We (almost certainly) won't become extinct, but things will get decidedly unpleasant for us over the next century. polars will expand, storms will become more deadly, floods will become chronic and eventually low-lying areas will be consumed by the sea.

We have already irreparably altered the climate, but we can still limit the damage. If average ocean temperatures rise by one degree, the Norfolk Broads disappear under the waves. After two degrees, we lose most of the south coast. After four degrees, you'll be able to take a ferry from Cambridge to York. It's too late to save the Broads, but we can avoid the rest if we act swiftly.

>>426025
If someone is prepared to take a c. 5,400 mile flight from Los Angeles to London to join a demonstration on climate change, whilst showing sufficient lack of awareness that they can't even get the Extinction Rebellion egg timer logo the right way round on their dungarees, then it's safe to say they're rather pretentious and superficial.

>>426020

I too believe there is still time, but I don't believe we can actually convince or change our politics or corporate culture in time, and certainly not by camping on a bridge.

Every time I say this I'm accused of either denying climate change or just not caring, and it's very tiring. I care a lot, and it frustrates me that everything we're doing as a society is basically not helping. Buying a bamboo toothbrush or camping on a bridge is an infintessimally small drop in the ocean, but I genuinely don't believe we can actually change the course of world industry and leaders at this point. They demonstrably are fine with whats happening, and it'll take billions of coordinated people to change that - and that's not going to come from XR.

>>426027

People travelling from all over to come to a protest that they're not really invested in...sounds exactly like Dale Farm. That one was chock full of rentamob protesters who didn't give a shit about the cause, they were only up for a ruck.

>>426030

It's certainly not going to come from naysayers sitting around handwringing and coming up with reasons to do nothing at all on the Internet.

>>426032

This is the frustrating part. I'm saying outright I don't believe anything other than a coordination of billions would do anything, and you're still convincing yourself that a few thousand people out there are actually doing anything. The difference between what I'm doing right now and what XR are doing right now is absolutely negligible. Keep doing it if you want, I'm not saying you shouldn't, but I believe fully it is not helping at all.

XR really highlights that really only middle class people have the time and capability of worrying about climate change. Working class people might be fully aware of the damage being caused but they also have to work to live and can't particularly pay the premium for sustainable food and products, let alone afford time off work to protest. Even if those working class folk are aware of the problem and distressed by it, they are likely stuck working for one of the big polluters anyway, and unless we completely remake society to remove that issue then we will never have enough people on board to bring this damage to a stop. How do we do that? No fucking clue, I'm not sure we can. Vote Green Party.

Whatever happened to carbon taxes? Did the trading schemes just turn it into a nothing?
Asking people to use less energy while it's cheap and their neigbours still do - seems like asking a lot of the average citizen.
(That said, I've just taken the govenment's shilling to get an electric car, so maybe I'm more bribeable than most?)

>>426034

>really only middle class people have the time and capability of worrying about climate change.

Unfortunately, this is very true. And I wouldn't say that being aware of climate change and wanting to protest against it are an intellectual feat, which they are by no means, but it appears you have to have a certain level of education to want to take part in an anti-climate change movement.

Some countries are now debating the introduction of a carbon footprint tax, which would impose an additional tax on everything from petrol to an airplane flight or even consumer goods, but also groceries, based on the amount of CO2 production that they cause. This is all not a problem for middle class people who have a decent income and have choices in what they consume, but if you are poor and depend on cheap food from Lidl or Iceland, then that CO2 tax will take away much more of your income in relative terms than it will from people who are better off.

>>426036

I don't even think it's about the education, it's more about being financially and socially mobile enough to have a voice at all. All the 'bastards complaining about not being able to get to work on time' because of these protests are often just people who simply can't afford to get their pay docked for being late. I was well aware of climate change when I was in a minimum wage job, I just didn't have much opportunity to think about it or certainly do anything about it.

Telling these people they should be cycling to work or getting a bus is fine until you realise that might not be cost effective or time effective for them. A single mother can't afford the fancy dutch cargo bike that middle class people want everyone to take their kids to school in, nor do they always work jobs easily or economically accessible by greener public transport. Poor people need cheap petrol and mass produced food right now, that's unavoidable.

Besides all that, looking to individuals to make changes is, in my view, and I'm sure in actual fact, the wrong end of the wedge. I can start bringing my own paper bags to the shops but until factories stop pumping out billions of litres of pollution per second that's hardly going to do much.

They say the rainforest is decreasing, right? Wouldn't climate change rejuvinate it?

>The Government must tell the truth about the climate and wider ecological emergency, reverse inconsistent policies and work alongside the media to communicate with citizens.
>The Government must enact legally binding policy measures to reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2025 and to reduce consumption levels.
>A national Citizens' assembly to oversee the changes, as part of creating a democracy fit for purpose.

I agree with Gove on this, Britain does care and we've done tremendous work in cleaning our act up. If anything we might be too cavalier in how we intend to be squeaky clean while engaging in post-Brexit international trade and decided the national grid doesn't need surplus capacity.

There's more to be done but if we're talking net zero in 6 years then really you're in space sunshade territory or even beyond. Go home.

>>426002
Do let us know in advance if any of your friends will be fucking with the underground tomorrow afternoon. I'm not snitching, I just have plans and would like to enjoy my Easter weekend.

You can be our man on the inside.

>>426034
If the working class is so shit then how can they afford to put on yellow vests and racially abuse civil servants all day?

>>426039
Not if the Brazilians keep chopping it down to farm cattle, no.

>>426038

>Besides all that, looking to individuals to make changes is, in my view, and I'm sure in actual fact, the wrong end of the wedge. I can start bringing my own paper bags to the shops but until factories stop pumping out billions of litres of pollution per second that's hardly going to do much.


Also, there is a lot of hypocrisy on behalf of the educated middle class who pretend to be all for saving the planet, but what I have personally witnessed numerous times was people pulling into a Lidl car park in their SUV and carrying a Bag For Life. No amount of Bags For Life anybody will ever own and use can make up for the fact that you choose to go grocery shopping in an SUV, and to a place that sells unsustainably produced, high carbon footprint groceries.

The newest culmination, although not entirely without good reason, is the new Swedish invention of flight shaming. In short, people who can be seen via their social media accounts undertaking frequent flights to far away locations are being criticised by online mobs for creating a large carbon footprint that way. I believe I've read that in some countries, a few local Green Party members have had to close down their social media accounts because of this. Talk about do as I say, don't do as I do.

And while it is true that modern aircraft have better fuel economy per person than a car if you convert the kerosene that is burned by that airplane into miles per gallon per person, naturally if you travel 20,000 miles to Australia and back just once, you will still have consumed more fuel than your car back home will use during two years of normal operation.

>>426039
Trees are natures dole-scum. There's a plan but it involves us having to cluster-bomb large sections of land with seeds so they can suck up all the carbon but which will cause it's own problems if having thorny bastards everywhere:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/04/invasive-mesquite-spreads-across-east-north-south-africa/

>>426040

>net zero by 2025

Net zero in 6 years? I'm in favour of green polices but that feels pie in the sky.

>>426040

>net zero by 2025

Net zero in 6 years? I'm in favour of green polices but that feels pie in the sky.

>>426044

>Net zero in 6 years? I'm in favour of green polices but that feels pie in the sky.

It's bullshit any way you look at it.

Just like that Vision Zero goal by the European Commission with which they seek to reduce traffic accident fatalities EU wide to zero, albeit by the year 2050 I think, and which mean that among other things, new cars from 2022 will have to have automatic speed limiters installed that effectively prevent you from breaking a posted speed limit by automatically reducing your engine power so you can not go significantly faster, unless it's for a few seconds at a time that you are overtaking somebody.

It would be nice to think that these kinds of lofty goals dreamt up by some out of touch politicians would be realistically attainable. But they aren't. And instead, we are all being made to feel bad for not meeting those goals, when in reality they were rather quite daftly formulated to begin with and are in their own way the modern equivalent to saying Let them eat cake.

The Mail have published an article highlighting the discarded rubbish and number of single use plastics and disposable coffee cups used by the crusties.

>>426042
>The newest culmination, although not entirely without good reason, is the new Swedish invention of flight shaming. In short, people who can be seen via their social media accounts undertaking frequent flights to far away locations are being criticised by online mobs for creating a large carbon footprint that way. I believe I've read that in some countries, a few local Green Party members have had to close down their social media accounts because of this. Talk about do as I say, don't do as I do.

The person I know most vocal about climate change has been on yoga holidays to North America, Africa and Asia in recent years.

>>426047

>The person I know most vocal about climate change has been on yoga holidays to North America, Africa and Asia in recent years.

And let me guess, that person gets in a huff about you driving to work every day in your own car, and won't shut up about how you are killing the planet by using plastic bags.

>>426047
>The Mail have published an article highlighting the discarded rubbish and number of single use plastics and disposable coffee cups used by the crusties.

>>426051

The fact is though there are absolutely alternatives to those things. You can absolutely 100% participate in society right not without ever using a plastic bag or coffee cup, especially in London. Even I bring my own cup to Costa and I'm a fucking northerner.

It's just further evidence XR is one big self righteous party.

>>426045
The fact it feels pie in the sky (and I do share that feeling) is probably the reason we're going to boil the oceans away.
The quote that sticks with me is "We now find it easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism", because it gets pretty close to the issue. I'm not saying the solution is socialism. I don't think we're going to find a solution, but the quote quickly captures our inability to seriously imagine an alternative.

>>426047

The person I know most vocal about it (and constantly posting stuff from the scenes of crusties) is a professional cyclist that flies all over the world to race bikes. When she's not posting about sustainable socks she's posting pictures of her substantial air miles. I don't understand.

>>426054
I'm tired of this sort of petty grasping for apparent hypocrisy. I mean if they had a XR private jet then sure, that's just taking the piss. "You used the wrong bags!" is just wank though. Who cares? Did the man use the cup? God forbid.

>>426058

>Who cares?

Typically, the people who care about climate change do. Aren't they supposed to be wanting people to stop using one-use items derived from petrochemicals?

>>426047

Anyone who criticises air travel usually misses the critical detail that for miles travelled and the number of people serviced it is profoundly efficient in terms of carbon footprint. More so that say a local bus (only really a train or a fully laden coach have comparable ) It is just the sheer distance and neither are really a practical replacement. You might be able to catch the euro star a few hundred miles. But try traveling to say China on the train (which you could) and you'll noticed the not to subtle difference between them.

>>426047

Anyone who criticises air travel usually misses the critical detail that for miles travelled and the number of people serviced it is profoundly efficient in terms of carbon footprint. More so that say a local bus (only really a train or a fully laden coach have comparable ) It is just the sheer distance and neither are really a practical replacement. You might be able to catch the euro star a few hundred miles. But try traveling to say China on the train (which you could) and you'll noticed the not to subtle difference between them.

>>426059
One would hope the people who care about climate change would be smart enough to think on the systems level rather than appointing themselves the cup mutaween.

>>426062

And yet they reckon camping out on a bank holiday will save the environment.

>>426048
She actually travels a lot by car. She's very big on chastising others for materialism, such as buying an expensive watch, so will make a big point about things like how she was shopping for a car and then decided to get one for half the price she was originally looking for because spending big isn't everything... before splurging on a pair of Louboutin shoes.

When she's not talking about bollocks such as this she's sharing her wisdom on parenting and boasting about how advanced her children are for their age. She has never taken the children with her on a single yoga holiday.

>>426061

>for miles travelled and the number of people serviced it is profoundly efficient in terms of carbon footprint

No it isn't. Per passenger-kilometre, it generates significantly more CO2 emissions than any other mode of transport aside from a single driver in a supercar.

https://www.eea.europa.eu/media/infographics/co2-emissions-from-passenger-transport/view

It gets worse, because emissions at high altitude have a greater warming impact than emissions at sea level and CO2 isn't the only emission from aviation with a warming effect on the climate. We still don't fully understand the science, but there is a broad consensus that emissions from aviation cause 2-3 times more warming than an equivalent amount of CO2 emitted at sea level.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-challenge-tackling-aviations-non-co2-emissions

>>426067
Not arguing against the point, but is there anything that breaks down aircraft in more detail? The assumption of 88 passengers average per plane seems remarkably low. I'd doubt if that's even break even loadfactor for many airlines. Presumably the figure is being dragged right down by short flights.

>>426068

>>426068

>Presumably the figure is being dragged right down by short flights

That'd be my assumption too. There are a lot of domestic short hauls with small planes that will bring that down. Even just looking at my local airport for the last couple of hours, there's been three or four 70-odd seat Dash 8 for every 150-300 pax jet, and the former are rarely fully loaded mid-week.

I reckon yank city hoppers like Austin to Dallas are underpopulated and flown frequently, too.

>>426064
I guess if you don't like one of your coworkers we should just acidify the oceans and abandon green energy wholesale then, it's the only possibly conclusion to you having an annoying workmate who may or may not exist.

>>426061
I get the feeling that a lot of the professional whiners who complained about Emma Thompson flying to London might have missed a crucial detail about the commercial flight she took to get there. With or without her, that plane was going to fly anyway. The inefficiencies in flying are related to large shipments of fresh air being flown across a continent.

People are right to notice that action on the individual level is a marginal gain at best, but go ask Sir David Brailsford what he thinks of marginal gains.

>>426068

The average scheduled long-haul flight does about 114g/CO2e per passenger kilometre. An economy-only charter aircraft with near-100% occupancy can manage 68g/pkm. After applying a conservative 1.9x multiplier to account for altitude effects, the climate impact per mile is roughly equivalent to a single occupant in a large SUV. In the best case scenario, aviation is still pretty bad.

There's also the obvious fact that the speed of jet aviation allows people to rack up massive mileages without really noticing it. The sustainable limit is about 2,000kg/CO2e per person per year, which would be gobbled up by a transatlantic return flight. Driving 7,000 miles in a big car over the course of a year feels like a lot of travel, but a long weekend in New York sort of doesn't. It's really hard to see how jet aviation can possibly fit into a sustainable transport mix.

http://lipasto.vtt.fi/yksikkopaastot/henkiloliikennee/ilmaliikennee/ilmae.htm

>>426060

>Anyone who criticises air travel usually misses the critical detail that for miles travelled and the number of people serviced it is profoundly efficient in terms of carbon footprint.

The point that you are missing though is that it's not a question about airplanes using less fuel per distance per person than your car, which they undoubtedly do, but that you choose to go to those far away destinations in the first place instead of spending your holiday somewhere closer. Even if you drive your car to the south of Spain, with two occupants and luggage, in total, you will have burned less fuel than you would on your round trip to Australia. Say you go to Gibraltar by car. Google Maps says that's about 1,475 miles from London. Let's assume your car gets 25 miles to the gallon, that means 118 gallons of fuel will be needed for the round trip.

If you take a plane to Australia and back, that's roughly 20,000 miles, and a Boeing 747 is said to get around 100 miles per gallon per person. That's 200 gallons of fuel burned on your round trip, per person. But if there are two people going to Gibraltar in your car, you will have consumed only 59 gallons per person. So your trip to Australia has used nearly three and a half times as much fuel as driving your car to Gibraltar and back.

So even if you argue that passenger airplanes are more fuel efficient than cars (you could also rightly say that flying to Gibraltar would use even less fuel per person), the problem is that too many people go on long-distance flights too often, mainly because commercial air travel has simply become too cheap. And part of the problem are all the no-frills airlines of the last 20 years. It may be all good fun to go on a stag do to Latvia for 100 quid round trip, but it just isn't an environmentally friendly business model, because it means air traffic as a whole has become too much. I remember we once flew to Alicante some 25 years ago, and the price per person round-trip for the tickets was around £300. As I said, 25 years ago. In today's money, that would probably be around £500. And people accepted that air travel was expensive, and that it meant that you could only afford it about once a year, and usually not much further afield than Alicante. A friend of my dad's used to fly to Los Angeles for business occasionally around the same time, and he always said something that it cost his employer £600 to £700 each time with British Airways.