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UK Politics: The Edge of Destruction


Chaircat Meow

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3 minutes ago, SeanF said:

But, the Industrial Revolution can't be repealed.  In fact, industrialisation has been a very good thing for humanity.   Trying to reduce global living standards would be a disaster all round.

A good thing for 2 centuries, a mere blink in the history of humankind and life itself. Any option now is a disaster all round, that's why I have no hope.

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8 minutes ago, House Cambodia said:

A good thing for 2 centuries, a mere blink in the history of humankind and life itself. Any option now is a disaster all round, that's why I have no hope.

I think, however, you should have hope. I think humans are pretty good at solving problems, even if we do tend to exhaust all the alternatives, first.

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1 hour ago, SeanF said:

By any standard, cutting carbon emissions by 100% by 2025 would cause an enormous decline in the UK's standard of living, because the government would have to push through huge reductions in the use of power.    It's very hard to see how that could take place in a democracy.

Or we could forget the scaremongering and the government can instead push through massive increases in the use of non-carbon-producing power, most of which is now mature technology which can be applied at scale.

New nuclear power is not viable in that timeframe but Hinkley Point, which is already a year into construction, will be able to take up some of the strain, as it will start generating power somewhere between 2025 and 2027 (other nuclear stations are coming off-stream around the same time, so the net benefit of this will be reduced, but still). The proposed gargantuan offshore windfarms - which are already more cost-efficient than nuclear (or at least more efficient than the wretched deal our government signed with the Chinese) - could do the job much faster. The government could also pass legislation requiring all new builds - residential, commercial and industrial - in the UK to include solar panels. Solar panel costs have fallen significantly and buying them at this level would reduce prices further.

Although these three developments (Hinkley Point, solar and wind) would not eliminate carbon-producing power, it would put an absolutely massive dent in it, as well as providing much greater energy security, and adding gigawatts to the UK's total energy production capability. It's worth noting that Britain already managed to exceed 50% of its daily energy produced by non-carbon sources on one day in 2018 (in summer, but still an impressive achievement) and Germany has been doing so on a more frequent basis.

Once we have more of the grid coming off renewable power, we can then accelerate banning carbon-producing vehicles in favour of electric (hydrogen would be nicer, but it's less practical at present).

Doing that in six years is clearly not going to happen, although it would be doable with a WWII-level crash programme. However, the current target of 2040 is far too late, so it needs to be accelerated and it needs to be imposed by legislation, as the market is clearly not going to put the legwork in that is required to get this done.

The other benefit is that the country that gets on top of this and really gets going on it can also export that expertise to other countries, including China and the United States.

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I think humans are pretty good at solving problems, even if we do tend to exhaust all the alternatives, first.

 

It is no longer possible to "solve" this problem. We can only mitigate the potential damage, and the chances of us doing that in any meaningful way are becoming more fanciful with every passing day.

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Regarding the environment, beyond climate change the UK, Europe, the World could benefit from less plastic pollution .

We have power as consumers to use less of the stuff. Simple steps like using  your own reuseable bag for groceries help when a billion consumers do it.

I dont know if Aldis in Europe is similar to Aldis U.S. but at Aldis U.S. reuseable  bags at checkout are the standard practice, we need that extrapolated to every store worldwide as much as possible imo.

Maybe this is off topic but it was being discussed so I decided to comment.

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Yeah the plastic bag in supermarket thing has made a big difference, its kind of amazing it didn't happen before. Seems quite natural that you should bring your own bags now. 

More needs to be done on the packaging issue though, its terrifying how much I have to throw away or recycle each week. 

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Also bloody infuriating is the amount of plastic collected before reaching the checkout.

Bananas do NOT need to be wrapped in a plastic bag. Fresh bread can easily come in paper bags, or even no bag. Magazines wrapped in plastic (presumably do that you have to take home the free recycling junk mail bonus extra natetial etc etc.

I now go shopping with a dozen or so paper bags, and unwrap this stuff in store, leaving it there - which gets me some right dirty looks.

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One of hubbies magazines he gets sent to him every month used to come wrapped in a bag.  now the it comes with no packaging at all.   I used to think we needed some maybe an envelope or the magazine would get damaged pages before it arrived, but I can report its not a problem.  They have been sent this way for over a year now and not one has had any damage.

 

I've had things posted to me with what I thought was polystyrene packaging blobs, these where not plastic but 100% compostable.  It makes me wonder why we still make so much polystyrene - especially as polystyrene is one of the least recyclable plastics.

The technology is here to replace most plastics with non-plastics with very little changes to the end use, yes it might be more expensive in the short term but I think one of the best ways to reduce plastics is a Plastic Tax money from which can be used to subsidise plastic alternatives and research.

 

I did read an article that some packaging is not necessary a bad thing as the packaging has allowed up to reduce food wastage.  Meat in vacuum packs lasts longer and can be packed / stacked more efficiently allowing for less lorries.  Apples in bags had the effect of less apples being damaged during transport.  I think it was 50% of apples used to be discarded when they where delivered loose without packaging because they would get damaged.  with packaging they all made it onto the shelves.  What we need to to now we know we need some packaging is be smart and make sure we use the right packaging which can be re-used many many times before recycled or composted.

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2 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

I dont know if Aldis in Europe is similar to Aldis U.S. but at Aldis U.S. reuseable  bags at checkout are the standard practice, we need that extrapolated to every store worldwide as much as possible imo.

Aldi's checkout policy is laudable, but Aldi are absolutely terrible at using recyclable packaging for their goods. Almost none of their food that I can see comes in plastic packaging that you can recycle (which at least is the case with Tesco and Sainsburys), which is pretty bad going.

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Packaging on stuff like deliveries from Amazon is utterly ridiculous too. I ordered headphones, they came in a flat box that should easily go through the letterbox. Instead i get a knock on the door with a shoebox sized package stuffed with paper. 

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1 minute ago, HelenaExMachina said:

Packaging on stuff like deliveries from Amazon is utterly ridiculous too. I ordered headphones, they came in a flat box that should easily go through the letterbox. Instead i get a knock on the door with a shoebox sized package stuffed with paper. 

I think I heard somewhere that Amazon have these oversized boxes because it makes it easier to stack in their warehouses etc. I've had boxes that are 6-7 times the size of the contents before. 

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the worst Amazon packaging I've experienced. was when we ordered 4 very large flower pot containers.  think 18 inches  width and height.  these could easily have been stacked one inside each other.  Instead they came in 2 very large parcels with the bases of 2 pots together.  they could have used just 1/4 of the packaging,  each box was almost my height.  Ok all packaging was recyclable so it could have been worse.

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Oh my god, Greta. 16 years old. I just read the speech she gave in the UK Parliament today with tears running down my face. This is EXACTLY what i was trying to say to those of you who think the UK is doing a fine job re. carbon emissions. Greta gets it - please read:

the full text of the speech Greta Thunberg gave to MPs at the Houses of Parliament

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On 4/23/2019 at 6:37 AM, House Cambodia said:

 

My view is that I'm not comfortable with those levels of hypocrisy, and that there is no way the whole of Asia and Africa can achieve the living standards of the UK on a sustainable planet. The planet can only survive if there is an immediate and drastic reduction in global living standards, and the West should take the lead. Of course, that's not going to happen and things are only going to get worse and worse.

I kinda disagree with that. Really the only limitation on living standards is energy production. Find a way to make energy in a non / minimally polluting way and there's no reason Africa and Asia can't have Euro/North American living standards. It's not a simple thing, yet, to make lots of clean energy, but there are possibilities on the horizon

If by "living standards" you mean things like eating meat and dairy at the same levels as is current in the UK / US / etc then perhaps yes this is not sustainable. But that is not a living standard, that's a lifestyle. You can have very good living standards without having the unsustainable elements of the "western" lifestyle. This of course includes some of the wastefulness of western lifestyles. USDA just put out a statement saying the USA is the worst country in the world for food waste, wasting about 60 million tons of food per year. Not only does that add to greenhouse gas emissions, but it's also enough food to feed millions of undernourished people. And while USA is the biggest waster of food, pretty much every moderately affluent country has a food waste problem that should be looked at as part of the sustainability equation.

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15 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Yeah the plastic bag in supermarket thing has made a big difference, its kind of amazing it didn't happen before. Seems quite natural that you should bring your own bags now. 

More needs to be done on the packaging issue though, its terrifying how much I have to throw away or recycle each week. 

About 12 years ago there was talk here of eliminating single use supermarket plastic bags. There was a big uproar from certain quarters who don't like to be told what to do, and the govt of the day was of the left persuasion. So the attempt was crushed by a wave of anti-PCness. 12 years down the road awareness and a greater sense of urgency on the part of most people saw a rapid shift to where all supermarkets no longer single singe use plastic bags within the space of about a year, and the move was started with a righty govt in power. But still some people of a certain political persuasion tried to oppose it by saying that people should still have the choice, and what if you forget your bags, and reuseable bags can become contaminated with harmful bacteria, esp from meat etc.

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5 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I kinda disagree with that. Really the only limitation on living standards is energy production. Find a way to make energy in a non / minimally polluting way and there's no reason Africa and Asia can't have Euro/North American living standards. It's not a simple thing, yet, to make lots of clean energy, but there are possibilities on the horizon

If by "living standards" you mean things like eating meat and dairy at the same levels as is current in the UK / US / etc then perhaps yes this is not sustainable. But that is not a living standard, that's a lifestyle. You can have very good living standards without having the unsustainable elements of the "western" lifestyle. This of course includes some of the wastefulness of western lifestyles. USDA just put out a statement saying the USA is the worst country in the world for food waste, wasting about 60 million tons of food per year. Not only does that add to greenhouse gas emissions, but it's also enough food to feed millions of undernourished people. And while USA is the biggest waster of food, pretty much every moderately affluent country has a food waste problem that should be looked at as part of the sustainability equation.

I live in a small SE Asian nation that is being rapidly denuded of resources to feed the Chinese frenzy for wooden furniture, construction and so on - minerals, sand, trees, anything we've got is diminishing shockingly fast. Many developing nations are seeing their natural resources being depleted like this.

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I feel the worst part of plastic pollution is the trash removal. There need to be biodegradable platic or another material (specialized waxed paper maybe?) that is sold on supermarkets in place of normal plastic to make even a dent on plastic bag pollution because 'taking out the trash' is a axiom of human life. All the reusable bags (i use them) won't affect that.

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