M25 Protests

[Manoverboard]

I'm sure somebody will disagree with it but it wont be me

[Mervyn and Trish]

Nor me

[Kendhni]

Then I was 100% right, even after 40+ years of education you still don't get it.
It's sad really that some have so little respect for the next generation that they choose to ignore what is going on around them.

Ken, I get it perfectly, but I happen to think that the current govt is doing as much as it can to reduce the UK carbon emissions, as well as encorsgong companies to minimise single use plastic, and is in general very environmentally aware. If all other countries were following a similar path then we would be well on the way to averting further major global warming.

While you raise a couple of 'media programmed' comments, I reiterate, you just don't get it. The kindergarten politics of doing as little as possible and then pointing the finger at what others are, or are not, doing is, quite frankly, beyond pathetic. Our government is no better (or worse) than any other government of similar 'world' standing they put 'economical awareness' well ahead of 'environmental awareness'.

Given the subsequent responses it shows that the real message and risks to the next generation is not getting through a cloud of selfish delusion.

[towny44]

I'm sure somebody will disagree with it but it wont be me

I think after you were just proved correct that I will now bow out of this thread.

[oldbluefox]

Don't blame you. I'm out as well.

[Quizzical Bob]

Ken, you seem to overlook the fact that the next generation is already with us and is using energy as much as the older generations and probably more so.

I know that you are technically literate so perhaps you might like to look at the figure for the amount of energy needed for social media and Facebook in particular. Closing that down would save us several years of emission reductions.

Selfish delusion is an apt description of these social terrorists who just want to disrupt other people's lives for their own personal petty panderments. If I knew where they lived I'd give them a disruption that they wouldn't forget in a long time.

[Kendhni]

Ken, you seem to overlook the fact that the next generation is already with us and is using energy as much as the older generations and probably more so.

There is no doubt about it, but that is the world we have built for the next generation and so you can't really complain if that is the world they are using. The younger generation is probably more aware of the issues that WILL affect them during their life time, but individuals always want someone else to do something about it, so nobody does anything (worthwhile) - as the advert on TV says "I am only 6, you figure it out".

I know that you are technically literate so perhaps you might like to look at the figure for the amount of energy needed for social media and Facebook in particular. Closing that down would save us several years of emission reductions.

Social media does require huge amounts of energy - if I remember correctly Facebook uses something like 5-6TW. However that is a moot argument verging on a strawman. If you take away social media you need to reintroduce other forms of communication, then you have to consider their impact on the environment, at that point you will realise that the environmental footprint of the alternatives is significantly higher. Also from the social side, can you imagine what it would have been like through COVID (or even before) without social media, zoom, skype etc.?

It is a bit like when we talk about foreign aid and some idiot always brings up 'India has a space program' without any understanding of why it has a space program.

Selfish delusion is an apt description of these social terrorists who just want to disrupt other people's lives for their own personal petty panderments.

Or is it 'social terrorists' taking on 'environmental terrorists' after years of petty panderment to their destruction of the environment? One mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter!

If I knew where they lived I'd give them a disruption that they wouldn't forget in a long time.

I heard that a lot when I tried to raise environmental issues - some took the odd punch and the police dealt with it ... and the money they paid out in victim compensation helped fund more action. You have to remember these are just normal every day people who feel they have been ignored and have to do something to raise their issue. As I said earlier, I think they have made their point and now need to build on that rather than continuing disruption.

[david63]

I reiterate, you just don't get it. The kindergarten politics of doing as little as possible and then pointing the finger at what others are, or are not, doing is, quite frankly, beyond pathetic. Our government is no better (or worse) than any other government of similar 'world' standing they put 'economical awareness' well ahead of 'environmental awareness'.

So then Ken as you appear to have all the answers - what should be being done by you, me, everyone else on this board and the Government?

[Manoverboard]

Waffle a lot for starters ?

[Onelife]

Waffle a lot for starters ?

…and for seconds…. build a load of eco-friendly houses in lovely Dorset

[Quizzical Bob]

If I knew where they lived I'd give them a disruption that they wouldn't forget in a long time.

I heard that a lot when I tried to raise environmental issues - some took the odd punch and the police dealt with it ... and the money they paid out in victim compensation helped fund more action. You have to remember these are just normal every day people who feel they have been ignored and have to do something to raise their issue. As I said earlier, I think they have made their point and now need to build on that rather than continuing disruption.
[/quote]
Compensation? What about all those who have had their lives disrupted at enormous cost to themselves? Aren't they entitled to compensation too?

There's nothing normal about these people at all. They are selfish, ignorant exremists who want to impose their views on the rest of society. They should be named an shamed. A pillory wouldn't be too good for them.

Ken, just suppose that I took exception to the way that you live, maybe I don't like the fact that you use your car to get your weekly shopping. By your arguments I am entitled to get a few of my mates to lied down in front of your car in protest?

Nope, your support for these vermin is unsupportable.

[Mervyn and Trish]

I reiterate, you just don't get it. The kindergarten politics of doing as little as possible and then pointing the finger at what others are, or are not, doing is, quite frankly, beyond pathetic. Our government is no better (or worse) than any other government of similar 'world' standing they put 'economical awareness' well ahead of 'environmental awareness'.

So then Ken as you appear to have all the answers - what should be being done by you, me, everyone else on this board and the Government?

Ken is very much pot calling kettle black. He posts vitriol about others' lack of action but then tells me, when challenged, he doesn't care anymore and will continue fly cruising. Now that is beyond pathetic.

[Kendhni]

Compensation? What about all those who have had their lives disrupted at enormous cost to themselves? Aren't they entitled to compensation too?

I don't make the laws, I just obey them. The thugs that attacked us were the ones breaking the law.

There's nothing normal about these people at all. They are selfish, ignorant exremists who want to impose their views on the rest of society. They should be named an shamed. A pillory wouldn't be too good for them.

Ken, just suppose that I took exception to the way that you live, maybe I don't like the fact that you use your car to get your weekly shopping. By your arguments I am entitled to get a few of my mates to lied down in front of your car in protest?

Nope, your support for these vermin is unsupportable.

The only piece of vermin I saw was the 'extremist' who tried dragging one of the female protesters off the road and was restrained by fellow motorists. We live in a society that supports (within reason) freedom of speech and freedom to protest peacefully. If you don't like that then I believe North Korea maybe better fits the bill - or 1970's Northern Ireland.

[Kendhni]

Ken is very much pot calling kettle black. He posts vitriol about others' lack of action but then tells me, when challenged, he doesn't care anymore and will continue fly cruising. Now that is beyond pathetic.

Wow is that you inspired contribution

[barney]

I reiterate, you just don't get it. The kindergarten politics of doing as little as possible and then pointing the finger at what others are, or are not, doing is, quite frankly, beyond pathetic. Our government is no better (or worse) than any other government of similar 'world' standing they put 'economical awareness' well ahead of 'environmental awareness'.

So then Ken as you appear to have all the answers - what should be being done by you, me, everyone else on this board and the Government?

Ken is very much pot calling kettle black. He posts vitriol about others' lack of action but then tells me, when challenged, he doesn't care anymore and will continue fly cruising. Now that is beyond pathetic.

Shame that we don’t have a like button on this forum Merv.
Spot on.

Reminds me a bit of the know all bloke who used to post on the Brexit thread.
Name escapes me now.

[screwy]

It doesn’t escape me.!

[Kendhni]

So then Ken as you appear to have all the answers - what should be being done by you, me, everyone else on this board and the Government?

When did I say I had the answers? There are enough posters on this board that make things up and only have ad hominems in their arsenal without you being one of them.

The best way of describing it is the 'smoker syndrome' we (collectively) believed it was something that was never going to affect us and that there would always be time to put things right. I am bordering on thinking that the time for doing something has now passed and we are entering into new phase of damage limitation where we are going to have to pay more-and-more taxes in order to try to control environmental damage. There is a line of thought that the damage we have done in the last 100 years is now irreversible. The challenge has always been trying to get the public to take action that they considered to be unpalatable - and no government, anywhere, has been willing to do that.

The one thing that we do know, irrefutably, is that we have not done anywhere near enough to meet the easy targets we set ourselves, not to worry the much more rigorous and harder targets that will follow later this century.

[Onelife]

- what should be being done by you, me, everyone else on this board and the Government?

David…I was chatting to my daughter this evening and posed the same question you asked of Ken…she came up with most of the things already discussed on the forum but she also mentioned protecting the worlds peatlands as she said they store more carbon than that of equal sizes of forest.
I’m not sure how we tackle the bigger problem of climate change but a world agreement on the planting of more trees and the protection of the worlds wetlands may reap some rewards for the future?

[Kendhni]

David…I was chatting to my daughter this evening and posed the same question you asked of Ken…she came up with most of the things already discussed on the forum but she also mentioned protecting the worlds peatlands as she said they store more carbon than that of equal sizes of forest.
I’m not sure how we tackle the bigger problem of climate change but a world agreement on the planting of more trees and the protection of the worlds wetlands may reap some rewards for the future?

She is 100% right, I had forgotten about peatlands - I believe they release something like 5-6% of all CO2. Planting of trees is currently being used by a lot of companies in an effort to target carbon neutrality. Whether or not that will work or not has yet to be seen.

The main message is that this affects everyone, not 'everyone else' as so many seem to think. If a child did something bad and their excuse was 'well everyone else is doing it' you tell them not to be so stupid ... but that really is where we (collectively) are at the minute (as many of the replies to me have shown).

The message from the 1970's as always been 'reduce, reuse, recycle' which is why those who talk about recycling show that they have not got the message. It is very deliberately in the order listed recycling is a BAD side effect of not reusing which is a bad side effect of not reducing. However we continually expect/want more so the reduce and reuse message has conveniently been swept under the carpet - unfortunately the evolution of packaging is making it difficult for anyone to reduce.

40 years ago one politician told me that people will not do anything unless you hit them where it hurts most .. in their pocket ... and no political party will want to do that because it is too easy for other parties to say they wouldn't do it. At the time a colleague of mine suggested stepped pricing whereby the first block is cheap but the price rises the more you use - this could have been applied to energy, water, transport etc. Sadly the only thing we have learned over the last 40 years is that if you leave the public to it they will (generally) do nothing or pay lip service; even when you get governments involved they will do as little as possible for fear of being unpopular.


Your daughter may be interested in a film coming out soon (may even be out) called ‘Eating Our Way to Extinction’. I know nothing about it other than it supposedly takes a scientific look at environmental and health issues.

[david63]

reduce, reuse, recycle

One of the problems with any of those approaches is that when we go down any one of those avenues we will have a very minor impact (although everyone's minor impact becomes a more significant impact) but in most cases it will create a problem somewhere else - either environmentally or economical.

For example I have recently changed my car to be a plug-in hybrid because the claim is that using some electricity to power the car is better than using fossil fuel (we wont go into the reasons why I did not go fully electric). As a consequence the car is much heavier therefore there will be an environmental impact there, then there is the environmental impact of producing the battery and lastly the environmental impact of shipping the car from Japan.

Also I have changed my electricity supplier (mainly on cost advantage) to one that has "green" energy.

So basically I have done everything that I am being told is good for the environment but I am well aware that if anything I have had a negative impact on the environment.

[Kendhni]

reduce, reuse, recycle

One of the problems with any of those approaches is that when we go down any one of those avenues we will have a very minor impact (although everyone's minor impact becomes a more significant impact) but in most cases it will create a problem somewhere else - either environmentally or economical.

There is a balancing act to be had. When you say 'create a problem elsewhere' do you mean social or environmental. By reducing and reusing we minimise the environmental impact but that may create a social issues (e.g. people not purchasing as much), which can then benefit the environment.

While we are getting much better at it I believe something like a third of 'recycling' ends up in landfill. A councillor recently told me that one of the problems is that a lot of recycling is contaminated and cannot be cleaned automatically so needed to be manually sorted ... my immediate thought was that there are over 1.5million people with nothing better to do.

For example I have recently changed my car to be a plug-in hybrid because the claim is that using some electricity to power the car is better than using fossil fuel (we wont go into the reasons why I did not go fully electric). As a consequence the car is much heavier therefore there will be an environmental impact there, then there is the environmental impact of producing the battery and lastly the environmental impact of shipping the car from Japan.

I am on my second Hyundai Ioniq hybrid, not for the environmental side but simply because I love the technology. I believe that at the minute the overwhelming majority of batteries are recycled - however I would like to see all manufacturers getting together and producing a standard size/configuration of batteries that could be swapped as necessary. The last paper I read was that while electric cars are more environmentally damaging to manufacture than FF the cross over time is something like 3 years/36000 miles (not sure about hybrid). So overall they help.

Also I have changed my electricity supplier (mainly on cost advantage) to one that has "green" energy.

I wish I had the choice ... but your point is good that just because it is 'green' does not mean it is more expensive.

I remember someone (maybe on this board) complaining about how high their electric bill was. I have multiple computers, monitors, and cameras running 24/7, multiple TVs (all bar one on standby or in use), Sky, all electric white goods (we don't have gas) and oil fired heating (not forgetting my collection of power tools that don't get used as often as they should) ... our monthly electric bill is under £50 (inc. latest price rises).

So basically I have done everything that I am being told is good for the environment but I am well aware that if anything I have had a negative impact on the environment.

The problem is that we all (collectively) need to be looking at how we can reduce and reuse more ... and failing that recycle more (and ensure the facilities and market is there for the recycled goods). Do we really need to make that journey; can I turn off instead of use standby; can that item be reused? avoid cooking even one night a week; go vegetarian one or more meals; don't randomly order things, try to batch them up .... millions of little efforts can add up to something significant (as you also said in your first para). Similarly there is a lot business can do e.g. not shifting people all over the world for meetings that could be held remotely; use work from home were suitable and desirable etc.

We have to work smarter on this because what we have done so far has not exactly been a success.

[Mervyn and Trish]

There must be two Kens on this forum.

One keeps telling us all the things we should do.

The other one keeps telling me he doesn't care.

Weird.

[Onelife]

Hi Ken,

Re: post 69

I found that an interesting read and would struggle to find any chinks in the basis of what you say but as David explains good intention doesn’t necessarily produce the desired outcomes. For my part and I would suggest for many climatic awareness has been and still is a learning curve. The 21st century has brought many inventions many of which could be considered advancements, (Without petrol powered vehicles you wouldn’t now be driving your hybrid’s) but little did we know back then that most would have an environmental/climate impact. We are all more aware of the issues and most I would suggest are trying to adapt their behaviours to accommodate these issues, we move forward with better climatic safeguards in place but alas until such time that some world leaders are willing to put their bins out climate change is here to stay.

Its called 21st century living for which we are all contributors.

I'll pass on your film suggestion to our daughter.. thank you.

[Manoverboard]

Another program to watch about peat is Ireland in the ' Above Europe ' series.

The Irish are of course using it in copious quantities for fuel ... just saying.

[Kendhni]

There must be two Kens on this forum.

One keeps telling us all the things we should do.

The other one keeps telling me he doesn't care.

Weird.

Nope only the one and the best - that's why everyone keeps coming back.

I have not once said what people should do ... In the spirit of conversation all I have done is reiterate what scientists and governments have clearly said we (collectively) need to do IF (and it is a big 'if') we want to try to prevent (or at least mitigate) what could be a looming disaster THIS century. Nobody can blame hindsight since it has been a topic of discussion now for well over 50 years.

Actually, I said "I don't really care any more" but it was something that I was once very passionate so I still take an interest and happily discuss it with many people. However since I only need to worry about the next 20-40 years I am generally of the opinion that its impact on me will be minor, so now take the attitude "I don't have children, you figure out".