Are you concerned about the destruction of the natural world and climate change?

Fossil fuel extraction and consumption are the major damaging sectors.

We don’t yet have a technology capable of replacing them.

Taxing them excessively will just collapse government after government as voters aren’t prepared to tear down their society when no alternative exists.

I often wonder will we see whistleblowers coming forward from within the petrochemical sectors as happened when big tobacco was taken into task for knowingly misleading people as to the health dangers of tobacco. I see Shell etc selling “carbon neutral” petrol, something that’s a physical impossibility, extracting, processing and burning petrol is a linear carbon exercise, no part of the system sequesters carbon, it cannot be carbon neutral.

similarly the airline industry cannot be carbon neutral, it has no carbon sequestration associated.

Average Chinese person has lower carbon footprint than Irish citizens.

the whole whataboutery pointing at third world countries is tiresome at best.

You say can "we do anything?" and the answer is "no"

Of course there is. The only ones polluting the planet are corporations. Stop buying their crap and their sales will quickly fall. That right there is a simple statement of intent. It takes 4 litres of water to make 1 litre of Coca Cola. Stop buying that crap. It's bad for you anyway. Spanish farmers can't give away oranges. You can probably buy a ton of Seville oranges for 50 quid. Drink orange juice. It's delicious, healthy and won't turn your kids into hyperactive blimps with acne and rotten teeth. The fossil fuel industry is a harder nut to crack. We all need or seem to need plastic in our lives. And I agree. It's hard to do without products that are convenient. I'm guilty of it myself. But just stop buying crappy products and find an alternative.

There was a time when you would have been called a weirdo for quitting smoking. Simple, lame little habits that just become normal will save you money and accrued wiill save energy. Unplug the effing telly instead of just putting it on standby.

Take all your potato skins, apple butts, banana peels, etc and find a place where there are trees and dump the lot in there. The forest will be howling with gratitude as all the mushrooms move in and take it all apart.

Check out that great documentary Fantastic Fungi.

You don't have to become a tree-hugger who drinks their own urine or dowses their arse with sawdust after crapping on the compost heap. Just stop buying crap and save money.

And have more sex. It's better than watching Netflix.

Orange Juice is healthy? That's a big jump. It has vit C, potassium, etc.... but otherwise it has about as much sugar as coca cola.

That is the harsh reality. There is no magic bullet. Western societies have been built on the premise of ever increasing revenue, growth and markets. That is simply unsustainable (for a variety of reasons). Very crudely speaking, there's probably 2 ways to fix this.

1 = A collective adjustment on demands and expectations to account for this (would be challenged by many as being the most hated of all C words (Communism))

2 - Survival of the fittest, expect to see concern over natural resources leading to disparate experiences based on wealth and power and the likely conflict that would come as a consequence of that.

Or maybe someone else can suggest a path from where we are that doesn't involve either of these 2 futures in a significant way.

What do you mean by 'ridiculously long way'? Do you mean in terms of population growth, time, GDP?

Some would argue that economic growth has been allowed to advance ridiculously uncontrolled to this point. The Amazon has decreased in size by 20% in the last 50 years.

The rate at which we are consuming natural resources is already unsustainable. Part of the reason that the climate conversation is such an issue is that too many stakeholders consider anything which is likely to run out after their lifetime or professional interest as not being a concern.

We need cohesive plans and there are no signs where they might come from.

That is the point I have made repeatedly, but where are they likely to come from before it becomes a necessity rather than trying to optimise the resources the planet has presented to us.

The last 18 months have shown us just how many people don't want to follow the science, it really makes be very skeptical that anything worth while will be done. But people line up to denigrate Greta for pointing this out.

I'm an Australian.

The comment was premised on the fact that the Chinese don't give a sh​it and neither does India. An Indian owned mining company (Adani) just got going in Qld and plans to export 10M tonnes of coal to India a year for the next 3 decades. As for China:

"China's provinces still planning over 100 GW of new coal projects - Greenpeace"

The make noises about becoming CO2 zero by 2050, but I expect to see flying pigs doing mach 2.2 before then.

So if India and China are not joining the party, everyone else on the planet might as well find a comfy chair, put their feet up and light a cigar and blow smoke rings.

Let's all just go back to neolithic living. After your fifth dead child in a row, you might start to have regrets. Anyone know how much Chinese made stuff is in a modern Hospital? I recently bought a vacuum cleaner made in Germany as I didn't want to buy Chinese. I recently bought a tool from a good German company. When it arrived, it became apparent it was made in China. What make and model of phone do you use, by the way?

Are you real? I just pointed out I have been trying to not buy Chinese goods. It's got nothing to do with concerns over CO2, but it's exactly the same thing you have been calling for ad nauseam.

We are not going back to the neolithic. You seem to be in the nut-job climate catastrophist camp, whose bleatings and chicken littleing are near comic.

Yeah, yeah, sure we are, and you're in the , eternal sunlit uplands and opportunity on the horizon head in sand camp. Did you see the videos on Twitter from NY last night?

If you had a kid, and every time they were thirsty, they poured a full glass of milk, took a mouthful and poured the rest down the sink, would you tell them to stop if you still had 6 more litres in the fridge, or would you wait until you were down to the last one?

The rate we are using resources is not sustainable, aside from the associated damage harvesting and burning these resources is doing.