Why old people were always "Green".

growleaves · 19-05-2021 2:05pm

Padre_Pio wrote: »

Who consumes the products, who consumes the power?

Creating a dictatorship around what people can do or where they can is coming at the problem backwards, and the bad motives of people who call for this can be seen from miles away.

I don't think you're fooling anyone. In a few years you will be calling for a "green transition" to a credit-based rationing system. The large corporations and the coal-fired power stations will still be there, undisturbed.

Swindled · 19-05-2021 2:08pm

Padre_Pio wrote: »

What's more important? Sustained economic growth based on production and consumption, or reducing our climate impact.

Unless the world economy fundamentally changes, we can't have both.

Who consumes the products, who consumes the power?

Yep, that's a "really true" dilemma, and clearly the best way to stop economic growth and reduce climate impact is to attack, blame and tax ordinary Irish people, older Irish people, and young Irish people that think they should stay in Ireland and have any children . . . you're right Irish people are the real problem, nuke us, and bring in the Liberians, they know how to run a country, produce, consume and how to have children correctly.

parkman6551 · 19-05-2021 4:57pm

Padre Pio, you do make some very good points there. I can't deny that the rubbish collections in towns ended up a huge toxic dumps, and that a lot of farmers spread plenty of cow-poo on the fields, and by keeping barns of silage they managed to damage a lot of natural waterways.

I would make a couple of brief points, however.

If arable farming was to provide the necessary amount of vegetables and cereals the farmers had to use something, and cow-poo did the job. There was no way small market gardeners could supply everything.

There is a very good reason for the following:
Huge swathes of France are off-limits due to buried war munitions.
That's before we get into the nuclear test sites from the 1940s-1960s.

If the UK, France, and the US hadn't gone to war against firstly, Germany, and secondly, faced up to Russia we would all be speaking either German or Russian by now. All the second world war bombing was completely necessary to prevent a rabid anti-Semitic lunatic from enforcing his political will across Europe and Russia. Provided you vote as a National Front member then this would be alright, but if you are Jewish, black, Russian, or a traveller then your outlook is grim.

The nuclear tests had to be done, and Kennedy was brave enough to face off the Russians with a threat of "We have more, and bigger, nuclear weapons then you". If he hadn't done so Russia would have marched into whatever country it wished, and there would have been little worthwhile opposition. Personally, I prefer my version of Democracy to Putins. I happened to have been in East Germany several times before the wall came down, and I can tell you from personal experience that I appreciate the nuclear bomb makers in the US , the UK, and France for doing what they did.

Another small point is that during the second world war, and for a number of years afterwards, families in Europe were very good at recycling products. They had to be because there was nothing to be bought. If you wanted a new dress, or trousers, your wife almost certainly made them. I have only recently got rid of all the dress patterns that my mother used all through the war and into the fifties. Glass bottles reused, or returned for a couple of pence each, so that kids would wander about looking for empty bottles to return to the grocer for a shilling.

It is the newer generations that have demanded their insatiable requirements for soft drinks in plastic bottles, fast food in plastic packaging because they are too lazy to cook, everything to be wrapped in layers of plastic so that it looks perfect on purchase, all their mobile communication products, their plastic car components, everything that has to sate their desire to have instant satisfaction, that is causing the current global warming. Look at the historical figures for world temperatures.

Unfortunately, these disagreements are like solving the cold war, almost impossible for old and young to agree on. What I would say though, is that I am prepared to do my bit, but not if I am subsidising China or Russia or Brasil, whose governments have little or no intention of forcing climate control rules on their industries. People like Bolsonaro who encourages his chums, the big farmers, to just go out and burn down a thousand square acres a day of the rain forest, while he pockets the brown envelopes and says that he can't stop the fires. He is a complete fraud and something very nasty should happen to him.

Parkman.

Padre_Pio · 19-05-2021 4:59pm

Swindled wrote: »

Yep, that's a "really true" dilemma, and clearly the best way to stop economic growth and reduce climate impact is to attack, blame and tax ordinary Irish people, older Irish people, and young Irish people that think they should stay in Ireland and have any children . . . you're right Irish people are the real problem, nuke us, and bring in the Liberians, they know how to run a country, produce, consume and how to have children correctly.

growleaves wrote: »

Creating a dictatorship around what people can do or where they can is coming at the problem backwards, and the bad motives of people who call for this can be seen from miles away.

I don't think you're fooling anyone. In a few years you will be calling for a "green transition" to a credit-based rationing system. The large corporations and the coal-fired power stations will still be there, undisturbed.

LOL, I don't have an agenda, it just bugs me that people continue to play the blame game, especially the "China bad, Europe good" trope that's categorically untrue.
China is bad, but Europe, the US etc are worse, only in different ways.
The World Bank says that in 2016, per capita, Ireland was a worse polluter than China. So was Norway, and half the other EU countries.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?most_recent_value_desc=true
You can find all sorts of studies to back this up.

So why are we blaming China? They have hundreds of coal plants? Sure, but they have over a billion people and they're the manufacturing centre of the world. How much sh*t do people buy that comes from China?! If China was split into ten small countries, then the headlines would move onto Russia or the US.

Ireland had ten peat power plants over the years, the WORST kind of pollution, not to mention the devastation of our peat bogs.
The "large corporations" are all fossil fuel based, providing power to people and industry the world over.
The problem is ourselves, it's everyone. You can point fingers all you want, but unless people in developed countries change our behaviours, climate change is going to get worse.

hirondelle · 19-05-2021 5:15pm

Swindled wrote: »

And China produces more emissions than the rest of all the developed world combined, and has opened hundreds of new coal fired power plants, but hey older Irish people, and certain races having any children, is the real problem. As long as we pay other people's carbon taxes for them, it's all good.
Maybe we can bring more Liberians here to show us the way, and force more of the disgusting Irish young to emigrate / not have kids ?

It is changing recently as it develops a middle class, but the vast majority of the carbon emissions generated by China were to produce the goods that the rest of the world consumes- we outsourced our carbon emissions to them. It is a shared responsibility.

JimmyVik · 19-05-2021 5:22pm

parkman6551 wrote: »

Padre Pio, you do make some very good points there. I can't deny that the rubbish collections in towns ended up a huge toxic dumps, and that a lot of farmers spread plenty of cow-poo on the fields, and by keeping barns of silage they managed to damage a lot of natural waterways.

I would make a couple of brief points, however.

If arable farming was to provide the necessary amount of vegetables and cereals the farmers had to use something, and cow-poo did the job. There was no way small market gardeners could supply everything.

There is a very good reason for the following:
Huge swathes of France are off-limits due to buried war munitions.
That's before we get into the nuclear test sites from the 1940s-1960s.

If the UK, France, and the US hadn't gone to war against firstly, Germany, and secondly, faced up to Russia we would all be speaking either German or Russian by now. All the second world war bombing was completely necessary to prevent a rabid anti-Semitic lunatic from enforcing his political will across Europe and Russia. Provided you vote as a National Front member then this would be alright, but if you are Jewish, black, Russian, or a traveller then your outlook is grim.

The nuclear tests had to be done, and Kennedy was brave enough to face off the Russians with a threat of "We have more, and bigger, nuclear weapons then you". If he hadn't done so Russia would have marched into whatever country it wished, and there would have been little worthwhile opposition. Personally, I prefer my version of Democracy to Putins. I happened to have been in East Germany several times before the wall came down, and I can tell you from personal experience that I appreciate the nuclear bomb makers in the US , the UK, and France for doing what they did.

Another small point is that during the second world war, and for a number of years afterwards, families in Europe were very good at recycling products. They had to be because there was nothing to be bought. If you wanted a new dress, or trousers, your wife almost certainly made them. I have only recently got rid of all the dress patterns that my mother used all through the war and into the fifties. Glass bottles reused, or returned for a couple of pence each, so that kids would wander about looking for empty bottles to return to the grocer for a shilling.

It is the newer generations that have demanded their insatiable requirements for soft drinks in plastic bottles, fast food in plastic packaging because they are too lazy to cook, everything to be wrapped in layers of plastic so that it looks perfect on purchase, all their mobile communication products, their plastic car components, everything that has to sate their desire to have instant satisfaction, that is causing the current global warming. Look at the historical figures for world temperatures.

Unfortunately, these disagreements are like solving the cold war, almost impossible for old and young to agree on. What I would say though, is that I am prepared to do my bit, but not if I am subsidising China or Russia or Brasil, whose governments have little or no intention of forcing climate control rules on their industries. People like Bolsonaro who encourages his chums, the big farmers, to just go out and burn down a thousand square acres a day of the rain forest, while he pockets the brown envelopes and says that he can't stop the fires. He is a complete fraud and something very nasty should happen to him.

Parkman.

Even in the mid to late 80s my mum was making dresses and knitting our school jumpers. We used to collect the bottle to get the 10p back for them in the shop, or 3p for the diluted drink bottles.
And milk bottles clanging in the mornings.

Now you hardly see a young person walking around without a plastic bottle or a coffee.

El Tarangu · 19-05-2021 5:22pm

growleaves wrote: »

Large corporate polluters in the West, and coal-fired power stations in India and China are where most of the harmful damage to the planet comes from.

Trying to micro-regulate every aspect of people' lives, talking people out of having children, banishing cars from cities, rationing (if it comes to that) are a con and a distraction.

Well, it depends on how you define the 'most harmful damage'; coal-fired power stations in China and India don't contribute to the deaths of the 1,300 people who die each year in Ireland from pollution, whereas the particulate matter spewed out by motorised vehicles on the streets of our cities certainly does. So this is why councils are banning or restricting access to their cities, starting with the worst-polluting vehicles, along with the more over-arching global efforts to curb carbon emissions.

Padre_Pio · 19-05-2021 5:38pm

parkman6551 wrote: »

Padre Pio, you do make some very good points there.

Some excellent points made yourself.
My main point is that if people put the same effort into preventing climate change that they put into blaming other people, then the world would be a better place.

You may look out the window and see a lovely green Irish countryside, but your daily routine is many times more harmful to the environment than the average human, purely down to the high standard of living that the developed world provides

We as a society can't wait for everyone to get on the same page. The notion of "it's not worth trying until X country/organisation does something" is ridiculous in the extreme.

Ireland was the first country to charge for plastic bags I believe and there was uproar. Now it's common practice.

Swindled · 19-05-2021 5:58pm

hirondelle wrote: »

It is changing recently as it develops a middle class, but the vast majority of the carbon emissions generated by China were to produce the goods that the rest of the world consumes- we outsourced our carbon emissions to them. It is a shared responsibility.

I get it, we can only outsource our jobs and industry to China, but we can't expect them to do anything environmentally, or the poor Chinese billionaires to pay any carbon taxes. After the US, China is the second largest consumer of luxury goods in the world.

Padre_Pio · 19-05-2021 5:59pm

Swindled wrote: »

I get it, we can only outsource our jobs and industry to China, but we can't expect them to do anything environmentally, or the poor Chinese billionaires to pay any carbon taxes. After the US, China is the second largest consumer of luxury goods in the world.

That's per dollar spent. Not per capita. It's only second because there's 1.3 billion people living there.

Swindled · 19-05-2021 6:00pm

Padre_Pio wrote: »

LOL, I don't have an agenda, it just bugs me that people continue to play the blame game, especially the "China bad, Europe good" trope that's categorically untrue.
China is bad, but Europe, the US etc are worse, only in different ways.
The World Bank says that in 2016, per capita, Ireland was a worse polluter than China. So was Norway, and half the other EU countries.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?most_recent_value_desc=true
You can find all sorts of studies to back this up.

So why are we blaming China? They have hundreds of coal plants? Sure, but they have over a billion people and they're the manufacturing centre of the world. How much sh*t do people buy that comes from China?! If China was split into ten small countries, then the headlines would move onto Russia or the US.

Ireland had ten peat power plants over the years, the WORST kind of pollution, not to mention the devastation of our peat bogs.
The "large corporations" are all fossil fuel based, providing power to people and industry the world over.
The problem is ourselves, it's everyone. You can point fingers all you want, but unless people in developed countries change our behaviours, climate change is going to get worse.

Thank God the Chinese are not as bad as the scumbag Irish. China, great bunch of lads. If only we could get a Chairman Mao.

shtpEdthePlum · 19-05-2021 6:00pm

Hi OP,

In all srsnss though, I think the whole green push needs to be made towards corporations instead of consumers.

Padre_Pio · 19-05-2021 6:01pm

Swindled wrote: »

Thank God the Chinese are not as bad as the scumbag Irish. China, great bunch of lads. If only we could get a Chairman Mao.

Nice nonsense answer. Didn't think we were in AH, but if that's the standard you've sunk to then I must be onto something.

El Tarangu · 19-05-2021 6:02pm

Swindled wrote: »

After the US, China is the second largest consumer of luxury goods in the world.

1,400,000,000 live in China
0,328,000,000 live in America

You either don't understand the difference between per capita and total consumption, or are being willfully obtuse.

Swindled · 19-05-2021 6:03pm

Padre_Pio wrote: »

That's per dollar spent. Not per capita. It's only second because there's 1.3 billion people living there.

We need a larger population(as long as they are not Irish), but keep them poor, while our party comrades become billionaires, then we can get rid of our environmental regulations and blame the nasty small western capitalist countries comrade. These Chinese lads have it sussed.

Swindled · 19-05-2021 6:07pm

Padre_Pio wrote: »

Nice nonsense answer. Didn't think we were in AH, but if that's the standard you've sunk to then I must be onto something.

Yep it's a giant Irish conspiracy theory against the poor Chinese / Liberians, but you're on it.

Swindled · 19-05-2021 6:25pm

El Tarangu wrote: »

1,400,000,000 live in China
0,328,000,000 live in America

You either don't understand the difference between per capita and total consumption, or are being willfully obtuse.

I get what you're saying, we should be more like the Chinese lads and less like the naughty Americans.

The J Stands for Jay · 19-05-2021 6:51pm

hirondelle wrote: »

It is changing recently as it develops a middle class, but the vast majority of the carbon emissions generated by China were to produce the goods that the rest of the world consumes- we outsourced our carbon emissions to them. It is a shared responsibility.

A high proportion of China's emissions should in reality be applied to Western countries, as they're propping up our vast consumption.

19-05-2021 6:54pm

Padre_Pio wrote: »

What's more important? Sustained economic growth based on production and consumption, or reducing our climate impact.

Unless the world economy fundamentally changes, we can't have both.

Who consumes the products, who consumes the power?

The producers are Chinese and the consumers are Chinese and other countries. I notice that since the EU, in particular, has managed to stall or reverse carbon production we are blamed for Chinese manufacturing. That makes no sense unless you deduct manufacturing in Western countries who export. All of them do.

McGaggs wrote: »

A high proportion of China's emissions should in reality be applied to Western countries, as they're propping up our vast consumption.

Ok, do that for Ireland. We export a lot, can we reduce our carbon costs by taking away the carbon cost of exports?

19-05-2021 6:59pm

I do think it is fair to give China sometime to catch up with the west on reducing per capita carbon costs, and I believe that they should do it.

Arbitrarily blaming consumer countries, rather than producer countries, is something new though. And of course it means that the West can't do much to control carbon emissions, if the Chinese emissions are to be blamed on us. Except ban all Chinese exports. Is that it?

whisky_galore · 19-05-2021 7:05pm

Padre_Pio wrote: »

Ireland was the first country to charge for plastic bags I believe and there was uproar.

I don't recall any protests over this?

Now we buy ourselves a so-called bag for life, which is still, by and large, plastic so we can feel good about ourselves.
They still end up dumped at recycling areas full of recycling people can't be bothered bringing home with them when they find the bins full....

19-05-2021 7:23pm

whisky_galore wrote: »

I don't recall any protests over this?

You don't sound too happy.

Now we buy ourselves a so-called bag for life, which is still, by and large, plastic so we can feel good about ourselves.
They still end up dumped at recycling areas full of recycling people can't be bothered bringing home with them when they find the bins full....

Well it could be a bag for life if people took care of it. And most are cloth of some kind.

19-05-2021 7:40pm

The original post is very ok boomer isn't it? Its all over the place regarding eras.

We walked up stairs, because we didn't have a lift in every supermarket, shop and office building.

Nor do we. I walk up the stairs to work and in my apartment. How many shops have lifts? Lifts existed pre WWII anyway.

We walked to the local shop and didn't climb into a 300 horse power machine every time we had to go half a mile.

Most people don't take a car for half a mile.

Back then, we washed the baby's Terry Toweling nappies because we didn't have the throw away kind.

First disposable nappy was in 1942. That said they are a big problem.

We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 3 kilowatts — wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids had hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.

Washing machines probably goes back to the 50s anyway in terms of popularity and the first ever were in the 19C. I did get hand me downs though. I'm early 40s.

Back then, we had one radio or TV in the house - not a TV in every room and the TV had a small screen the size of a big handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of Arran In the kitchen.

That TV almost certainly was more of a carbon cost than a modern one.

We blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us.

I mean people still do but those electric machines are also older than a century. ( i.e. The first mixer with electric motor is thought to be the one invented by American Rufus Eastman in 1885. U.S. Patent 330,829)

Its all over the place.

Padre_Pio · 19-05-2021 7:41pm

whisky_galore wrote: »

I don't recall any protests over this?

Now we buy ourselves a so-called bag for life, which is still, by and large, plastic so we can feel good about ourselves.
They still end up dumped at recycling areas full of recycling people can't be bothered bringing home with them when they find the bins full....

There wasn't protest. There was uproar. Same in the UK in 2015.

But we did it, and people would agree now it's a good thing.

parkman6551 · 19-05-2021 9:00pm

Padre_Pio wrote: »

There wasn't protest. There was uproar. Same in the UK in 2015.

But we did it, and people would agree now it's a good thing.

Interestingly, the shops in the UK seem to get it all wrong. Whenever I went over, and bought something in, for instance M&S, you would have it put in a PAPER bag and be charged 10p automatically. But you couldn't have a plastic bag either !

Parkman.

magicbastarder · 19-05-2021 10:20pm

whisky_galore wrote: »

Now we buy ourselves a so-called bag for life, which is still, by and large, plastic so we can feel good about ourselves.
They still end up dumped at recycling areas full of recycling people can't be bothered bringing home with them when they find the bins full....

it's not that it's plastic that's the key. it's that you don't get 8 free bags when you do your weekly shopping anymore.

speaking of plastic and shopping, i can't be the only person who hates the move to plastic shopping baskets in shops. they usually look manky inside.
though aldi had one a few months ago for sale, so we got one and usually use that when we shop now.

Capt'n Midnight · 20-05-2021 12:28am

fvp4 wrote: »

That TV almost certainly was more of a carbon cost than a modern one.

Flat screen power usage has remained neutral because newer models are more efficient but that's offset by bigger sizes.#

Tip - don't get too hung up on SMART TV's they are insecure and rarely patched. Get an external box - from something like a Chromcast to a combo Linux satellite receiver with all the apps.

CRT's and Plasma run hot all right.

hirondelle · 20-05-2021 9:33am

Swindled wrote: »

I get it, we can only outsource our jobs and industry to China, but we can't expect them to do anything environmentally, or the poor Chinese billionaires to pay any carbon taxes. After the US, China is the second largest consumer of luxury goods in the world.

Did you miss the bit where I mentioned the growing Chinese middle class and said "it is a shared responsibility"?

20-05-2021 9:40am

hirondelle wrote: »

Did you miss the bit where I mentioned the growing Chinese middle class and said "it is a shared responsibility"?

do you deduct the cost of carbon from western exports on a per country basis?

That would reduce Ireland’s carbon emissions a lot. We would have to work out the carbon cost of export businesses, across their use of electricity, fuel and transport. Including services.

For instance a lot of the data centre cost would be attributed to the rest of the EU.

20-05-2021 9:45am

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Flat screen power usage has remained neutral because newer models are more efficient but that's offset by bigger sizes.#

Tip - don't get too hung up on SMART TV's they are insecure and rarely patched. Get an external box - from something like a Chromcast to a combo Linux satellite receiver with all the apps.

CRT's and Plasma run hot all right.

Yes, I was replying to the op and the tiny little CRT box from 1950 or so. Probably more carbon expensive than a modern TV.

The other way of saying what you said about the smart TVs is that getting a bigger one has no carbon effects. Win.

Why old people were always "Green".

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