Greta Thunberg

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"Hi China, we're handing you the future on a plate. No need to thank us."

It seems like China are pretty much the only people capable of R&D-ing and then actually building these things, with other nations either banning all things nuclear or being unable to get anything through planning to actually build them.

Whilst democracy can (is supposed to) reflect the will of the people, the will of the people is not always in their own best interests, due to being ill-informed, selfish, etc.

Just lol if we need China to save us after all.

China? The place is imploding, it's gonna be like North Korea in a decade or so.
 
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(snip)

If the summit is a failure, it will hopefully see the end to any net zero pledges & mark the start of a properly mature debate about what measures & more importantly mitigations are realistic & feasible.
No action is realistic, because nobody is going to accept having their quality of life or purchasing power decreased, and no government will even ask its populace to do so.

So, we'll get more words, more fudging the numbers, more skirting around the edges of the problem. Meaningful action is utterly unrealistic.

Everybody knows this. It's basically an intractable problem for any western democracy.
 
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No action is realistic, because nobody is going to accept having their quality of life or purchasing power decreased, and no government will even ask its populace to do so.

So, we'll get more words, more fudging the numbers, more skirting around the edges of the problem. Meaningful action is utterly unrealistic.

Everybody knows this. It's basically an intractable problem for any western democracy.
Pretty much this, I have recently really enjoyed losing plastic straws in favour of the paper ones (that feel awful to drink from and cant even be recycled) all while knowing 95% of plastic waste flows Into the oceans from about 10 rivers out of China/India and Pakistan.
 
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Remember when drinks came in glass bottles and you got a few pence for returning them, I think some lids could even be returned.

to recycle them you basically just spray them with steam, it's amazing.

surely even cartons are better than plastic bottles?


no one ever seems to get at the drinks companies though, makes me wonder if they are funding some of the climate change groups and making donations to the right people

whenever there's a disaster water bottles seem to be big business, just normal regular sized little ones.

you'd think they could just take water over in massive bottles, surely it's cheaper and more efficient to have like 10 litre bottles than handing out 300ml or whatever size
 
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Remember when drinks came in glass bottles and you got a few pence for returning them, I think some lids could even be returned.

to recycle them you basically just spray them with steam, it's amazing.

surely even cartons are better than plastic bottles?


no one ever seems to get at the drinks companies though, makes me wonder if they are funding some of the climate change groups and making donations to the right people

cartons are probably worse as they are usually 3 to 5 layers of different materials including plastics and the long life type shelf cartons i.e the ones that you don't need to store in the fridge also have a foil layer sandwiched between 2 polyethylene layers. The term carton is so misleading these days as they stopped being "carton" decades ago. Plastic bottles would be way easier to recycle as they are single material. Cartons are a nightmare as you can't or at least shouldn't really dump then in with paper recycling due to the high ammount of plastics in them, but you can chuck them in plastics due to the paperboard content. The only reason cartons still exist is because of logistics i.e you can fit more of them into a certain ammount of rackspace compared to bottles.
 
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plastic can't be recycled indefinitely, most plastics can't be recycled at all, the few that can you can only do it a few times.

isn't the process of shredding the plastic, making it little balls again and reforming it more energy intensive than just making new plastic too?

plastics cancer to the earth, it's already too late to ever remove it from all living organisms.

the fact we are pumping out more single use disposable plastic is insane.

nothing on the earth has done more damage than plastic? not even nukes

An apple contains thousands of particles of plastic, the air you breathe probably even contains plastic

how much more contamination can we accept?

BTW you might want to look in to the origins of plastic recycling and see where it came from and why the plastic resin identification code symbol is almost identical to the recycling symbol.

pro tip the people who pollute the earth convinced you that recycling plastic makes plastic good.
 
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Cartons morphed into 'tetra packs' and as noted above need very specialist recycling methods to recover any material from them. To recycle them you need to return them to somewhere that will take them. Some council recycling centre sites have them as do some but not all supermarkets, otherwise send them to landfill.
 
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pictures of people at the cop exhibition concourse all wandering around with carton drinks cups ... they didn't take their reusable cups
Don't have any products in cartons in weekly shop now , either pet/polythene - Aldi went greener.

Haven't heard that major companies are represented to give their commitments (likes of McD, kfc, unilever, coke ) that might be interesting to hear
otherwise, these closed door meetings - what the hell actually go's on (it's like the brexit discussions?) - they have doughnuts and coffee delivered and sandwiches ... and ?

( https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0010zxs/panorama-cocacolas-100-billion-bottle-problem )
 
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No action is realistic, because nobody is going to accept having their quality of life or purchasing power decreased, and no government will even ask its populace to do so.

So, we'll get more words, more fudging the numbers, more skirting around the edges of the problem. Meaningful action is utterly unrealistic.

Everybody knows this. It's basically an intractable problem for any western democracy.


No action is not sustainable.
No action means even more pollution (more health issues to more people and more frequent pandemics), even more climate change refugees, even more losses because of the more frequent and intense natural disasters.

Which means that at some point earlier or later, some nations will start a global war which will end the civilisation as we know it.

It's your choice - you will learn either way - the hard way (which you choose), or the wise way (the Greta way)...
 
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No action is not sustainable.
No action means even more pollution (more health issues to more people and more frequent pandemics), even more climate change refugees, even more losses because of the more frequent and intense natural disasters.

Which means that at some point earlier or later, some nations will start a global war which will end the civilisation as we know it.

It's your choice - you will learn either way - the hard way (which you choose), or the wise way (the Greta way)...
I'm not choosing anything. Even with no impact to quality of life, apathy and inertia is hard enough to overcome.

When the "meaningful action" would involve loss of convenience, purchasing power, etc...

Well, you tell me. What "meaningful action" do you expect to see from all the world's governments, in the next decade? Seriously expect them to implement?
 
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I'm not choosing anything. Even with no impact to quality of life, apathy and inertia is hard enough to overcome.

When the "meaningful action" would involve loss of convenience, purchasing power, etc...

Well, you tell me. What "meaningful action" do you expect to see from all the world's governments, in the next decade? Seriously expect them to implement?

1. Build nuclear power plants, wind farms, solar farms, tidal energy farms, geothermal energy farms;
2. Shut down all coal-powered and natural gas-powered plants;
3. Force the automotive industry to start developing electric and hydrogen vehicles only;
4. Force Boeing and Airbus to develop and start selling aircraft on hydrogen;
5. Phase out all internal combustion vehicles off the roads all over the world;
6. Stop the deforestation of the global rainforests;
7. Start tree planting on a large industrial scale - hello Sahara desert, yeah, we are looking at you :D

This is good for a start :D
 
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Pretty much this, I have recently really enjoyed losing plastic straws in favour of the paper ones (that feel awful to drink from and cant even be recycled) all while knowing 95% of plastic waste flows Into the oceans from about 10 rivers out of China/India and Pakistan.

Funny thing is straws used to be paper when the first plastic ones appeared they were a novelty.

Remember when drinks came in glass bottles and you got a few pence for returning them, I think some lids could even be returned.

to recycle them you basically just spray them with steam, it's amazing.

Remember when milk came in glass bottles? Someone even used to come and collect them and they'd be reused the next day!
 
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Unless every part of the supply chain was electric, the additional weight of the glass bottles would produce more CO2 than the plastic bottle.

If the plastic bottle is recycled, you would need to reuse the glass bottle 20 times for the CO2 emissions to be comparable.
 
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1. Build nuclear power plants, wind farms, solar farms, tidal energy farms, geothermal energy farms;
2. Shut down all coal-powered and natural gas-powered plants;
3. Force the automotive industry to start developing electric and hydrogen vehicles only;
4. Force Boeing and Airbus to develop and start selling aircraft on hydrogen;
5. Phase out all internal combustion vehicles off the roads all over the world;
6. Stop the deforestation of the global rainforests;
7. Start tree planting on a large industrial scale - hello Sahara desert, yeah, we are looking at you :D

This is good for a start :D
My question was what do you seriously expect them to do in the next decade... you don't honestly think 1/2 of the stuff on that list is going to happen in the next decade, do you? Especially since we're talking globally, not just the Scandies ;)
 
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"Hi China, we're handing you the future on a plate. No need to thank us."

It seems like China are pretty much the only people capable of R&D-ing and then actually building these things, with other nations either banning all things nuclear or being unable to get anything through planning to actually build them.

Whilst democracy can (is supposed to) reflect the will of the people, the will of the people is not always in their own best interests, due to being ill-informed, selfish, etc.

Just lol if we need China to save us after all.

Well the idea of democracy is very noble but it usually falls flat on its face when a majority of people refuse to educate themselves before forming an opinion or at the very least try to verify that their opinion has some ground to stand on. Blind faith in whatever person or institute is also a danger we see to much of these days IMHO. Democracy only works when the majority are exercising critical thinking about the system(s) they are relying on and the information they are getting no matter who gives it.

It would be a sad kinda funny if China is the one to save us with the very research/technology we need to solve this energy problem we have.
 
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Well the idea of democracy is very noble but it usually falls flat on its face when a majority of people refuse to educate themselves before forming an opinion or at the very least try to verify that their opinion has some ground to stand on. Blind faith in whatever person or institute is also a danger we see to much of these days IMHO. Democracy only works when the majority are exercising critical thinking about the system(s) they are relying on and the information they are getting no matter who gives it.

It would be a sad kinda funny if China is the one to save us with the very research/technology we need to solve this energy problem we have.


Well they've tried a virus and that's so far not reducing population growth noticeably, not sure I like the Chinese technologies much... ;)
 
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