37° heat is depressing.
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But not in the sense that they don't care. In the sense that it feels like such a large problem they feel helpless to contribute.
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We tone-policed flight shame away so quickly. We made smoking socially unacceptable. Smokers still smoke and are free to smoke, but give you a slightly apologetic embarrassed grin as they sneak out to the smoking area. When someone says they've bought a holiday home in Spain and someone else says they're bringing the whole family to Thailand to celebrate their birthday, there are no apologetic grins and the social expectation is still that everyone else exclaims "Oh how lovely! Lucky you!"
@CiaraNi As if smoking is even the least bit contained.
slightly apologetic embarrassed grin as they sneak out to the smoking area = dump tobacco, weed and whatever else on neighbors and passersby and threaten anyone who complains
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@CiaraNi Yes. I've been thinking it really is time to stop that.
Sometimes, when people are discussing holiday plans, I'll mutter "I don't fly anymore, except for family visits, because my conscience won't let me. But you do you". But I'll be the only one at the lunch table.
During this June heatwave (11-12 days here, with a maximum of 37 degrees), I've been thinking I should really start speaking up more. Someone should start changing the social expectation, right?
Young people flying to holiday destinations multiple times a year. I don't get it. It's not like they haven't been aware of climate change since middle school. And they'll be suffering the consequences for their whole - hopefully long - lives.
@marjon I’ve tried being passive, not performing the Oh Lovely! reaction when someone says they’ve booked a flight to their newest city break. Lately, like yourself, seeing how badly it's going, I’ve tried working into the conversation that I only fly when it's to family on islands, and then only on whatever leg of the trip requires a plane. I mention that I’d love to do #NoFly, but for family reasons, I can only do #NoFrivolousFly until I have time for long, multi-leg train trips across seas.
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@CiaraNi Yes. I've been thinking it really is time to stop that.
Sometimes, when people are discussing holiday plans, I'll mutter "I don't fly anymore, except for family visits, because my conscience won't let me. But you do you". But I'll be the only one at the lunch table.
During this June heatwave (11-12 days here, with a maximum of 37 degrees), I've been thinking I should really start speaking up more. Someone should start changing the social expectation, right?
Young people flying to holiday destinations multiple times a year. I don't get it. It's not like they haven't been aware of climate change since middle school. And they'll be suffering the consequences for their whole - hopefully long - lives.
“I've been thinking I should really start speaking up more. Someone should start changing the social expectation, right?”
Yes! Me too. We need to collectively change the social expectation and the conversation. To encourage each other to use our collective superpowers, taking action like a mass boycott of holiday flights.
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My generation and the one before it have made prospects for young people relentlessly shit. They know it. And we’ve trained them to think that voting is the only real agency they have. Which is bullshit.
For the most part, I don’t begrudge them making their lives momentarily less shit
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@CiaraNi The gamification of our own demise.
I have spent the last years focusing on thinking clearly.
Would not have thought that this was in the cards.
@spdrnl "The gamification of our own demise." Yes. The word 'gamification' keeps popping into my mind the last few days since the temperatures where I am (Denmark) got as high as those already melting Germany, France etc. News reports and social conversations are mostly a breathless excited game of who can report the latest highest record temperature, like it's a prize we've won.
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@CiaraNi this last week has been quite shocking. The second heatwave of the year in the UK. I hope folks are beginning to take notice. Many are too self-centred to care, other than by making sure they buy the right brand of air con...
@caffetino My experience in the past few days, when the heat has hit properly where I am (Denmark), is that people are noticing and talking about it, but what they're talking about is all the 'reasons' why none of us have to modify our individual behaviour and consumption because it's no use, 'what can one person do?' The possibility of change through collective action and mass boycotts is never mentioned.
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@CiaraNi Just watched the news and an older woman was delighted because "you can take your coffee outside are 7 and it is so nice. That is something we can usually not do."
I just... can't.
@hemlockcookie
Yeah. Now try taking your tea outside late afternoon and see how nice that is. (I'm 71 and decidedly undelighted.)
@CiaraNi -
@CiaraNi Just watched the news and an older woman was delighted because "you can take your coffee outside are 7 and it is so nice. That is something we can usually not do."
I just... can't.
@hemlockcookie Oh that's so depressing. And she's not the only one. I wish the news would show more courage about reporting within a context. They don't need to share that kind of thinking, making a climate crisis seem nice. Demoralising is absolutely the right word.
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@CiaraNi Just watched the news and an older woman was delighted because "you can take your coffee outside are 7 and it is so nice. That is something we can usually not do."
I just... can't.
@hemlockcookie @CiaraNi God I want to punch people like that, or scream "we won't have coffee soon because the places where it grows will become deserts, and entitled imbeciles like you offloading responsibility to other people is a reason for that".
Grr.
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37° heat is depressing. So is the way we’re dealing with climate collapse. The language we’re using, the excuses we’re making. Making heat records a game, excitedly watching to see if Number Goes Up. The news said the latest temperature had ‘ruined the chance of another new record’. And we all seem to agree that, conveniently, there’s no use in inconveniencing ourselves personally by consuming less or not flying until the day after every billionaire has given up their private jet.
@CiaraNi I wonder how much pollution there is from all of the private jets.
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@CiaraNi I have students, and family members, who go abroad on holiday twice, three times a year, and I've stopped pretending to be interested and pleased for them.
I try not to be a total arse about it, but I just had to cancel a citybreak in bloody *Birmingham* because I rely on public transit and the trainlines in Wales were buckling in the heat.
@nic Snap! I've stopped responding Oh Lovely! too. And lately have upgraded to mentioning that I don't fly for holidays. I'm not telling others they shouldn't frivolously fly, but just trying to normalise the fact that holidays are possible without flights. (Many people I know equate the two. They hear 'no fly' as 'no holidays')
"I just had to cancel a citybreak in bloody *Birmingham* because I rely on public transit and the trainlines in Wales were buckling in the heat."
Perfect illustration.
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@CiaraNi Yes! Plus we have to stop subsidising air-transport fuel. I got the train from London to Malmö last year, and it was way more expensive than flying. But I haven’t flown for 12 years, and can’t see myself doing it again, certainly not short-haul.
@arratoon The subsidising of air-transport fuel is a scandal.
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What you are describing is " #PathDependency ".
And billionaires are just part of the path. As are people cheering for combustion engines or the newest electric car.
This is the way inequal human societies just function - Persistence & Tradition is valued over everything else.
And when the powerful AND a great part of the powerless want the same thing - #stability - then survival becomes an afterthought.
@berlinfokus Not taking an airplane to go on holidays seems like a very simple thing to do here. Instant action that requires no actual sacrifice or loss.
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37° heat is depressing. So is the way we’re dealing with climate collapse. The language we’re using, the excuses we’re making. Making heat records a game, excitedly watching to see if Number Goes Up. The news said the latest temperature had ‘ruined the chance of another new record’. And we all seem to agree that, conveniently, there’s no use in inconveniencing ourselves personally by consuming less or not flying until the day after every billionaire has given up their private jet.
There is a pervasive sense of "what difference does it make?" when it's the 100 corporations and the 1% who do the biggest amount of damage. And there is a lot of truth in that, but waiting for that to be solved will not help prepare us for what is coming either. There is a lot of room between obsessing over "individual footprint" and doing at all nothing to change. Capitalism encourages FOMO; choosing to miss out is part of the resistance.
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I dunno. Some of it is conscious, by the most lost people. But I think it’s mostly the aggregated property of what most of us do at the individual scale.
A billion “yeah I could do the low carbon thing but there are ‘reasons’ why this journey, this meeting, this purchase can’t do that”.
What we most critically lack are contexts in which to talk about why our ‘reasons’ are dust and what to do about it
"What we most critically lack are contexts in which to talk about why our ‘reasons’ are dust and what to do about it"
Yes, this is it. We are refusing to even acknowledge this problem, let alone talk about this. The current heatwave has had the opposite effect, in my anecdotal experience - I have never heard so many people confidently state so many 'reasons' why it will make no real difference if individual people modify their individual behaviour.
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My generation and the one before it have made prospects for young people relentlessly shit. They know it. And we’ve trained them to think that voting is the only real agency they have. Which is bullshit.
For the most part, I don’t begrudge them making their lives momentarily less shit
@urlyman
I agree. My daughter not flying would not decrease the CO2 emissions. The fuel that she might have saved gets consumed by some other tourist, or by the military.In the meantime, part of my pension is coming from Big Oil etc.
There is very little an individual can do. (But of course Trump, Putin, the generals in Sudan, etc could have chosen not to start their wars.)
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“I've been thinking I should really start speaking up more. Someone should start changing the social expectation, right?”
Yes! Me too. We need to collectively change the social expectation and the conversation. To encourage each other to use our collective superpowers, taking action like a mass boycott of holiday flights.
@CiaraNi @marjon I get this too, stopped flying years ago thinking there would be electric planes in a few years time, but still nothing 20 years on.
So I get family saying things like ‘you won’t stop your kids flying I’m afraid’ like some kind of cautionary tale *on me* (also I’ve never stopped my kids flying, they have to make their own judgement call). It’s the older / my generation, it would just be nice if we all supported each other in this crisis
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@berlinfokus Not taking an airplane to go on holidays seems like a very simple thing to do here. Instant action that requires no actual sacrifice or loss.
well, personally I'm @ 25 years flight-free now. never felt like a sacrifice at all, more like a liberation actually.
but thats an outsider-position. Not like totally rare, but not mainstream either.
so the question would theoretically be: "why are people not acting in their self-interest ?"
but whatever a scientific answer to that might be, I have made up my mind - they CAN'T. Usually most people are generally unable to anticipate or even see the consequences to their actions.
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@RVLara23 @tsturm @urlyman Lots of people who aren't part of the small privileged minority who can over-consume and fly on holidays are overwhelmed too. If people feel helpless to contribute, then a mass holiday-flight boycott (or similar) should help them feel less helpless. I do believe there are people who don't care, who just value their city break flights higher than they value younger generations' futures. But it's still not socially acceptable to say that.
