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Having this light hearted discussion 😁 in the my shop a fair bit with customers at the moment, not the starting with an earthquake, Birds and snakes, and aeroplanes type.
But the collapse of our westernised society as we know it.
With the current Political moves, war, plague, drought, environmental issues etc. Currently around the world - When do you think we'll see major disruption and shifts in the way humanity lives on planet earth?
Anyone got Odds on how long it stays light hearted for?
What changes in their lifestyles are your customers making to prepare for/mitigate against the problems they see coming?
What changes in their lifestyles are your customers making to prepare for/mitigate against the problems they see coming?
Literally none - Most of this is discussed with elderly newspaper buyers.....
Anyone got Odds on how long it stays light hearted for?
Paragraph 2 was a bit of a departure I think.
What changes in their lifestyles are your customers making to prepare for/mitigate against the problems they see coming?
He offers them [plastic free] solutions, offers them [plant based] alternatives and they decline.
We only have plastic free solutions where able & to be fair many now won't even use a paper bag for fruit and veg (but still drive a 4x4 and live in a house big enough for 10 families, holiday 3x a year etc)
I feel fine.
Plus ça change
I think thols2 sums it up 😂
Right?
nah, it'll be right. the last 25 years have been a bit special though, moving forward we wont get everything we want, whenever, for cheap, on demand.
For revolution to happen the common man has to have the basic necessities denied.
Food and water, housing, heating, clothing and security.
thols2 wins
moving forward we wont get everything we want, whenever, for cheap, on demand.
This would define Western society for me. But the question is, roughly when this would happen.....?
5/10/20/100 years etc
Given the UK went metric before I was born but people still insist in talking in inches and foots because it is easier* when measuring stuff I doubt there will be much change in the UK behaviour for a while.
*Since when did 10+10 = 1' 8" make things easier than 10+10=20 or 2+2 = 1 yard 1 foot easier than 2+2=4?
That's a surprise pineapple face if ever I saw one.
Those Insulate Britain people saw it coming before all of us.
If only there were cheap effective ways to save energy.
We are totally dependent on capitalism. As soon as the systems for delivery of food breaks down we're kucked.
And anyone who requires medicine for their daily life is also knackered.
I used to think we'd be extinct (along with most of the other species on the planet) within 500 years. Now I think we'd be lucky to make it through another 300. And the second half of the 300 will be pretty grim.
I think this article sums up where it went wrong
I was at the first Climate Camp, and we had a management team from northern Europe there who said they were over to persuade our government and the pump sites to be changed over to hydrogen cars. Said their factories were ready to roll. But, both the government and the oil companies here running the pump sites were unwilling to cough up to change the infrastructure.
True or not, there are a few things that don't get changed in life because rich people won't keep earning money anymore from their investments. You might start believing they are the ones preventing prompt changeover.
Literally none – Most of this is discussed with elderly newspaper buyers…..
Not a massive surprise. Boomers have the most entitled perspective of any group of folks I know. It's all going to hell in a hand cart, but it will be solved (to the benefit of them, obvs) by and is the fault of; someone else...
Living in a small cul de sac, it's clear to see the households who are really trying to make a difference. Some people in the road have been caring about the planet for years, some are finally making small changes, the rest don't give a flying fig, they will never change and no amount of educating them will make a difference.
I see it within my own family too. Most are really making changes and others just carry on with their life as they want, not thinking or future generations. No amount of hints or tips from me make any difference.
A good example is that everyone should have a water butt (this is possible). A relative said "oh but I've nowhere to put it", I'm actually getting worn out by the wonderful excuses people make for not helping the environment.
But the collapse of our westernised society as we know it.
Not from what I see. There are still many, many people with money to piss up the wall and not a care in the world.
Personally we're OK. Not rich, modest jobs, but mortgage free and some money in the bank. Thermostat will still be turned down when winter comes though.
& so we fall into lazy stereotypes
I think this article sums up where it went wrong
I think this is a More concise wiki link
A good example is that everyone should have a water butt (this is possible)
Why? What am I going to do with said water butt and its content?
In a thread that is literally itself a lazy rehash of every newspaper headline since oh about 1750, I think we can make allowances for a bit of typecasting
Theres too many people in the world for stereotypes not to be raised - the issues aren't a singular persons problems.
But the blame game, isn't why I started the thread, more to see if anyone would give a timeline.
So far we have one reply(in 30odd) that answers the question, when?
Things are changing and almost all of us aren't ready/prepared/willing for what changes are coming/needing done.
Yep water butts are a must if you have a hose pipe ban, grow your own fruit and veg, have a pond, a bird bath and a garden.
It's common sense to have one or more.
We used ours a few weeks ago for flushing the loo, (when there was a leak nearby), no water for a full Saturday. It's amazing how much water is needed to flush a loo :0)
Literally none – Most of this is discussed with elderly newspaper buyers…..
Not a massive surprise. Boomers have the most entitled perspective of any group of folks I know. It’s all going to hell in a hand cart, but it will be solved (to the benefit of them, obvs) by and is the fault of; someone else…
Where is the evidence for this?
Where is the evidence for this?
I follow #PoliticsJoe on twitter, he was interviewing a bunch of conservatives outside a husting event for Truss/Sunak, one of his interviewees literally said "I'm too old to start to do anything about climate change now" I'll see if I can dredge out the clip.
edit here you go, The very first words...
https://twitter.com/PoliticsJOE_UK/status/1556667325545324545
Yep water butts are a must if you have a hose pipe ban
Don't really get this. If there's a hose pipe ban, it means there hasn't been any rain, so your water butt is empty.
If anywhere civil unrest will happen in America first. They've got loads of guns and loads of people dying to use them.
Personally I'm hoping aliens will come and save us.
We'll give you limitless energy technology if you give up weapons and destruction.
he was interviewing a bunch of conservatives outside a husting event for Truss/Sunak
Yep, that's a pretty representative sample!
So what? Here's a bloke who's had every advantage that the post war settlement could hand to him, and now here is is saying out loud to a stranger that he doesn't care for the future of the planet, he literally couldn't give a toss. I know the area that monkeyboy has his shop, and I will take odds that this chap's view isn't a million miles from his customers'
The idea is you're not using potable water to water plants all the time so hosepipe bans don't happen, duh
Yep water butts are a must if you have a hose pipe ban, grow your own fruit and veg, have a pond, a bird bath and a garden.
It’s common sense to have one or more.
Pretty much hasn't rained here for at least a month, and then again it's been pretty dry all year bar some epic storms, guess my butt would be pretty empty anyway.
But what percentage of the population of the UK 'boomers'? If the other 80% of the population are changing their ways then that's a good thing.
If we're doing the blame game, then why not blame the short-term thinking of politicians over decades. All parties only do what they need to do to stay in power.
Anyway - it's always the end of the world as we know it. The world today is far removed from the '70s I grew up in.
Yep water butts are a must if you have a hose pipe ban, grow your own fruit and veg, have a pond, a bird bath and a garden
You see i have all those things (the hose pipe ban being self imposed and year round) but the solution is to accept when it's not rained there isn't much water. The result is the garden is filled with things which do well in the weather we have rather than the weather we want, this year the lavender is doing very well as are the lilies, the camelia not so much. The grass is a bit brown (ding dong the moss is dead!) but the other stuff - what ever it is - is doing well in place.
Root veg, courgettes, squash, tomatoes, all fine, leafy stuff less so, the sweet corn is looking OK but I don't think it'll make it to fully ripe, masa it is. when the weather changes a bit I'll put the spinach and things in and they should take for winter.
That a hose pipe ban is a concern is a bit like thinking the problem with driving too much is the cost of fuel.
If everybody had a water butt it would put off the need for the hosepipe ban.
They are far from perfect in a very dry spell but in normal times save water.
Even with the minimal rain recently we have filled our water butts.(300 litres)
Boomers have the most entitled perspective of any group of folks
The thing is a fair few of them know have they've had it the best.
Talk to my Mum, mid-80's.
She's old enough to have experienced what it was like before the post-war consensus, and 'sane' enough to see what's happened since it was abandoned. It still protects folk like her (DB pensions, triple-lock state pension, insulated by assets) but she can see how it's been eroded constantly.
For her the absolute key policy was a cradle-to-grave NHS - and she can see that been eventually removed.
Her & my Dad were Labour voters right thru (middle class professionals), only recently moving over to the SNP - mainly as she can see that they're following the social democratic policies she's always supported (it was hard though, for someone English born & bred). Very pro-EU too.
I also remember my blue to the core Grandma realising in the early 2000's what the Tories had become, she swapped to the Libs.
If we’re doing the blame game, then why not blame the short-term thinking of politicians over decades
And what generation do you think those politicians are from?
Why? What am I going to do with said water butt and its content?
Use is as domestic water. But that doesn't take the practicalities of installing a suitably sized tank, pump, filter etc. into account. It's certainly not a terrible suggestion but would require appropriate investment (and would probably scale better when shared between households). Recycle the grey water for toilets and job(bie) jobbed.
The thing is a fair few of them know have they’ve had it the best.
Oh sure, and many of them have just benefitted unwittingly from the policies of the time. It's still surprising how many of them either refuse to acknowledge it, or willfully ignore it. They'll go down in history as the folks that got handed the golden cup - [that they handed the cost of onto other generations]. though.
And what generation do you think those politicians are from?
All generations - current lot are my age and younger (mid 50s). And the way of thinking is still the same.
Can't blame the politicians - blame tge system. Climate change is a long term fight, western politics is a comparative short term vote, so politics (generally) only work for short term goals.
50 reply's, one answer providing a timeline of events.....
50 reply’s, one answer providing a timeline of events…
Know your audience.
Thatcher's Britain! Thatcher's bloody Britain!
The thing is a fair few of them know have they’ve had it the best.
Oh sure, and many of them have just benefitted unwittingly from the policies of the time. It’s still surprising how many of them either refuse to acknowledge it, or willfully ignore it. They’ll go down in history as the folks that got handed the golden cup – [that they handed the cost of onto other generations]. though.
This is pretty much bullshit.
The real reason energy prices are going up is that soon we won't need heating, so the energy companies are just squeezing what profit they can, bless em.
As such, the model for our future already exists; look to British expats having it large on the Costa Del Sol; in time, lager will become the official currency; dwindling water stocks for lager production will ensure the currency's continued value in the long term. Any shortfalls in water for agriculture will be made up by urine.
Of course, there will come a point whereby there is no longer sufficient water stocks to produce lager, at which stage, they will just recycle urine.
Mleh, too many people think that there'll be some miraculous invention that will solve climate change overnight, like removing flouro-carbons from aerosols or lead from petrol. Folks aren't doing anything individually because they know it's meaningless anyway. You can have as many water butts as you like, it everyone is still moving via dinosaur mulch, we're still going to screw up the environment for ourselves.
There's too many frighted white people thinking they're going to have to live like people in Africa do now, and they'll hang onto their luxuries for as long as they're able regardless of the ultimate cost, and hope they snuff it before it's all a wasteland
Archeologists of 1000's years time will marvel and wonder at a group of folks who knew what was happening to them, and chose to do nothing anyway.
The real reason energy prices are going up is that soon we won’t need heating, so the energy companies are just squeezing what profit they can, bless em.
If we become too hot for heating we'll then need aircon! 🙂
Just look at the drought conditions currently in Europe and Western US, once water shortages start to kick in with the knock on effect of crop failures then more people will start to take the changes more seriously - but by that time it will be a few decades too late to do anything other than deal with the consequences.
Of course, there will come a point whereby there is no longer sufficient water stocks to produce lager, at which stage, they will just recycle urine.
Will anyone notice?
Know your audience.
I think people are just reluctant to admit it's closer than they want it to be and would rather just dance around the details of why it is the way it is....
If we become too hot for heating we’ll then
needwant aircon! 🙂
Like some of the more environmentally friendly, yet less profitable means of energy generation, that technology will be suppressed, for the good of all!
Should anyone discover the deception and raise the subject, they will be mercilessly targeted by a deftly crafted media campaign and end up scorned for their outdated concepts of decadence, being denied all shade as a punishment
It's a shame that we occupy a beautiful planet and are highly intelligent beings whose smart tech could be used to live symbiotically with the planet. Unfortunately we are power crazy fools who are committing planetcide and can't be bothered doing anything about it even though it spells out out own demise.
This sums it up quite well:
Between the boundaries of time and space
Was the planet earth and the human race
A world alive and centuries old
With veins of diamonds, silver and gold
Snow capped mountains over looked the land
And the deep blue sea made love with the sand
Full grown strands of evergreen hair
Kissed the sky with a breath of air
Where exotic fish once swam in the sea
And the eagles soared in the sky so free
But the foolish clan that walked the land
Was the creature, that they called man
They’re cannibalistic, paranoid fools
Tricking each other with games and rules
Training their men to kill and fight
Moving and stearing their mechanized might
Only thought that man had in mind
Was to conquer the world and the rest of mankind
Timeline wise I think it might be a bit longer than you think, kicking the can along like we did in 2008 - but that when the inevitable happens, it won't be a gradual decline but a sudden crash of complex, interacting systems rapidly breaking down. It will be very very bad, and most people will not have the internal resources to cope. Timeline? In my mid 50s I might get away with it. Glad I don't have kids.
Archeologists of 1000’s years time
You seriously thing there'll be anything like that existing in 1000's of years?
Problems be solved easy:
In most cases there has never been the incentive for those with resource to make it happen. When there is it will happen.
Run out of cheap fossil fuel. Go renewable. Renewable not enough. Go Nuclear. Solution has been around for years.
No water > Desalinate > how do rich people on private islands or dessert folk survive?
Global warming > everyone move to to Russia, they cold, have lots of land and some understanding of nulclear 😂
Optimists will survive. Maybe it could even get better for those that work to make it so. Just too many smart people working at adtech companies doing McJobs instead of on real world problems.
This is pretty much bullshit.
Ok, boomer
Hmm. If I understood what you meant by ‘golden cup’ and what these supposed benefits Boomers have received, I might be able to either understand better, or counter your argument.
I am a Boomer. I would argue that life has not been any easier for my generation, than it is for my children’s.
Also, many of my generation have done what they can to make the World a better place; many millennials couldn’t give a shit. It’s not as straightforward as you appear to suggest (imho).
If we become too hot for heating we’ll then need aircon! 🙂
I know you posted a smilie indicating your sarcasm, but unfortunately this is the attitude we will have to deal with.
Heating and cooling the large open space in your home, office, shopping mall is a ridiculous waste of energy.
Can’t blame the politicians – blame tge system.
Politicians designed the system (steered by the ultra-wealthy of course) - and the Conservatives are busy changing it for the (even) worse at quite a rate - abolition of the Human Rights Act, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, ripping up the ministerial code etc.
I am a Boomer. I would argue that life has not been any easier for my generation, than it is for my children’s.
My dad's a boomer and he (mostly) squandered the economic opportunities his time and country of birth offered - in his case with a few divorces and a drinking problem. Doesn't mean most of that generation didn't have it easier as working-age adults though.
You seriously thing there’ll be anything like that existing in 1000’s of years?
yeah, 'course. At some point (a few hundred thousand years back) in our history there was something like just a few thousand humans, in written records you can see plague events that have wiped out 50%+ of the population, There's theories now that suggest that the "dark ages" in post Romano-Britain was the result of bubonic plague killing off most of the population. Even as little as just a few hundred years ago the entire population of Britain was less than just the population of London now.
Humans are amazingly resilient.
he was interviewing a bunch of conservatives outside a husting event for Truss/Sunak, one of his interviewees literally said “I’m too old to start to do anything about climate change now”
C'mon nickc ,you should have spotted that that was The Corinthian 😉🙃
I know you posted a smilie indicating your sarcasm, but unfortunately this is the attitude we will have to deal with.
It was a dig at JHJ at suggesting that we won't need heating so energy companies won't have people to supply and profit from. We'll always need energy of some sort - hopefully created by green alternatives.
War, famine, pestilence, disease have always been the norm.
It's the last 70yrs which have been the abboration, at least in the west.
My dad’s a boomer and he (mostly) squandered the economic opportunities his time and country of birth offered – in his case with a few divorces and a drinking problem. Doesn’t mean most of that generation didn’t have it easier as working-age adults though.
I still don’t see any justification for saying Boomers had it easier.
I still don’t see any justification for saying Boomers had it easier.
i know, you did it all without avocado toast and a netflix sub... 😉
It’s not as straightforward as you appear to suggest
Who said the internet was a place for nuance? Of course you're right, it isn't nearly as clear cut as that. But it's difficult to argue the charge that the post war generation have a cultural, political and financial dominance in today's Britain. In just two areas; home ownership, which has worked to the benefit of the post war generation to the cost of the generations either side , and the rise of mass immigration since the mid-90s that have worked to hold down the wages of Gen X and Y.
It's for others to call whether the post war generation was selfish or just lucky, but you can't argue that they've not influenced (more than other generations have in history) all the lives of those around them
For the Boomers in denial -
I'm not a boomer but close enough that I benefited from some of the policies that did benefit them, house prices etc.
The truth is everyone has to make changes, and there are a lot of people and corporations who have a lot invested in the status quo that are going to resist those changes, eventually those changes will be forced upon us. Those changes are harder the longer you leave them and it's entirely possible to make those changes too late to have the effect that is needed to save us.
It'll happen in my lifetime that's for sure. What we will transition to though is anyone's guess.
50 reply’s, one answer providing a timeline of events…..
Early 2025, the new Tory leader will realise they're going to lose the next election and lose it badly. To divert attention they will declare war on someone who has nuclear weapons and then push them so hard that they use one against us. We will then become a giant leper colony full of the survivors and be shunned by the world. The rest will have to deal with the nuclear fallout/winter that will result and they will finally sort this mess out without us.
But we'll have sunlit uplands galore as the whole ground will glow.
the main trouble with water butts (and other rainwater\grey water recovery systems) is the cost of water is extremely cheap. We've got a water butt, and we're having an extension done, so I thought I'd look at getting a more significant rain water recovery system into place, both for plants and for loos and things. Break even on a system like that is in the region of 25 years (at some point the not-cheap pump will probably give out too). its just not worth the hassle.
water butts are obviously cheaper but only work for the short part of the year where its dry enough for things to need watering but been wet enough recently for you not to have already exhausted it. Outside of that most people are fairly happy to spend £1.50 to run a sprinkler for an hour
but you can’t argue that they’ve influenced (more than other generations have in history) all the lives of those around them
I cannot believe that with any seriousness you would suggest they have! It is a ludicrous proposition.
House prices have always been high. Pretty much at a cost that was just about affordable, depending on what sacrifices people were willing to make. I guess, that’s how the property market works. Unless you rode your luck somewhat - I have a colleague who bought her first house (c20 years ago) with a 110% mortgage, she is not a Boomer. My daughter who is a millennial, has with great frugality bought her own flat, but she did not sacrifice any more than my wife or I did (and we were a couple - neither of us would have managed alone).
I have a colleague who bought her first house (c20 years ago) with a 110% mortgage, she is not a Boomer
she is not. 20yrs ago is in this century...
Considering how good boomers had it in the post war period, the obvious answer is war...
We already have all the infrastructure in place and though everyone pretends death and destruction is terrible for political purposes, they all secretly love it (at least as a spectator sport, and moreso when there's profits to be made)
The only problem is, to really alter global consumption trends, for a change, we might have to focus on the extermination of droves of white people, rather than brown ones