Discussion

Theory_of_Change

lschueller: The article makes the impression, that this the security threat caused by climate change are somewhat new to gov bodies. As this is not true, the risks for political and societal stability and security have been very well researched in depth in the respective scientific disciplines since the Club of Rome firstly broad this topic to the larger public attention in 1972. But the contradicting forces are not long-term perspectives but short term gains on the political agenda, which makes it much harder to lobby for solutions against threats, which will happen "only" in 5 to 10 years in the future.

secondcoming: > If collapse happens, it notes the UK does not have the ability to absorb global shocks through higher domestic output. It lacks enough land to feed its population or rear livestock to maintain current consumption patterns and price levels.Yet they're pushing to use farmland for solar farms and social housing.There's a real hatred of farmers among the UK Leftist/Green crowd.

sunshine-o: Here is the solution nobody is talking about:The population of the UK or Europe did not explode in the last hundred years. It did not even double.The population used to be more rural and relatively self sufficient in terms of food. There is actually enough land in Europe to feed everybody, especially considering the great progress we made scientifically. You can actually sustain yourself on a few hundred square meters of land and you won't get fat and be healthier (in your body and mind).The great migration of the local population to the city to get a good factory or a bank job is over I believe. But the country side is still empty.The reason is it is hard to make the jump first and ending up in the middle of nowhere living with a few old people. Also your politicians hate independent people so they are not gonna encourage it. They would rather keep you in a constant guilty state about their vision of "climate change" while letting you board a 10 GBP Ryanair flight for a week-end city trip or order useless things on Temu.For Europe and many other places, the solution to a more sustainable future is actually quite straightforward.

defrost: There's certainly a justified hatred of faux-farmers of convenience such as Clarkson et al.I suspect that's the hatred being amplified by the GBNews Farrage crowd.

secondcoming: No. It's because farmers sometimes pollute rivers (despite household sewage being pumped into UK rivers daily), want to kill badgers to stop TB spreading, and because they work large areas of land they're obviously wealthy.

hermitcrab: Is there any strong evidence that killing badgers reduces bovine TB?

pjc50: I don't think it's been possible to feed the UK domestically since before WW2.I note you put the word "social" in there; very little social housing is being built, it's mostly private. Agrivoltaics are also possible, but of course everyone would rather do the politics of emotions ("hate farmers") than discuss the issues. Such as how we grow enough electricity, too.

defrost: Sure, someone always believes such things, .. is that really widespread and a core belief of the "the UK Leftist/Green crowd." ?The constant observation made about the UK is there's always an excess amplification of what various groups are alleged to believe.Last I checked, the current King is in the "Leftist/Green" camp and pro-farmer. (by default, he'd be "UK" and not a "crowd" though).

hdgvhicv: To his credit Clarkson has done more form farming with his show than countryfile or the archers has done in decades.He bought it as a tax break, but I’d leave not ire for “farmers” like the musician and vacuum cleaner salesman.Nothing caused me to laugh more at the “woe is the millionaire march” than seeing Lloyd Webber and his dog out on the march.

sunshine-o: > I don't think it's been possible to feed the UK domestically since before WW2.Of course you can, I know people being almost self sustainable right now on very little land. It is hard, frugal but highly rewarding and we have evolved to do it since very recently.Energy and heating is a bit more complicated. We obviously cannot burn wood or coal like we use to because this is actually very damaging to the planet. So this is where technology has to play a bigger role.

hdgvhicv: Europe’s big problem is the hindered of millions of climate refugees on the doorstep. Even the most open heart liberal will baulk at the population doubling or more in 20 years. The only ones promising a solution will be the neofeudalists

stinkbeetle: Why would an open heart liberal have any concern with welcoming refugees?

hdgvhicv: The farmers are the ones selling the land off and living off the million pound proceedsFarmland is worth £100/acre/year, at most that’s £3k an acre. But people pay £10k because it’s a way to avoid tax and if you get the right planning permission a way of making millions.

Normal_gaussian: https://animal.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/Eating-Awa...This covers moving the UK to self-sustain by reducing animal products and repurposing animal feed cropland to direct consumption cropland; it also covers reforestation.So while it isn't possible today, its possible to become possible without relying on any technological advancements.

sunshine-o: But Europe also have to stop believing they can solve the world problems and act on a global scale. This time is long gone, about at least a hundred year.Every region, culture will need to find a path to sustainability in their own way. If the path they take is invading another region, it leads to war. Like it has been for thousands of years.

supliminal: I think you’re talking about subsistence farming, which plenty of places in Europe do practice. But it is hard work.

defrost: Subsistence farming would be farming to only feed the farmers with little excess left for trade, it's a little too keyhole in this context.They're talking more in the direction of EU scale closed loop / closed cycle agriculture, in which a network of farms across countries interop to exchange resources (pig and chicken waste, for fertilizer, for example) in order to reduce or eliminate outside inputs (synthetic fertilizers from the Gulf, for example), but still work to maximise production for EU consumption.

vardalab: Farming might feel rewarding while watching someone else do the hard work. I watched and had to help my grandparents do it and went through my own decade of "farming" and it never gets easier and you only get older.

mschuster91: That doesn't mean that efforts to suppress awareness and subsequently action against climate change isn't being done to this very day. Some of it is done by governments (such as mentioned here, or with the EPA dismantling in the US), some by hostile governments (e.g. Russia funding a lot of the Western far-right parties that all run on climate change denial), some by fossil fuel companies (e.g. BP creating the "CO2 footprint" to individualize responsibility), and the rest by utterly braindead clown individuals (we used to call them "village idiots") that, thanks to the Internet, now have a global audience.

actionfromafar: Or are presidents!

kypro: Depends where they're coming from I guess. There's basically no where on Earth where people are as liberal as Europe.No liberal would want millions of people coming from Afghanistan, for example.

stinkbeetle: Presumably you mean No True Liberal.

cynicalsecurity: Smells like Soviet censorship.

ben_w: > > It lacks enough land to feed its population or rear livestock to maintain current consumption patterns and price levels.> Yet they're pushing to use farmland for solar farms and social housing.Cities, you may note, never ever make enough food to feed themselves. Always been true, everywhere and everywhen since the invention of the city.Farmers choosing between cash crops and food crops was literally a game the teachers got the kids to play when I was in school in the 90s. Cash crops, and PV is kinda a cash crop, let you make enough money to buy food. That said, how much money depends on what industry you have to use the power, because nobody else in the world will care if the UK employment consists entirely of baristas, hairdressers, and Amazon warehouse staff/delivery drivers.The biggest problem with using farmland for social housing is that a lot of the good farmland is a flood risk.But the only case where the UK has to care that it doesn't make enough to feed itself is if the economy becomes an autarky, at which point it cannot help but suffer a massive population reduction because it's a small island quite close to the arctic circle which has spend most of its natural resources, first the wood (1600s-1700s), then the coal (1930s or so), then the fish (1980s or so), then the natural gas (early 2000s).

miningape: Well, I have something to tell you about the last decade+ of EU immigration policy

georgemcbay: > or with the EPA dismantling in the USIn the US I feel we have entered the stage beyond trying to suppress awareness. Not that the government is being honest about it, but they also aren't really trying to hide it. They've just moved to not directly talking about it, and since our mainstream media is fully captured nobody is pushing them to talk about it. We've moved from trying to downplay the impact to just announcing what we plan to do about it as the impacts continue to manifest into reality.We're going to continue down the path of fossil fuels (we have no intention of trying to lessen the severity at the cost of economic growth, number MUST GO UP) and we're going to attempt to take countries (Greenland, Canada) that "benefit" from the changes (at least in terms of having more livable/arable land). Migrants trying to enter the US to escape the catastrophes in their own countries will be thrown into concentration camps or worse. Large parts of the US will be impacted, of course, but those are sacrifices they're willing to make. Better double check your insurance policies.Almost all of Trump 2.0's actions to date make a sort of sociopathic sense if you assume the various groups pulling his strings have accepted that large impacts from severe climate change are coming soon and have just decided to YOLO it.

teamonkey: There’s no real hatred of farmers on the left, other than the fact that farmers generally vote small-c conservative.There’s certainly a hatred of land owners, and vast amounts of UK farm land is privately owned, renting the land to farmers. It’s the right wing parties and press that takes that to mean that the left hate farmers.

actionfromafar: "Europe, you don't have global influence?" What is this? Disconnect, splinter and prepare for war?

anthk: Spaniard there, from rural background. Self-suficient... you wish. Post civil war even oranges were a luxury, something to be give as a present in Christmas. Any autharchic attemp, be left or right, just produced famines and misery.

sunshine-o: > Disconnect, splinter and prepare for war?But this is what we are doing anyway...I am just trying to articulate a path where can have better food security and sustainability.

beejiu: The UK is consistently amongst the lowest household expenditure on food in the entire world. Only 3 countries in the world are self sufficient in food. If this "reasonable worst-case" scenario happens, surely the UK is one of the better placed to deal with it?

mmarq: > your politicians hate independent people so they are not gonna encourage itYour politicians are actually subsidising the rural lifestyle with direct and indirect transfers. Eg in Europe, you can buy land, leave it more or less abandoned and cash in agricultural subsidies.

3eb7988a1663: For only three countries to be self-sufficient, I suspect there is some funny definition like, "Well Americans eat 100pounds of pork each year, and they have to import pork to hit that number, ergo America is not food self sufficient." When instead you could switch calories to any number of alternatives.

beejiu: It's on a calorie basis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_food_self...

OgsyedIE: Moving from the current situation to the situation you describe is impossible, because the UK has far too much debt and far too small an annual government income to pay for even the popular kinds of infrastructure spending, let alone the degrowth proposition you articulate. The millionaires really do take their assets and leave if taxes are raised and a Mossad-style international program to repatriate them in duffel bags would see the government that initiated it both out of power permanently and in cells themselves.

dandellion: If they take their assets and leave, tax the land. They're not going to be able to take that when they leave.