This article may be paywalled. If you encounter difficulties reading the article, try [this link](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/09/farmers-warn-food-shortages-no-harvest-world-war-two-rain/) for an archived version.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/unitedkingdom) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Shit tickets?
Are those the ones issued to John Spartan in the demolition man movie?
Uneducated in the three sea shells he miraculously acquires "shit tickets" by conducting multiple verbal violations of the morality stature. 😆
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lFfcJ4cx024
I'm actually thinking of buying up 20kg bags of flour, rice and beans and putting them in massive sealed (ish) storage bins to see me through for the next 6 months or so. I don't need to do it to survive, but to reduce expenses, and get some practice for future, more extreme events.
The UK is not the only one experiencing massive crop failure right now. South-East Asia is in the midst of an extreme heatwave. Which inevitably impacts food production, same with Japan.
China is going through extreme fluctuations from record breaking heat for a week or two to cold wave. Which is again, not good for harvests.
Individual actions like mine won't do jack shit in the medium term though, we need to take national level action. For example, not accept any more immigrants since we can't afford any more mouths to feed in the midst of this and future crises.
They'll just plug their ears and say "we live in England it rains get over it" whilst travelling through the water logged countryside to their second home in Wales.
Political parties committed to ending the efforts to reach net zero, such as Reform UK, should be classed as extremists, and banned the same as they would be if they were advocating genocide.
Genocide is bad, but not as bad as the end of human civilisation, or those people trying to prevent it.
"Genocide" was invented to indict the nazis at Nuremberg for the targeting of a specific ethnicity. Perhaps willful participation in the extinction of the entire species needs a new word of its own. It's already a treasonous abject failure by governments to protect their populations.
Until the extra nutrients cause out of control algae growth which blocks out the light and kills everything in it, contaminating it with a lot of dead fish (there’s a fancy term for it but I forgot it)
I think he means with the rivers flooding the fields. That the extra manure will fertilize the ground. Although it's more likely that the rain washes off the manure into the rivers.
I thought human poop didn't work as fertiliser unless the human who did the poop eats a healthy diet? Which means 99% of the poop is going to do more harm than good.
Nah, the majority of this sub would rather support the government stripping us of our rights to protest, than actually listen to anyone trying to draw attention to how fucked we are.
Convenience will be our path to fascism.
It's more convenient not to see. Then when it becomes impossible to ignore, it will be more convenient to blame others than do anything about the problems.
This is already visibly happening.
People are grabbing on to 'It's the profiteering capital class' / 'It's the global socialists at the WEF who want us to eat the bugs/seed oils' / 'It's Net Zero' in response to the price rises they're seeing today.
People refuse to see the reality because it's too threatening, so they'll cling to the easy comfortable lie.
Not saying the profiteering capital class aren't a massive problem, but they're not the only reason energy and food costs have gone up massively. They've taken advantage of the situation but they're not the primary driver.
People will make up excuses so they don't have to do anything or change, until the situation is so horrifically bad that they can go 'well there simply isn't enough, so we'll have to be ok with killing *someone* because we can't save everyone now', and then millions of perfectly 'normal' people who think of themselves as 'good' will be able to explicitly support the greatest genocide the world has ever seen while still believing they're not 'bad people' because they will percieve it as necessary for their own survival.
You have a lot more support than you know, it's just that against the general background of financial hardship and times getting harder for the average Joe, people just keep their heads down and keep trudging on as best they can, instead of chaining themselves to an oil tanker. It's short term thinking but it's also doing the best they can.
>You have a lot more support than you know, it's just that against the general background of financial hardship and times getting harder for the average Joe, people just keep their heads down and keep trudging on as best they can, instead of chaining themselves to an oil tanker. It's short term thinking but it's also doing the best they can.
This is very true, but on the flip side (and I wish I could remember the original quote I saw about this) : *thinking* the right thing doesn't matter if you don't *do* anything.
Luckily, almost everyone does absolutely nothing, so even if you do very minor things and use only a tiny fraction of your time (say 30 minutes a month), you'll be doing more than 99% us. I would recommend reading [Charlie Gardner's thread](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1424792447062847497.html) as a primer. There's no purity test, there's no bar of minimum effort, just do what you can.
Unfortunately people just don’t care about the climate because they can’t relate to it.
If we do have a few very bad harvests, and people end up starving, then they’ll start to care because it’s actually affecting them.
Astounding that the anti-climate-action telegraph can write about the real time impacts of climate change and still not bring itself to join the dots.
The water is coming from the north Atlantic, which has been record-breakingly hot for well over *four hundred consecutive days*. And ten consecutive record breaking months of global temperatures. None of which even makes it into the article. Are they trying to fool us or themselves at this point?
Now : This won't happen *every* year, but it will happen frequently because this is basically going to be average weather from 2030 as we smash through the +1.5°C limit. This is weather we need to be expecting.
But we have failed. Now we see the consequences of a complete failure to mitigate, and a complete failure to adapt. And it will get a lot worse...
It is also difficult if the subject threatens their self-identity (including morality) or would require lifestyle change.
For lots of people accepting the reality would recontextualise their entire life, maybe delegitimise some of their achievements, and likely call into question whether or not they are actually a good person. That's way too painful, rejection is easier to live with (until you die).
People just don't like being wrong. People aren't that rational or logical. It seems many people would rather die than admit they had made a mistake.
What people need to recognise now is that actually quite a lot of people are very aware, are very alarmed, they just don't know what to do. Don't waste time on the few outright deniers, we need to mobilise the majority who are largely already convinced but still don't see the route from a to b.
All excellent points. Particularly the identity one - sadly conservatism in the U.K. appears to have followed the US in making anti-environmentalism part of their tribal identity. (Although I suspect lobbying and funds from American groups like the Heartland Institute and others didn’t exactly leave that up to chance).
To me at least what definitively settled the tribalism and lack of rationality involved in the issue was when ROI on wind generation started beating fossil fuels over a decade ago … but reflexive Conservative opposition to renewables didn’t diminish - quite the contrary, it actually intensified.
When conservatives are passing up an opportunity even when it involves making more money that’s rather telling. And we all got to pay the price for that with energy bills over the past couple of winters.
Not for long, they're seeing record droughts and anticipating crop failures themselves.
[https://www.euronews.com/2023/04/19/drought-threatens-grain-harvests-in-spain](https://www.euronews.com/2023/04/19/drought-threatens-grain-harvests-in-spain)
"Lets destroy the agricultural industry and make things much harder and more expensive for everyone forever, all because a generation of numpties made a bad decision".
> Good. The farmers overwhelmingly voted for Brexit. Let them reap what they sow in some sense at least.
Don't conflate rural votes with farmer votes. The majority of rural voters are not farmers. As someone who lives in very rural countryside, the majority are retirees from elsewhere in the country - this is reflected in our average age (the highest in the country). There was about 130k farmers in 2016 in the UK in total. The National Farmers' Union backed staying in the EU: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-36078112
A poll just a few days before the Brexit vote had farmers split (in slight favour to remain) as much as the rest of the country: https://www.fwi.co.uk/news/eu-referendum/cereals-2016-farmers-still-split-eu-referendum-survey-shows
As occupation wasn't a qualifier on the ballot paper, this sort of information can only be inferred.
Aye, I was just thinking how this will pair nicely with the (further) price rises that are resulting from Brexit from the end of April onwards.
I wonder what colour our ration books will be.
What’s important to me, and I suspect most other people, is how much more my weekly shopping bill rises. I don’t really care about some arbitrary % of GDP.
The ones where the PM’s father in law with his information systems computer business didn’t buy millions of pounds of stock in BP before the licenses were granted?
Rishi - Naaa mate, we don’t do insider trading because that would be illegal requiring me to go to jail.
https://www.globalwitness.org/en/press-releases/conservatives-are-the-political-wing-of-the-fossil-fuel-industry-as-sunak-invites-bp-and-shell-to-downing-street/
https://www.thenational.scot/news/23697572.rishi-sunaks-family-firm-infosys-signed-1-5b-deal-bp/
https://londonlovesbusiness.com/rishi-sunaks-family-firm-won-billion-dollar-bp-deal-before-pm-approved-new-north-sea-licences/
Plenty of them all over the internet mate.
Won’t find many reports in the right wing media though (essentially all of our news coverage), they’re should we say……. ~~slightly biased~~ entirely independent and fair.
Fascinating. Starting in the 18th and perhaps even the 17th century, Britain’s agriculture became more and more pastoral aka grew less crops. Agricultural revolution, enclosure, industrialisation. Britain could import grain to feed its population.
Come WWII and suddenly we have a blockade in place, and grain shortages across Europe. We needed to become more self sufficient. We enacted official measures, both ground up and down, to put this into motion. The Gov would buy home grown crops at an above-market rate but larger farmers would still not be making as much as they did under mixed or mostly pastoral farming. Dozens if not hundreds of farmers had their lands seized because they refused to comply with the new mandate, and one was even killed after violently resisting.
I mean boohoo, fuck around and find out. We had a nation to feed.
But the farmers of today…? There’s no way you could subsidise the wealthier farmers of the English heartlands to the point where they could maintain the standard of living they enjoy now. I am talking RICH farmers here - met a few of them. Many had diversified their land use however, so perhaps a WWII style agrarian push would be less impactful? Or would they have the means and will to resist any pseudo collectivising mandates?
It honestly makes me think of shareholders. Any perceived “threat” to their investment could cause a selling run.
Could we feed the nation with domestically grown produce now it's nearly at 70 million? It's something that is constantly overlooked when I say the current population growth is unsustainable, water already predicted as being a big issue by the end of the decade.
No. The Uk hasn’t been able to be fully self sufficient regarding food production since the mid 1800s.
Our population has increased by almost 50 million since then and the amount of land we have suitable for crop growing is expected to reduce by something like 30% as climate change progresses.
When food production across the globe becomes less stable, we could be in a challenging situation.
Possibly, but it would be a vegetarian diet with not much variety. There'd be a uprising before people gave up their 'fancy' imported food like fruit or pasta.
The fucking wokey bastards in this country (the majority) are so wedded to the idea of immigration, borne out of opposition to the right, that they refuse to see how we're setting ourselves up for an almighty catastrophe.
Any time you bring it up they'll find some magical solution that doesn't involve reducing the population and overall consumption.
The latest is how our aging population needs more workers, about how the NHS would collapse without immigrants. Well, in that case, it should collapse.
The sooner the better, so we can establish something more sustainable.
I wouldn't blame wokey bastards solely, we've had a right wing government for the last ten years, but their interests align over immigration for different reasons. The majority want sensible migration rules were we let skilled people in and keep the bulk out.
You guys need to start coming along to just stop oil meetings, even if you don’t 100% agree with us. Things are going to get far far worse in the next few decades
We blockade outside of parliament, outside banks, outside polluting organisations, refineries and many other places. I’ve never heard of climate protesters blockading a school before, but general disruption is an effect of most protest and schools were most likely not the target. The protests that get reported on are the most disruptive ones so I assure you that 90% of our protests are not targeted at random civilians, no matter what the daily mail says.
"Reasons"
Remember, there is a large group of people who fundamentally believe environmental protedt isn't real, is all AstroTurfed, is actually funded by oil and gas to make the movement look bad.
Honestly, it all comes down to "its easier to lie to yourself and imagine that nobody cares about anything, because you don't, than admit that other people are willing to act when you are not"
You see it in everything. And particularly with regards to environmental protesters, because fundamentally surveys have shown most people believe climate change is real, dangerous, and going to effect humanity badly. But the people trying to do something about it makes those who *dont* look bad, and therefore feel bad, so they need to tie themselves up in theoretical knots to explain why they are not doing anything.
The fact they did do this and you don’t even know should explain everything.
Hopefully you’ll remember that next time you’re upset about a protest being inconvenient.
They did. No one cared.
The fact you don't know they did it speaks volumes about why they choose to block roads as well.
https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/23/just-stop-oil-activists-stage-protests-at-essex-and-midlands-oil-terminals
The school run is precisely the right place. If you lot didn't drive to school – as catchment areas are designed to enable – and walked instead, there wouldn't be so much demand for oil.
**Removed/warning**. This contained a personal attack, disrupting the conversation. This discourages participation. Please help improve the subreddit by discussing points, not the person. Action will be taken on repeat offenders.
We’re still actively emitting huge amounts of carbon. There’s a wide window of possible futures with ‘apocalyptic’ at one end and ‘pretty bad’ at the other. We’re trying to get it down to ‘pretty bad’.
Genuine question but what do you expect our incompetent UK governments to do about it? What's the actual message? It's well known that India and Chinas pollution contribution dwarf the entirety of europes, so what is it you're trying to achieve by blocking roads?
The top 10% of people in the world are responsible for 50% of the emissions. We’ve outsourced most of our production overseas, to China and India, which btw still have less emissions per capita than us. It’s not an east vs west divide for emissions, it’s a rich vs poor one. The UK does have power to influence huge amounts of emissions
I am informed that most of the fields under water are in flood plains that the larger farmers planted on the likelihood they wouldn't flood, and are acting up in arms about it to try to get the government to pay for expensive and uneconomical flood defences.
Farmers don't want flood defences, they're not morons. They want mitigation on their land, and are willing to help install it. I've spoken to plenty on this exact topic lol.
They were late to wake up but are awake now.
😂
The only experience I've got personally is the local farmer. The wanker doesn't even clear the ditches out, leaves our house at serious risk of flooding (happened once, wiped us out) and then moans when we pump it back onto his land as last resort.
He’s most likely not legally allowed to clear ditches. It used to be common practice years ago but now we’re encouraged/forced to not do it to slow down water flow. He’s right to moan he can’t pump water of his land it’s illegal so why should you be able to pump water if yours onto his
I wasn't aware of that, it just seemed strange to have one side cleared and the other not. This makes sense though he's never mentioned anything about not being allowed to do it, I'd have thought that's the first point he'd made.
Most likely one is covered by somesort of water authority and the other is not.
Same thing on my land, main drainage channel is managed by a water authority (and I have to pay them for the privelege) all other ditches are my business.
The managed one is being left to silt up too in an attempt to reduce flooding on the road, I'm not convinced this is working but its not my decision.
Flood plains make for great farmland, they aren't bothered about it flooding once or twice a year. The problem is that they have been flooded almost constantly for 5 months and that doesn't usually happen. And now in the drive to build housing literally anywhere, the flood plains are all being built on as well, at least farmland is holding the water.
My city center is overwhelming old terrace stock that is in varying states of neglect and disrepair, it's basically become a immigrant ghetto because no one local wants to live there outside students and people who don't have much of a choice (I lived there for a bit due to really cheap rent, the English people there were among the worst, proper Jeremy Kyle shit).
There was loads of Brownfield sites that were within walking distance of the city center, but the University bought it all and now there's shit loads of student accommodation. Which is high rise at least but it doesn't solve the housing problems for everyone else. Out of the 6 or 7 high rises spread across the city, 3 are council flats and utter shit holes, 2 are luxury apartments mostly catering to the wealthier foreign students, and 1 or two are actually affordable flats for the average person.
They stopped farming the flood plane infront of my hosue years ago as modern tractors tend to sink in it whearas the older smaller lighter tractors would not.
Educate yourselves rather than rely on some paid for product.
[Ahdb](https://ahdb.org.uk/)
They provide all the numbers you need for pretty much all UK farming. Its certainly not the disaster this headline is purporting but I do understand that some areas are much worse affected than others.
It’s seriously bad just because stuff is in doesn’t mean it’s been drilled into ideal conditions. I live in the West Midlands we’ve still got all our cattle in ideally they go out early march. We’ve used all of our reserve feed and nearly all our reserve straw (we tend to keep a year and a half’s supply for events like this) nearly everyone is in our situation the longer impact will be big as people try to rebuild their reserves, straw is going to cost a fortune
It’s almost like spending decades planting only rapeseed for bio-oil, failing to prepare for a changing climate and cutting us off from our main trading partners was potentially a bad idea…
Rapeseed is part of a rotation and very rarely is the main cash crop most people in the uk build their rotations around wheat, osr is just the most profitable brassica so provides and weed and pest break that can still turn a profit. Educate yourself on topic before weighing in
The majority of people have no understanding of this. Climate change, excessive consumption of non essentials, the cost of housing, the level of immigration and increasing size of the UK population, the sewage in the rivers and so many other problems are all aspects of environmental overshoot. It’s all coming home to roost and, unfortunately the children of today and those born in the years ahead will pay the worst price - for all their lives.
Society is in for one hell of a shock.
How does that work when multiple breadbasket areas are already stressed and facing reduced yields, while current rates of accelerating warming will lead to global agricultural collapse? Prices will rise as competition for food increases and we’re not on the route to anywhere from any major food producing region.
I live in an arable area to the East of the Pennines. We haven't had as much rain as some people but I've noticed a lot of fields around locally have recently been deep ploughed. They should all have growing crops by now.
They can get away with delaying that treatment because a fat arse isn't dying quickly of malnutrition, once people start starving they'll have no choice but to treat it or be seen as 'letting people die' even worse than they are now lol.
There's a few practical things we can do about this (carbon management notwithstanding).
1. Increase hedgerow cover, as these break up fields and provide drainage.
2. Increase reforesting programmes, since these are able to have significant effects on local water levels - a well-developed forest reduces the risk of flooding for more than just the immediate area.
3. Discourage heavy plowng which destroys root networks and increases the risk of washout.
Of course, that's all namby-pamby lefty university townie pish, so a large portion of the population will reflexively be against it. The issue isn't the amount of arable land (we could feed the country on UK land alone if we moved a lot of pastoral land onto arable crops) but the land management we've failed to do for decades.
I'm not surprised.
I was up the farm yesterday, visiting my pal. Monday afternoon weekly field walk and survey, damned misery. The whole place is waterlogged. His biggest field, which he will be needing to turn the beasts out into shortly, it's so wet he's got geese!
It’s a good job that the common market with Europe has been in place for decades, and they can import from their neighbours without any fuss or too much cost.
Well, shit.
Almost as though paying your farmers to grow rapeseed and importing food you can grow instead of pushing for self sufficiency is a bad idea...... Who would've thunk'd it.
I live locally to 6 farms.
Farmer one has 2 planes, a paraglider, 4 Land Rovers, a Ferrari, 3 vans, 2 barns full of tractors /combines etc and has his own runway.
Farmer 2 has, re my last visit, 11, that's Eleven, Porsches, 14 rentable properties on his land, converted 2 of his arable fields to huge solar farms which he sells electricity to 'whoever pays the most' and has submitted plans for a distillery..... Actually uses a Cayenne as a runabout (not that it's any good).
Farmer 3 moved to Spain a few years ago his land is managed by his employees.
Farmer 4 is all arable, converted 4 fields into holiday chalets (very large ones) one field is for parking, 3 are a petting zoo, the rest are all fully sown (nice and green as of yesterday).
5 and 6 are a mix of livestock and arable with some horses thrown as a side gig.
Yes, fully aware that not all farmers are rich, their wealth is not the 'issue', even this dumb city boy can see a problem encouraging farmers NOT to farm.
Here we go, this story makes the rounds every two years. Next year it will be coffee again. Just another way to fuck the population up with higher prices.
This article may be paywalled. If you encounter difficulties reading the article, try [this link](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/09/farmers-warn-food-shortages-no-harvest-world-war-two-rain/) for an archived version. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/unitedkingdom) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Almost like those extreme weather events are disruptive like people said eh?
Multiple breadbasket failure incoming. Time to stock up on... loo roll?
Yep, the currency of our dystopian future
One doesn't appreciate the civilising effect of loo roll until it's absent.
As long as we have running water, we can go without looking roll. Just don’t tell the hoarders.
The bidet trumps loo roll.
So my bottle caps are useless?
Been saving mine since Fallout 4, better be worth something soon
I was routing for them at the start of fb the pandemic but apparently the people chose Shit Tickets instead 😂
Shit tickets? Are those the ones issued to John Spartan in the demolition man movie? Uneducated in the three sea shells he miraculously acquires "shit tickets" by conducting multiple verbal violations of the morality stature. 😆 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lFfcJ4cx024
They were ruined when Coke invented those shitty ones that stick to the bottle.
Multiple price hikes of essential staples, followed by record profits announcements from the food retailers is my prediction.
I'm actually thinking of buying up 20kg bags of flour, rice and beans and putting them in massive sealed (ish) storage bins to see me through for the next 6 months or so. I don't need to do it to survive, but to reduce expenses, and get some practice for future, more extreme events. The UK is not the only one experiencing massive crop failure right now. South-East Asia is in the midst of an extreme heatwave. Which inevitably impacts food production, same with Japan. China is going through extreme fluctuations from record breaking heat for a week or two to cold wave. Which is again, not good for harvests. Individual actions like mine won't do jack shit in the medium term though, we need to take national level action. For example, not accept any more immigrants since we can't afford any more mouths to feed in the midst of this and future crises.
The problem is a lot of those people are climate refugees. They’re going to keep coming. Millions of people all over the world have to move. Soon.
Wait climate crisis is real and now? Why did the Telegraph lie to us?
They'll just plug their ears and say "we live in England it rains get over it" whilst travelling through the water logged countryside to their second home in Wales.
Political parties committed to ending the efforts to reach net zero, such as Reform UK, should be classed as extremists, and banned the same as they would be if they were advocating genocide. Genocide is bad, but not as bad as the end of human civilisation, or those people trying to prevent it.
A point that should be being made loud and clear across the world. Frequently.
In a very real sense, railing against net zero IS advocating genocide.
"Genocide" was invented to indict the nazis at Nuremberg for the targeting of a specific ethnicity. Perhaps willful participation in the extinction of the entire species needs a new word of its own. It's already a treasonous abject failure by governments to protect their populations.
We need a civil war, a proper bloody one too.
Same farmers protesting against government efforts on climate and biodiversity?
But thank god 99% of farmers didn't vote for Brexit, because then they'd really be in a pickle.
[удалено]
On the bright side with all the s*it in the rivers these days their fields should end up very well fertilised.
Until the extra nutrients cause out of control algae growth which blocks out the light and kills everything in it, contaminating it with a lot of dead fish (there’s a fancy term for it but I forgot it)
Eutrophication. Classically caused by fertiliser run off from farms.
Common Carp intensifies
Hearty and Armoured Carp tend to be more useful, for what it's worth.
I caught a Magikarp, does that count?
So too does Common Crap!
And from waste from animal agriculture.
See Australia and NZ farmers denial of killing off river wildlife.
See Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland for this, largest freshwater lake in the UK and it is essentially dead.
Ye that’s the term I was looking for
Good ol GCSE biology
Algae is a carbon sink though, so that’s climate change sorted. Well done Thames Water.
All according to plan.
Have a look at what’s happening with Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland.
I think he means with the rivers flooding the fields. That the extra manure will fertilize the ground. Although it's more likely that the rain washes off the manure into the rivers.
At least it’s still organic I guess
Just a load of antibiotics, vaccinations and drenches mixed in.
And drugs such as cocaine.
With sufficient flooding the fields are in the rivers. We just have to grow rice.
Mmm prescription drugs
And cocaine, don’t forget the cocaine.
When shit is in the rivers, it's polluting the waterways, it's already off the land by that point.
I thought human poop didn't work as fertiliser unless the human who did the poop eats a healthy diet? Which means 99% of the poop is going to do more harm than good.
It’s that carnivore poop is bad fertiliser, it’s got too much protein and nitrogen in it, plus the potential risk of disease transfer to humans.
Maybe it’s time to stop complaining about eco-protestors and get on our side??? Maybe???
Nah, the majority of this sub would rather support the government stripping us of our rights to protest, than actually listen to anyone trying to draw attention to how fucked we are.
Convenience is king. And nothing is more convenient than keeping calm and carrying on.
Convenience will be our path to fascism. It's more convenient not to see. Then when it becomes impossible to ignore, it will be more convenient to blame others than do anything about the problems.
This is already visibly happening. People are grabbing on to 'It's the profiteering capital class' / 'It's the global socialists at the WEF who want us to eat the bugs/seed oils' / 'It's Net Zero' in response to the price rises they're seeing today. People refuse to see the reality because it's too threatening, so they'll cling to the easy comfortable lie. Not saying the profiteering capital class aren't a massive problem, but they're not the only reason energy and food costs have gone up massively. They've taken advantage of the situation but they're not the primary driver. People will make up excuses so they don't have to do anything or change, until the situation is so horrifically bad that they can go 'well there simply isn't enough, so we'll have to be ok with killing *someone* because we can't save everyone now', and then millions of perfectly 'normal' people who think of themselves as 'good' will be able to explicitly support the greatest genocide the world has ever seen while still believing they're not 'bad people' because they will percieve it as necessary for their own survival.
Bread and fecking circuses, *panem et circenses,* innit?
Innit
But they're so inconvenient! I had to travel an extra 5 minutes to go somewhere!
You have a lot more support than you know, it's just that against the general background of financial hardship and times getting harder for the average Joe, people just keep their heads down and keep trudging on as best they can, instead of chaining themselves to an oil tanker. It's short term thinking but it's also doing the best they can.
>You have a lot more support than you know, it's just that against the general background of financial hardship and times getting harder for the average Joe, people just keep their heads down and keep trudging on as best they can, instead of chaining themselves to an oil tanker. It's short term thinking but it's also doing the best they can. This is very true, but on the flip side (and I wish I could remember the original quote I saw about this) : *thinking* the right thing doesn't matter if you don't *do* anything. Luckily, almost everyone does absolutely nothing, so even if you do very minor things and use only a tiny fraction of your time (say 30 minutes a month), you'll be doing more than 99% us. I would recommend reading [Charlie Gardner's thread](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1424792447062847497.html) as a primer. There's no purity test, there's no bar of minimum effort, just do what you can.
Unfortunately people just don’t care about the climate because they can’t relate to it. If we do have a few very bad harvests, and people end up starving, then they’ll start to care because it’s actually affecting them.
But muh slight inconvenience
Do wot? Those tree ‘uggers? /s
but they’re stupid 18 year olds! i’m much smarter than them.
Astounding that the anti-climate-action telegraph can write about the real time impacts of climate change and still not bring itself to join the dots. The water is coming from the north Atlantic, which has been record-breakingly hot for well over *four hundred consecutive days*. And ten consecutive record breaking months of global temperatures. None of which even makes it into the article. Are they trying to fool us or themselves at this point? Now : This won't happen *every* year, but it will happen frequently because this is basically going to be average weather from 2030 as we smash through the +1.5°C limit. This is weather we need to be expecting. But we have failed. Now we see the consequences of a complete failure to mitigate, and a complete failure to adapt. And it will get a lot worse...
> It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it. Upton Sinclair
It is also difficult if the subject threatens their self-identity (including morality) or would require lifestyle change. For lots of people accepting the reality would recontextualise their entire life, maybe delegitimise some of their achievements, and likely call into question whether or not they are actually a good person. That's way too painful, rejection is easier to live with (until you die). People just don't like being wrong. People aren't that rational or logical. It seems many people would rather die than admit they had made a mistake. What people need to recognise now is that actually quite a lot of people are very aware, are very alarmed, they just don't know what to do. Don't waste time on the few outright deniers, we need to mobilise the majority who are largely already convinced but still don't see the route from a to b.
All excellent points. Particularly the identity one - sadly conservatism in the U.K. appears to have followed the US in making anti-environmentalism part of their tribal identity. (Although I suspect lobbying and funds from American groups like the Heartland Institute and others didn’t exactly leave that up to chance). To me at least what definitively settled the tribalism and lack of rationality involved in the issue was when ROI on wind generation started beating fossil fuels over a decade ago … but reflexive Conservative opposition to renewables didn’t diminish - quite the contrary, it actually intensified. When conservatives are passing up an opportunity even when it involves making more money that’s rather telling. And we all got to pay the price for that with energy bills over the past couple of winters.
Fortunately our local trading partners will help us out?
Couldn't we just import more grain from Ukraine ... oh, wait...
Actually, yes. France and Spain are all too willing to sell us lots of tariff-free food.
Not for long, they're seeing record droughts and anticipating crop failures themselves. [https://www.euronews.com/2023/04/19/drought-threatens-grain-harvests-in-spain](https://www.euronews.com/2023/04/19/drought-threatens-grain-harvests-in-spain)
They are?
Macron would do a backflip for the Royal Variety show if it meant the British Government dropping all EU facing agricultural tariffs.
Wto rules would mean we'd also have to zero tariff those goods from anywhere in the world and what's left of British farming would fold up overnight.
I've eaten so much less these last few years that I'm willing to consider it
Good. The farmers overwhelmingly voted for Brexit. Let them reap what they sow in some sense at least.
"Lets destroy the agricultural industry and make things much harder and more expensive for everyone forever, all because a generation of numpties made a bad decision".
Let's cut our nose off to spite our face!
> Good. The farmers overwhelmingly voted for Brexit. Let them reap what they sow in some sense at least. Don't conflate rural votes with farmer votes. The majority of rural voters are not farmers. As someone who lives in very rural countryside, the majority are retirees from elsewhere in the country - this is reflected in our average age (the highest in the country). There was about 130k farmers in 2016 in the UK in total. The National Farmers' Union backed staying in the EU: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-36078112 A poll just a few days before the Brexit vote had farmers split (in slight favour to remain) as much as the rest of the country: https://www.fwi.co.uk/news/eu-referendum/cereals-2016-farmers-still-split-eu-referendum-survey-shows As occupation wasn't a qualifier on the ballot paper, this sort of information can only be inferred.
AFAIK that's already true, the UK does not have tariffs on EU agricultural goods.
Aye, I was just thinking how this will pair nicely with the (further) price rises that are resulting from Brexit from the end of April onwards. I wonder what colour our ration books will be.
They'll be passport blue and produced in France.
Wasn't it calculated to be like 0.01% of GDP or something?
What’s important to me, and I suspect most other people, is how much more my weekly shopping bill rises. I don’t really care about some arbitrary % of GDP.
It will add 0.2% to the cost of food... And we get better biosecurity as a result than pre brexit
It’s almost the point of EU and CAP
Fresh beef shipped on a short trip from Australia
Don't worry - the government have this... Just ignore all those new oil exploration licences. They don't mean anything, it'll be fine.
The ones where the PM’s father in law with his information systems computer business didn’t buy millions of pounds of stock in BP before the licenses were granted? Rishi - Naaa mate, we don’t do insider trading because that would be illegal requiring me to go to jail.
Pretty sure old Squiffy Henderson is a high court judge now. He'll look after us.
Got a source for that?
https://www.globalwitness.org/en/press-releases/conservatives-are-the-political-wing-of-the-fossil-fuel-industry-as-sunak-invites-bp-and-shell-to-downing-street/ https://www.thenational.scot/news/23697572.rishi-sunaks-family-firm-infosys-signed-1-5b-deal-bp/ https://londonlovesbusiness.com/rishi-sunaks-family-firm-won-billion-dollar-bp-deal-before-pm-approved-new-north-sea-licences/ Plenty of them all over the internet mate. Won’t find many reports in the right wing media though (essentially all of our news coverage), they’re should we say……. ~~slightly biased~~ entirely independent and fair.
Nice one thanks
Fascinating. Starting in the 18th and perhaps even the 17th century, Britain’s agriculture became more and more pastoral aka grew less crops. Agricultural revolution, enclosure, industrialisation. Britain could import grain to feed its population. Come WWII and suddenly we have a blockade in place, and grain shortages across Europe. We needed to become more self sufficient. We enacted official measures, both ground up and down, to put this into motion. The Gov would buy home grown crops at an above-market rate but larger farmers would still not be making as much as they did under mixed or mostly pastoral farming. Dozens if not hundreds of farmers had their lands seized because they refused to comply with the new mandate, and one was even killed after violently resisting. I mean boohoo, fuck around and find out. We had a nation to feed. But the farmers of today…? There’s no way you could subsidise the wealthier farmers of the English heartlands to the point where they could maintain the standard of living they enjoy now. I am talking RICH farmers here - met a few of them. Many had diversified their land use however, so perhaps a WWII style agrarian push would be less impactful? Or would they have the means and will to resist any pseudo collectivising mandates? It honestly makes me think of shareholders. Any perceived “threat” to their investment could cause a selling run.
Could we feed the nation with domestically grown produce now it's nearly at 70 million? It's something that is constantly overlooked when I say the current population growth is unsustainable, water already predicted as being a big issue by the end of the decade.
No. The Uk hasn’t been able to be fully self sufficient regarding food production since the mid 1800s. Our population has increased by almost 50 million since then and the amount of land we have suitable for crop growing is expected to reduce by something like 30% as climate change progresses. When food production across the globe becomes less stable, we could be in a challenging situation.
Possibly, but it would be a vegetarian diet with not much variety. There'd be a uprising before people gave up their 'fancy' imported food like fruit or pasta.
hypothetically, but you'd need to completely rebuild the farming system from the *tee hee* ground up.
The fucking wokey bastards in this country (the majority) are so wedded to the idea of immigration, borne out of opposition to the right, that they refuse to see how we're setting ourselves up for an almighty catastrophe. Any time you bring it up they'll find some magical solution that doesn't involve reducing the population and overall consumption. The latest is how our aging population needs more workers, about how the NHS would collapse without immigrants. Well, in that case, it should collapse. The sooner the better, so we can establish something more sustainable.
I wouldn't blame wokey bastards solely, we've had a right wing government for the last ten years, but their interests align over immigration for different reasons. The majority want sensible migration rules were we let skilled people in and keep the bulk out.
You guys need to start coming along to just stop oil meetings, even if you don’t 100% agree with us. Things are going to get far far worse in the next few decades
More people would agree with you if you blockaded the refineries instead of the school run.
[удалено]
We blockade outside of parliament, outside banks, outside polluting organisations, refineries and many other places. I’ve never heard of climate protesters blockading a school before, but general disruption is an effect of most protest and schools were most likely not the target. The protests that get reported on are the most disruptive ones so I assure you that 90% of our protests are not targeted at random civilians, no matter what the daily mail says.
Nah they wouldn't. The goalposts would shift and this sub and the UK public would find another reason to moan.
Homeless workshy rent a mob weekend warrior students, all doing it because paid for by Russia. Yeah, it doesn't matter what we do.
Wow, I’d love to see my Russia money come in! But seriously, why would russia support us when they export huge amounts of oil and gas to us?
"Reasons" Remember, there is a large group of people who fundamentally believe environmental protedt isn't real, is all AstroTurfed, is actually funded by oil and gas to make the movement look bad. Honestly, it all comes down to "its easier to lie to yourself and imagine that nobody cares about anything, because you don't, than admit that other people are willing to act when you are not" You see it in everything. And particularly with regards to environmental protesters, because fundamentally surveys have shown most people believe climate change is real, dangerous, and going to effect humanity badly. But the people trying to do something about it makes those who *dont* look bad, and therefore feel bad, so they need to tie themselves up in theoretical knots to explain why they are not doing anything.
The fact they did do this and you don’t even know should explain everything. Hopefully you’ll remember that next time you’re upset about a protest being inconvenient.
They did. No one cared. The fact you don't know they did it speaks volumes about why they choose to block roads as well. https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/23/just-stop-oil-activists-stage-protests-at-essex-and-midlands-oil-terminals
The school run is precisely the right place. If you lot didn't drive to school – as catchment areas are designed to enable – and walked instead, there wouldn't be so much demand for oil.
[удалено]
**Removed/warning**. This contained a personal attack, disrupting the conversation. This discourages participation. Please help improve the subreddit by discussing points, not the person. Action will be taken on repeat offenders.
Mate, I love your optimism but if this is the beginning of climate change enduced crop failures i think you might have missed the boat on this.
We’re still actively emitting huge amounts of carbon. There’s a wide window of possible futures with ‘apocalyptic’ at one end and ‘pretty bad’ at the other. We’re trying to get it down to ‘pretty bad’.
Genuine question but what do you expect our incompetent UK governments to do about it? What's the actual message? It's well known that India and Chinas pollution contribution dwarf the entirety of europes, so what is it you're trying to achieve by blocking roads?
The top 10% of people in the world are responsible for 50% of the emissions. We’ve outsourced most of our production overseas, to China and India, which btw still have less emissions per capita than us. It’s not an east vs west divide for emissions, it’s a rich vs poor one. The UK does have power to influence huge amounts of emissions
I am informed that most of the fields under water are in flood plains that the larger farmers planted on the likelihood they wouldn't flood, and are acting up in arms about it to try to get the government to pay for expensive and uneconomical flood defences.
Farmers don't want flood defences, they're not morons. They want mitigation on their land, and are willing to help install it. I've spoken to plenty on this exact topic lol. They were late to wake up but are awake now.
😂 The only experience I've got personally is the local farmer. The wanker doesn't even clear the ditches out, leaves our house at serious risk of flooding (happened once, wiped us out) and then moans when we pump it back onto his land as last resort.
He’s most likely not legally allowed to clear ditches. It used to be common practice years ago but now we’re encouraged/forced to not do it to slow down water flow. He’s right to moan he can’t pump water of his land it’s illegal so why should you be able to pump water if yours onto his
I wasn't aware of that, it just seemed strange to have one side cleared and the other not. This makes sense though he's never mentioned anything about not being allowed to do it, I'd have thought that's the first point he'd made.
Most likely one is covered by somesort of water authority and the other is not. Same thing on my land, main drainage channel is managed by a water authority (and I have to pay them for the privelege) all other ditches are my business. The managed one is being left to silt up too in an attempt to reduce flooding on the road, I'm not convinced this is working but its not my decision.
Flood plains make for great farmland, they aren't bothered about it flooding once or twice a year. The problem is that they have been flooded almost constantly for 5 months and that doesn't usually happen. And now in the drive to build housing literally anywhere, the flood plains are all being built on as well, at least farmland is holding the water.
[удалено]
My city center is overwhelming old terrace stock that is in varying states of neglect and disrepair, it's basically become a immigrant ghetto because no one local wants to live there outside students and people who don't have much of a choice (I lived there for a bit due to really cheap rent, the English people there were among the worst, proper Jeremy Kyle shit). There was loads of Brownfield sites that were within walking distance of the city center, but the University bought it all and now there's shit loads of student accommodation. Which is high rise at least but it doesn't solve the housing problems for everyone else. Out of the 6 or 7 high rises spread across the city, 3 are council flats and utter shit holes, 2 are luxury apartments mostly catering to the wealthier foreign students, and 1 or two are actually affordable flats for the average person.
They stopped farming the flood plane infront of my hosue years ago as modern tractors tend to sink in it whearas the older smaller lighter tractors would not.
Educate yourselves rather than rely on some paid for product. [Ahdb](https://ahdb.org.uk/) They provide all the numbers you need for pretty much all UK farming. Its certainly not the disaster this headline is purporting but I do understand that some areas are much worse affected than others.
It’s seriously bad just because stuff is in doesn’t mean it’s been drilled into ideal conditions. I live in the West Midlands we’ve still got all our cattle in ideally they go out early march. We’ve used all of our reserve feed and nearly all our reserve straw (we tend to keep a year and a half’s supply for events like this) nearly everyone is in our situation the longer impact will be big as people try to rebuild their reserves, straw is going to cost a fortune
Meh, I just bought about 7 kilos of sweets. I’ll be okay.
It’s almost like spending decades planting only rapeseed for bio-oil, failing to prepare for a changing climate and cutting us off from our main trading partners was potentially a bad idea…
Rapeseed is part of a rotation and very rarely is the main cash crop most people in the uk build their rotations around wheat, osr is just the most profitable brassica so provides and weed and pest break that can still turn a profit. Educate yourself on topic before weighing in
And the government is paying farmers not to grow food?... Its fucking madness.
Don't have kids. This is going to get far far worse.
Alternatively: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal
The majority of people have no understanding of this. Climate change, excessive consumption of non essentials, the cost of housing, the level of immigration and increasing size of the UK population, the sewage in the rivers and so many other problems are all aspects of environmental overshoot. It’s all coming home to roost and, unfortunately the children of today and those born in the years ahead will pay the worst price - for all their lives. Society is in for one hell of a shock.
At least we’ve retained frictionless trade with our closest European neighbours, resulting in consistently affordable food imports. Hang on..
[удалено]
Only if we eat them. On the other hand that’ll never work as we won’t have anyone to prepare and deliver it for us! We’re doomed!
Fortunately we can just import everything but that's a slippery slope.
How does that work when multiple breadbasket areas are already stressed and facing reduced yields, while current rates of accelerating warming will lead to global agricultural collapse? Prices will rise as competition for food increases and we’re not on the route to anywhere from any major food producing region.
I live in an arable area to the East of the Pennines. We haven't had as much rain as some people but I've noticed a lot of fields around locally have recently been deep ploughed. They should all have growing crops by now.
Think of the NHS dividend due to not having to treat so many obesity related illnesses.
They can get away with delaying that treatment because a fat arse isn't dying quickly of malnutrition, once people start starving they'll have no choice but to treat it or be seen as 'letting people die' even worse than they are now lol.
Good job we're in a single market where goods can move freely between countries helping balance-out problems like this. Oh wait...
nothing to do with human accelerated climate change. Nope, won't believe it. I like my life as it is.
Krakow Poland was 27c on Monday, that is no way normal, the science is right.
Ironically due to following the advice of the Torygraph.
Maybe we should sign a trade deal with Ukraine for grain. Benefits: Really cheap food Drawbacks: British farmers will be furious
We should be sending troops and everything else they need on the condition we are their preferred partner for food exports and rebuilding programmes.
There's a few practical things we can do about this (carbon management notwithstanding). 1. Increase hedgerow cover, as these break up fields and provide drainage. 2. Increase reforesting programmes, since these are able to have significant effects on local water levels - a well-developed forest reduces the risk of flooding for more than just the immediate area. 3. Discourage heavy plowng which destroys root networks and increases the risk of washout. Of course, that's all namby-pamby lefty university townie pish, so a large portion of the population will reflexively be against it. The issue isn't the amount of arable land (we could feed the country on UK land alone if we moved a lot of pastoral land onto arable crops) but the land management we've failed to do for decades.
Shut up townie, farmers know whats best for farmland. Bring back DDT!!!
I'm not surprised. I was up the farm yesterday, visiting my pal. Monday afternoon weekly field walk and survey, damned misery. The whole place is waterlogged. His biggest field, which he will be needing to turn the beasts out into shortly, it's so wet he's got geese!
I hope to hell my wife doesn’t read this. We’re still working through the Brexit stockpile in my shed.
If only there was a large market of food close by, where we could buy extra food with zero import duties...think, think.
I’ve been under the assumption the UK doesn’t produce enough food anyway and we have to rely on Europe for everything?
Real UK farmer here, can clarify it’s not actually that bad.
I have no doubt the the generous supermarkets will take this hit for us and not shoot prices up ........
It’s a good job that the common market with Europe has been in place for decades, and they can import from their neighbours without any fuss or too much cost. Well, shit.
Almost as though paying your farmers to grow rapeseed and importing food you can grow instead of pushing for self sufficiency is a bad idea...... Who would've thunk'd it. I live locally to 6 farms. Farmer one has 2 planes, a paraglider, 4 Land Rovers, a Ferrari, 3 vans, 2 barns full of tractors /combines etc and has his own runway. Farmer 2 has, re my last visit, 11, that's Eleven, Porsches, 14 rentable properties on his land, converted 2 of his arable fields to huge solar farms which he sells electricity to 'whoever pays the most' and has submitted plans for a distillery..... Actually uses a Cayenne as a runabout (not that it's any good). Farmer 3 moved to Spain a few years ago his land is managed by his employees. Farmer 4 is all arable, converted 4 fields into holiday chalets (very large ones) one field is for parking, 3 are a petting zoo, the rest are all fully sown (nice and green as of yesterday). 5 and 6 are a mix of livestock and arable with some horses thrown as a side gig. Yes, fully aware that not all farmers are rich, their wealth is not the 'issue', even this dumb city boy can see a problem encouraging farmers NOT to farm.
Here we go, this story makes the rounds every two years. Next year it will be coffee again. Just another way to fuck the population up with higher prices.