I find this whole "it's not milk if it's not dairy" argument really hard to take in good faith.
I'm not an expert at all, but when I've heard people talk about these kind of decisions, it sounds like it's normally meant to come down to consumer benefits.
Who's gaining here (aside from dairy lobbies)? I don't think there's any reasonable argument that UK citizens are confused by the term "oat milk", and buying it because they were tricked into thinking it was a dairy product.
Later on, George swipes when she shows a picture to get even, finds out she supports the wrong baseball team, and spends the rest of the episode trying to break up with her without revealing whybecause she'd find out that he swiped.
Amazingly zooplankton does play a huge role in reducing CO2. The ocean carbon pump is a mammoth thing, and it's effects are just from the combined movement of life, not phytoplankton's direct FlCO2 storage.
Doesn't it? Surely the economics of less demand for meat = less meat production?
I think the biggest issue, especially in parts of the US, is just cultural inertia. It's reallynot hard or.expensive to eat an easy, healthy and tasty vegan or vegetarian diet, but a lot of people, especially men, tie their identity up with eating meat.
Also, just in case anyone is reading this and thinking they not sure they're ready- you can still:
Even if you don't go full vegan, you'll still cut emissions by transitioning your diet.
Yeah, trees are pretty amazing! There's also a mammoth amount of carbon capture in the ocean (more than land) mostly via plankton but also sea grass and the like.
Trees play a massive role in the ecosystem we're part of aside from just being carbon stores. If we just focus on carbon storage and invent new tech that does that, it might somewhat improve the situation, but we're really just kicking the can down the road, and waiting for our extraction based economy to cause chaos somewhere else.
The main pictured on looks pretty goofy, especially because of the bright green, but this sent me down a youtube rabbit hole of seeing a bunch of reallymawesome house tours.
Side note: I find 'new build ecofriendly' architecture liks this awesome, but wonder a lot about adapting existing homes which is surely the most environmentally friendly option. If you were to go all out on making an existing home solarpunk, what would that look like?
I think this is a real struggle. I've felt massively depressed by the state of things in the past. I don't have a silver bullet, but some stuff has really helped me:
Do something about it! Even if it's as small as talking to your friends, voting on green issues and signing petitions. Positioning yourself on the side of fighting against environmental damage, is a much happier place than watching it happen fron the sidelines.
Remember the environment in the big and the small. As in, CO2 needs to be reduced, we should fight for that, but also, bringing more environmental stewardship in your life, whether joining a nature reserve conservation group, or just taking care of your houseplants and garden.
It might feel devastating sometimes to be witnessing the loss and danger that's happening. But the people mist perpatuating climat change are the one's who don't even understand what we're loosing.
Ronald Regan once said "a tree is a tree is a tree" to justify deforestation. What an idiot! Trees are beautiful and amazing and individual. I would much rather feel anxious than blind to the incredible beauty that exists in our world.
Not to be too bleak, but of course you're being punished for caring. The status quo is owned by people who have huge profits in looking away from the environmental damage that is happening, by caring about nature, you're going against the happy path that's been laid out for you.
Just to make the case for the smart meter. The UK energy industry is trying to bring something called market-wide alf hourly settlement into play, which is meant to make more energy use data available and therefore make it easier and more efficient to respond to changing demand.
Assuming you think it'll work, then smart meters will play a role in enabling greater renewables in a way that "dumb" meters can't.
I don't really like the idea of things being phased out so quickly either, but at least (unlike phones, TVs, computers, ebooks, smart watches etc) smart meters are being phased out to bring out to potentially lessen overall environmental impact.