Ban on single-use plastic cutlery comes into force in England

It is a bit wild that you don't care about the climate you rely on changing but care more about how fast you can force liquid into your face

It is a bit wild that you don't care about the climate you rely on changing but care more about how fast you can force liquid into your face

I’m assuming it’s because we’ll all be dead anyway by the time climate change actually makes the Earth an entirely inhospitable place for humans to live. Even if the earth is heating up by a fraction of a degree per year, there are still places earth that are virtually uninhabitable because they’re too cold.

As for future generations, well the world has to end some time. Whether that’s 200 years from now or 2 million years from now, what difference would that make to any of us?

Aside from the fact that we should care about future generations

climate change is already affecting the us.

But this doesn’t address the fact that human extinction is going to happen some time. If it were possible to prolong the lifespan of our species into perpetuity, great, let’s do it. But it isn’t. The Earth isn’t even going to exist forever.

So my question still stands. Why should we care whether such events happen 200 years from now or 2 million years from now? Given that some generation or another has to suffer from these issues, why should it matter to us which one it is?




Climate change has been affecting the Earth as long as it has existed. We adapt by moving out of less hospitable areas and into more hospitable ones. People used to live in and around the Sahara desert when it was a wetter place than is today, and now they don’t really.

What a ridiculous argument. That we shouldn't aim to make the world a better place because 'well, we are all going to die eventually'? Of course there are things beyond our control that will eventually kill us all, either individually or as a species, but that doesn't mean we should work to improve what we have while we are still living. Climate change is a problem that can be fixed, we shouldn't allow future generations to suffer just because it won't affect us (as badly) today.

As for adaptability, the idea is that we shouldn't have to adapt if it is possible to avoid it. We're not talking about a couple of thousand people living in early civilisation either, we are talking about nearly 8 billion people who will be affected by an issue that impacts all parts of the world.

My point is you can’t prevent future generations from suffering. If the next generation doesn’t suffer, the one after that will, or the one after that, or the one after that etc. All you’d be doing is delaying the problem.

Given that it is inevitable that some generation or another has to suffer this problem, why does it matter which generation that happens to be?

Because it isn't inevitable. Climate change is a problem that can be fixed. Why should we allow future generations, and our own, to suffer when we could instead fix the problem?

Ban on single-use plastic cutlery comes into force in England - BBC News

Shops and hospitality businesses will no longer be able to supply plastic cutlery, balloon sticks and polystyrene cups under the new rules.

I personally support the move despite be being someone who does not care about climate change, but my issue is how effective will the non-single-use plastic alternatives be? I find paper straws to be absolutely crap for one compared to the plastic counterpart but other than that, good move.

The whole UK should have done this a year ago when Scotland did it.

The amount of fast food rubbish around the whole country is ridiculous as obviously majority of it can't be recycled but hopefully now that they have started to bring in recycling packaging it will improve loads.
Think McDonald's has the right idea with the separate slots for what can be recycled

In French McDonald’s, you get proper cutlery if you eat in (as in plastic cup, plastic holder for chips etc) and it get’s washed and reused afterwards. Maybe the UK could do something similar if they truly cared (for est in only obviously, takeaway would have the normal packaging).

How is it not inevitable? When the sun eventually runs out of hydrogen fuel and starts expanding to become a red giant, are we not going to have climate change and global warming then? Isn't the Earth going to heat up to uninhabitable levels before finally getting swallowed by it? Aren't the future generations on Earth at that time going to suffer (if indeed they're still around haven't already suffered some other catastrophic extinction event before that)? Is there anything we can do to stop any of this?

We can only "fix" climate change to the extent that we humans are no longer the ones causing it, or that we can reverse some of the effects we have caused. But it would just be temporary until climate change or some other catastrophic event hits us via natural causes instead.


Besides that, I also feel like there's not much point in you or I as individuals worrying about climate change, when there's so little we can do about it. The UK contributes to less than 1% of emissions, so even if we erased our footprint entirely it's a miniscule effect. The main culprits are Chinese, American and Indian industry (which we have little to no say over) as opposed to our plastic straws and cutlery. And your average Indian voter struggling to feed his family is going to care far more about having a government that grows the economy and puts food on his table in the here and now, over one that's worrying about what the weather will be like in a hundred years.

Christ, way to be disingenuous. We are talking about climate change due to human activity, not something like the expansion and death of the sun. The two are clearly different which is why we wouldn't think about them in the same way.

I don't accept the nihilistic take that we shouldn't care about or try to fix problems just because some other problem might come along eventually. That's like saying we shouldn't brush our teeth because they will eventually fall out. Be it climate change or some other environmental disaster, efforts to stop, slow down or mitigate the problem are worth it even if some other problem might come along which is impossible to fix.

Yeah, I don't care about climate change but can see the need for this kind of ban to happen.

I just find that a strangely strong if nihilistic position to take. I can understand a variety of opinion on severity, impact or even denial etc, but just not caring seems genuinely odd to me, we're not taking about dismissing a TV show or a material possession, but the literal air we breathe and food we eat, I think we're affecting these pretty quickly, like within our lifetimes of significance, not perhaps dramatically, but if we're going to start having to move and rezone to cooler/warmer areas as things shift, can you afford it? How will you fare in the haves vs have nots if things are pushed and values change overnight?

Wouldn’t bother me in this context but it’s annoying for the businesses.