UKH

well I'm not actually but picking up from the other thread, after a bit of googling the go to's for rich folk to spend their loot are

1. Travel

2. Food/eating out

3. Cars

4. Wine

5. Clothes

And all are bad bad bad for the climate and the Global South's well-being.

So help me out. I'm very very rich. what can I spend my hard earned money on that is a bit more responsible? Open to any suggestions as long as they are sustainable and very very expensive. I need to feel that all the sacrifices were worth it.

thanks

Simply stop eating altogether and donate your wealth to a worthy cause. All you have to worry about then is whether the Co2 caused by cremation outweighs the methane your rotting corpse will emit during its recycling during a conventional burial.

seriously vintage plonk, expensive and fairly green...

million pound banksy mebbe

Yeti hunting, oh, hang on, nah scrub that

Land, it's the only thing they're not making more of. 

Ah, it seems that Dutch and Chinese dredgers are actually making more land.

So maybe, greenbelt land.

Yep, land. Then spend more on returning it to it's natural state. 

Antique furniture. It was made years ago so no additional resources have been used for you to own it (except a bit of transport) and it saves you buying new furniture and the resources going in to that.

Buy an old classic sailing yacht and sail around the world.

Sponsoring the arts, or helping to finance a movie.

Good idea. Take  Greta as a cabin boy.

A million pounds.... could become mortgage free with a normal 4 bed house round my way. Won't leave that much for all the other extravagances however. 

Why not buy an industrial unit in a naff bit of town and build a climbing wall? As a 2nd option. 

I'm genuinely puzzled?

I thought it was an attempt at humour. Not especially funny, but still funnier than I usually am. I don't see any unpleasantness? 

A friend has designed and built an energy efficient house up a hill in Switzerland, and covered the roof with the best solar panels that charge his Tesla to take him into the Alps for walking.

education for women in 3rd world countries.

Sorry, which of my posts caused offence? The one about cremation or the one about the cabin boy?

I  don't see that my age is any more relevant than my skin colour or my gender.

If anything I said was genuinely offensive I'm sure I'll be contacted by a moderator fairly soon and if they tell me I was in the wrong, I'll take notice. 

Do a Georgie Best,

I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered.

Reduce your working week by one day and spend it climbing / reading / chilling out / doing something valuable for yourself or others. Best money you'll spend.

Debbie Mcgee 

What's interesting about those 5 named is that they are all classic status emblems ie. there's an accepted culture of values which we're all conditioned towards. Thus - the eco question has to reject these traditional values - largely. But the yachting trip / project could fit both - wind power - great idea 

Alternately take up gliding !

It would be travel for me.

Realistically money buys you time, the need not to spend time earning money. That makes slow travel an option, bikes, trains, on foot, passenger quarters on cargo ships. Your impact beyond transport is down to another set of decisions that you make.

Toy wise Lee's right, buy a glider A wooden classic (I'd say Elfe S4a but I'm biased) would deal with the resource use guilt but you don't need to be rich. If I could afford it I'd go for a state of the art electric or jet self launcher but there's a lot of epoxy carbon there doing not much most of its life. 

Oh and I'd definitely get a wooden yacht. Probably also a windsurfer and a paraglider. And a nice shed with a classic English toolroom in it. Oh and a velomobile and a rescue mutt and some land to grow trees. I'm warming to the idea of being rich! 

There are a thousand and one ways to spend money well, mostly it's not on toys.

Jk

There is actually a couple sailing around the world and vlogging who gave Greta and her dad a lift.

Sailing La vagabonde I think the vlog is called.

When you said wooden classic I expected something like an old Slingsby Cadet. I was a bit shocked when I saw a picture of that Elfe  you mentioned!

Lovely isn't it  

Jk

If you have serious money the thing to do is found your own space company.

But you don't need a lot of cash for this my savings never exceeded 100k - before purchase of our 10 acre property - where I have planted >500 trees. Obviously land is cheaper in France but even in the UK agricultural land (ie. no planning permission) is still relatively cheap. A piece of land can be hold eco and recreational value with a nice collection of trees - park, plantation and forest ! 

Land.  

You can't burn it or loose it, 

i've spent the lst ten years trying to restore  a hay meadow to its former state after it had been holding horses for a long time.The problem is striking a balance between grass and flowers: I want more flowers but the person who cuts it for me is more interested in the hay quality than the flowers.

Well that would depend on how much land you wanted to restore. 10 acre is a lovely size for a personal plot.. but what about a grouse moor?

I’d pay off the mortgage, quit my job  then spend all of my time working in the wood I currently attempt to manage but never seem to have enough time for.
Firewood, coppicing & charcoal burning, replanting the already thinned-out bits, grazing pigs, redigging the ponds & restoring the bogs, and a fair bit of deer stalking. I’d be perfectly happy. 

Would all go nicely with some green woodwork / pole-lathe setup. How much (wood) land do you have ? What are the dominant tree species ?

Noted irony - this lifestyle used to earn a living at one time; now you need money to drop out - my experience - but you wouldn't need a million ??

It’s about 70 acres in total, and a fair mixture. There’s a lot of ash that has to come out this winter due to dieback. Apart from that, a load of sycamore (especially small self-seeded stuff, which is a nightmare), some decent oak, hazel & sweet chestnut, some big stands of beech, some silver birch, and a few bits of pine & yew dotted around. 
There’s probably a further 50 acres or so of smaller copses around the estate too.

I try and keep it tidy enough, but it’s a hell of a job on my own at evenings & weekends. I just make sure that I keep the ‘big house’, estate cottage & myself in firewood, and the rides in there are kept clear, but hopefully I’ll get some more assistance this winter from the commercial timber lads to clear it out a bit. 

all good suggestions but I want to show of my success. Status Symbol please ( and I can't afford a space rocket). The wooden yacht is a good status symbol as it demands huge amounts of someone else's time to keep it in pristine shape. Horses likewise.

I really can't think of anything else so maybe (if I really were a millionaire) I'd put my money into a Vegan Cooking Range and try and get it into steak restaurants and the like.

Status symbol? Maybe start growing pineapples? 

I like the idea of a wooden yacht but from my limited experience of dinghy sailing there's quite a bit of skill involved.

On the other hand one of those classic Italian motorboats from the 50's like a Riva Aquarama  should be a doddle to drive and leaves very little doubt about your financial status. Apart from being a very beautiful thing, which it is.

You must accept the limitations of this idea - the millionaire eco-indution must include proposals with education - a shift in values is what is really needed 

I have noted  some rich bods have bought up parcels of untamed wilderness / jungle / forest for preservation - so this act already has trending status

Sex. drugs and rock and Frig all else.

Are you sure you wouldn't like a roll with your rock?

You could support the greener alternatives like train and boat (and car), themaninseat61 is a cool website devoted to greener travel - travel without flying.

It supports the economy I guess, but you could eat out less? A late family friend over time became a very good cook, so that by her 60's she'd occasionally grumble about going out to a posh restaurant and finding that she could have made something better , she was meticulous and always learning, become an excellent cook instead...?

Buy second hand?

Buy fair trade?

See above, add recycled and organic too, and second hand.

Edit: That's just an off the top of my head response to your OP, but I reckon that making changes towards living a greener or more wholesome and ethical life is probably easier achieved by degrees over time, rather than all at once.

Most of us in London (1 in 20 people) and the South East have spent our money on property and have very little of our million left to spend on anything. Least of all holidays and cars. A million pounds doesn’t get you much. Spending money in local restaurants, beauticians, golf courses and Waitrose is the usual. 

Those are all obvious choices but what the comfortably wealthy actually spend most of their money on is little bits of companies whose prospects appeal to them. The good news is that, while the average pension fund is still propping up oil companies, the wealthy (okay, not all of them, but a growing majority) are ahead of the curve on ESG (environmental, social and governance) investing and are forcing change by their abandonment of companies that pollute or abuse in favour of greener and more socially responsible alternatives.

Some of this is to make themselves feel virtuous of course but it’s supported by hard research that shows companies with high ESG scores to be more profitable investments in the short and long run.

Sounds like a good start but this ESG needs to take account - not just of energy consumption but obselescence - esp built-in; ie; materials turnover & E-waste. Curious here that Faiphone & Apple are named in the same phrase ! 

Q: Guide to Greener Electronics (Greenpeace) scores 17 tech companies based on their emissions reductions, resource consumption and elimination of hazardous chemicals. The report gave the highest scores to Fairphone and Apple.

https://www.greenbiz.com/article/report-report-climate-risk-greener-electro...

"Why would I want ten Ferraris, 20 diamond watches and two jet planes? What would that do for the world? I starved, I worked in the fields, I played barefoot, and I didn't go to school. Now I can help people. I prefer to build schools and give poor people food or clothing. I have built schools [and] a stadium; we provide clothes, shoes, and food for people in extreme poverty. In addition, I give 70 euros per month to all people from a very poor Senegalese region in order to contribute to their family economy. I do not need to display luxury cars, luxury homes, trips, and even planes. I prefer that my people receive a little of what life has given me," Sadio Mane.