Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I agree all this environmenalism is stupid. Acid rain, lines at the gas station, and getting cancer just from doing your job were totally awesome! Dumb kids for missing out on that. Did you know that trees and polar bears are jerks?
Perhaps what I call the 'fern gully generation' had subsequently seen so many sappy environmental films and tv shows in their childhood that it dramatically shaped their worldview (basically brainwashed them), and is so deeply embedded in their psyche that it is basically their moral compass and religion, much like the sunday school classes or more traditional morality based children's entertainment was for other generations.
Brainwashed? I'm not brainwashed. I decided on my own I like nature. Large Forests. Mountains. Rivers. Clean beach. Fresh air, clean water, food not full of chemicals. By the end of my teenager years, I realize I didn't care all that much for lots of material stuff but I did like the outdoors.
Forests.
Mountains.
This scene was nice until this raucous motor boat came along. It needed to shut up:
I was hiking in the woods on the side of a large mountain. I heard loud gunshots from a nearby shooting range. I don't like guns. They're too noisy, especially those ones. They were desecrating the mountain. These cows destroy native vegetation. A non-beef diet would mean more land kept wild:
They also wander into the road and get in the way of bicycling. Silly Californians. They need to fence their roads. The locals told me clearcutting is good for forests. I disagree:
I like cities, too. Where I can walk around and there are people on the street and walking around doesn't lead past endless highways and strip malls or involve walking in a subdivision in circles.
Perhaps what I call the 'fern gully generation' had subsequently seen so many sappy environmental films and tv shows in their childhood that it dramatically shaped their worldview (basically brainwashed them), and is so deeply embedded in their psyche that it is basically their moral compass and religion, much like the sunday school classes or more traditional morality based children's entertainment was for other generations.
Can you even think of much childrens programming from the 80s-90s that does not have some type of cheesy environmental message?
Well, if you want to blame anyone for the millenials having a green tinge, blame OPEC and the US government for the oil shortages of the 70s, blame the smog in LA, and blame all levels of government and lenders for the cheap debt that fueled the housing boom and allowed green initiatives to not actually "cost" anything from individuals' daily lives.
I'm sure it would seem like nihilism to some. I remember thinking that teen garage bands were 'important' once too, and that life without them would be like some kind of shell existence, a spiral into meaningless unfulfillment.
Not just garage rock, but rock n'roll in general provides salvation and meaning:
Actually, I was snarking before, but I submit that the posing of the question is completely incorrect.
Check out this poster from 1917 from the US Food Administration: Food - don't waste it
And there are tons more in the US Library of Congress collection regarding the popular tropes of environmentalism. The same message has been going strong since for the past 100 years; the idea that people were 'brainwashed by movies in the 1980s' is incredibly ignorant of history.
What is really hilarious is the hostility you are exhibiting towards people that care about the environment. I'm certainly not brainwashed and living in a walkable and dense environment has little to do with my environmental views, but I do see it as a bonus that my carbon footprint is a little bit smaller than it would be in other situations.
Also maybe because we have to live on this planet after you are gone so taking care of it is more of a priority as science advances and shows how some of our activities are more harmful to the planet than others. And it does make a difference - just look at Los Angeles' smog problem in the last 40 years.
And posts like this one demonstrate a pattern of self-righteousness, peddled "guilt", and demonization that would make a gaggle of "church ladies" over in Possum Hollow seem tame by comparison.
I'm old enough to recall when "conservation" as opposed to the buzz-words "environmentalisnm" and "ecology" were primarily a conservative concern. It wasn't until the late Sixties, when the masters of manipulation and half-truth like Al Gore saw a potential for recruitment of the young, impressionalble and simplistic into the coalition of single issues which has always been the basic orientation of the Democratic Party, that environmental concerns became a prominent Center-Left issue.
Underneath all the blame-throwing, most of us with a desire for learning recognize that there are some serious threats here. Even the well-respected conservative newsmagazine National Review devoted a cover story to climate change some three years ago.
That's "climate change", not the Pavlovian buzz-phrase "global warming" designed to get all the teenyboppers crying about those cuddly polar bears.
Because we can't deal with issues like this until we separate the real threats from the hype, and develop a means of dealing with them which works in the world of Hard Science rather than science-fantasy; and that a globalizing economy can resonably sustain. That's not going to happen if only the over-sensitized First World is expected to be held to a higher standard.
And because the "nihilism" decried in Posts #3, #5 and #7 is every bit as apparent in "activist" politicians who never think beyond the next election -- and whose only real goal is a bigger bureaucracy, and the patronage that goes with it.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 01-29-2013 at 05:19 AM..
And posts like this one demonstrate a pattern of self-righteousness, peddled "guilt", and demonization that would make a gaggle of "church ladies" over in Possum Hollow seem tame by comparison.
I'm old enough to recall when "conservation" as opposed to the buzz-words "environmentalisnm" and "ecology" were primarily a conservative concern. It wasn't until the late Sixties, when the masters of manipulation and half-truth like Al Gore saw a potential for recruitment of the young, impressionalble and simplistic into the coalition of single issues which has always been the basic orientation of the Democratic Party, that environmental concerns became a prominent Center-Left issue.
Underneath all the blame-throwing, most of us with a desire for learning recognize that there are some serious threats here. Even the well-respected conservative newsmagazine National Review devoted a cover story to climate change some three years ago.
That's "climate change", not the Pavlovian buzz-phrase "global warming" designed to get all the teenyboppers crying about those cuddly polar bears.
Because we can't deal with issues like this until we separate the real threats from the hype, and develop a means of dealing with them which works in the world of Hard Science rather than science-fantasy; and that a globalizing economy can resonably sustain. That's not going to happen if only the over-sensitized First World is expected to be held to a higher standard.
And because the "nihilism" decried in Posts #3, #5 and #7 is every bit as apparent in "activist" politicians who never think beyond the next election -- and whose only real goal is a biggr bureaucracy, and the patronage that goes with it.
Thank god you're here. I really need you to separate the hard science from the science fantasy in my brain. Because I've been brainwashed. Save me from al gore's mind control!
^^all this anger because some people, many young people want to live in walkable areas?
Who says I'm angry? I'm just pointing out that a huge gap exists between the fantasies peddled by the more-simplistic environmental zealots. and what an economy ruled by the sum total of human interactions -- in plain terms, supply and demand -- can actually sustaiin. There comes a point where environmental wishes run up against reality, and as long as the bureaucratic empire-builders get their cut, they reallly don't cae all that much about the rest -- even if a really serious issue is hiding somewhere below the surface.
But I'm not going to pay much attention to something aimed mostly at 14-year-olds.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
