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The environment's great and all, but I see it from a cost/benefit perspective.
Living in an area where I can ride my bike or walk places, I use my car less. This means less maintenance, and less gas (granted, if I lived downtown in a big city, I wouldn't even need a car -- but you can pry my keys from my cold, dead hands). Living in a smaller footprint also saves me money. A smaller house means cheaper rent, and less space to heat in the winter, and cool in the summer (and, living in Phoenix, it takes a lot of cooling in the summer!).
By living in a smaller house, riding my bike / walking / taking the bus or light rail more often, buying (cheaper) local produce, and generally living cheaply, I save money each year. Last year I completely lived off of about $12,000 -- and that's going to school full time, and going out to eat a lot!
I'm not sacrificing anything living so cheap -- I'd say I still have a fairly high quality of life -- but it means I get to bank more money each month, which means I get to travel more, and have more fun / awesome experiences.
That's "climate change", not the Pavlovian buzz-phrase "global warming" designed to get all the teenyboppers crying about those cuddly polar bears.
No, global warming is the more accurate phrase. Increase in global average temperature = global warming. Just because you think it has political implications you don't like doesn't mean it's inaccurate.
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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 hard science; developing a means of dealing with an environment issue is an engineering or political issue. Hard science can say if the threats are real or not
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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.
Maybe he got stuck at this line "They were desecrating the mountain." and couldn't tell if you were lampooning or not.
Why would that line make someone ignore? There were also photos — many photos. As to whether I was lampooning or not, that's left as an excercise to the reader. Shouldn't be too hard.
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. how lucky I was to have been enlightened, how lucky to 'understand' those complex tapestries of raw emotion woven from the depths of the human pathos.
Not the same thing. You're referring to an art form that may or may not still speak to you over time as you grow and change. We say nihilism because environmentalism is fundamentally about ethics, our responsibilities to each other, and to disregard it is to disregard the well being of others and of future generations. I try to do what I can for the environment, but no one's perfect. I definitely think someone's cool if they do alot because it truly is an honourable endeavour, not something to be mocked by those who seem to think that selfishly never thinking about the consequences of our actions is somehow a virtue. It isn't, you're the one who was brainwashed to consume as much as possible and to stop caring about what that might lead to.
Not the same thing. You're referring to an art form that may or may not still speak to you over time as you grow and change. We say nihilism because environmentalism is fundamentally about ethics, our responsibilities to each other, and to disregard it is to disregard the well being of others and of future generations. I try to do what I can for the environment, but no one's perfect. I definitely think someone's cool if they do alot because it truly is an honourable endeavour, not something to be mocked by those who seem to think that selfishly never thinking about the consequences of our actions is somehow a virtue. It isn't, you're the one who was brainwashed to consume as much as possible and to stop caring about what that might lead to.
You know, the scientific community views you folks as those kids in the supermarket pushing one of those fun-sized 'lil shoppers' carts with the flag on it. They don't come up and say, 'hey kid, actually your not really shopping or being useful in any way, your just going through the motions because it makes you feel important like your mom. so just stop wasting your time and effort pushing that silly looking thing around' because its kind of cute, and there just kids, so let them feel useful.
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..
Al Gore was born in 1948. In the late 60s he was in college, and then in 1969 he joined the army. I was going to say he went to Viet Nam, but apparently in 1969 he was still in basic training, and he did not get to VN till January of 1971.
You know, the scientific community views you folks as those kids in the supermarket pushing one of those fun-sized 'lil shoppers' carts with the flag on it. They don't come up and say, 'hey kid, actually your not really shopping or being useful in any way, your just going through the motions because it makes you feel important like your mom. so just stop wasting your time and effort pushing that silly looking thing around' because its kind of cute, and there just kids, so let them feel useful.
Yup! You're right. I should just consume with careless abandon. That's definitely how you create a culture and breed a value system where people with a bit more power are going to also care about getting their operations sustainable, where the innovative folks are going to devote their time and come up with ideas to make the more significant cogs in the machine green, where people embody and internalize these ideas and put pressure on legislatures to help them guide society to where it needs to be going forward if we want it to work in the long term. Each act is also symbolic, and through slow cultural changes like this, this is how you get people to take civic responsibility and come together to meet the challenges we face.
EDIT: I'd also add that I actually do know several bonafide climate scientists (I am myself a scientist from another field). They aren't laughing, they're just glad to see any movement towards addressing this issue, even if it isn't enough.
You know, the scientific community views you folks as those kids in the supermarket pushing one of those fun-sized 'lil shoppers' carts with the flag on it.
Any evidence that the scientific community views the environmental movement with disdain?
I am often asked about Al Gore and his film. I don't know Gore, but he strikes me as a very intelligent man who is seriously concerned about what global change will mean for the world. He is a lawyer/politician, not a scientist, who has clearly worked hard to master a very complicated subject and to convey his worries to the public. Some of the details in the film make me cringe, but I think the overall thrust is appropriate. To the extent that he has gotten some things wrong, I mainly fault his scientific advisers, who should know better, but not Al Gore.
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