4 ms·
Problem is, that wouldn't satisfy the "humans are evil, and the cause of all nature's ills" narrative that underlays much of the activism around climate policy
by tbrownaw 9y ago
Problem is, that wouldn't satisfy the "humans are evil, and the cause of all nature's ills" narrative that underlays much of the activism around climate policy and other environmentalist causes.
The solution always has to be fewer humans and less human activity, with the possible exception of temporary "sorry, we were never here" cleanup efforts.
- sillysaurus3 9y agoA movement is composed of people, and those people can be reasoned with individually. If we reason with enough of them, the narrative changes.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoThe tricky thing is separating those people from their support groups long enough for the reasoning to stick. Otherwise, all the effort only gets wasted on trying to overcome people's need of belonging to a group.
- justicezyx 9y agoChina did managed population growth, guess what happened, no one is happy. I doubt human can overcome their own nature to step ahead and regulate population effectively.
- josefx 9y agoIsn't population growth close to zero for most industrialized countries?
- justicezyx 9y agoWhat's your point? I am not blaming other countries being irresponsible in controlling population. I was saying simply control population is not as easy a social policy to carry out.
- josefx 9y agoThat it isn't human nature that is the problem with population growth, otherwise we wouldn't have large parts of the free world with almost none and even slightly negative growth. The problem is cultural/historical and the problem of chinas one child policy was that it tried to combat the effect while the people still saw having a male heir as important.
- justicezyx 9y agoI cannot seem to understand your statements.
- josefx 9y agoFact: we don't have an issue with positive population growth in most western nations. Fact 2: the populations of these western nations are human. Q.E.D.: explosive population growth is not human nature. It is a cultural, educational, social security and rights issue. The Chinese failed because they tried to fight the result instead of the cause(s).
- jorangreef 9y agoWould you prefer the "humans are basically good" narrative? Do you honestly find that to be a better explanation of human history the past few thousand years than "humans are evil, and the cause of all nature's ills"? Personally, I find the latter proves true to life. Better to accept it and deal with it, than to sweep it under the rug.
- oblio 9y agoThat's assuming that all the harm we do, we do it just to do harm. I think this assumption is false. Most of the harm we do is a side effect of things we're trying to achieve. So, basically, we're just another (slightly smarter) animal. It's not like, for example, invasive species introduced from another continent stopped for a second and thought: "hey! maybe we shouldn't breed too much and we shouldn't eat all the bees/birds/whatever!". Life is like a gas, it expands to fill all the space given to it. I don't think that's inherently bad. After all, life is the exception in the universe. And frankly, most of the universe is boring :)