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> But I still feel like this trillion-mile-high context is glossed over in many of these environmental diatribes and the endless drumbeat to protect it which we
by shakna 7y ago
> But I still feel like this trillion-mile-high context is glossed over in many of these environmental diatribes and the endless drumbeat to protect it which we've all grown up with in modern times.
I'd guess, because in the end, it isn't really relevant.
Sustainability isn't really about living in some kind of partnership with nature, it's making sure that our exploitation of resources doesn't reach a point at which our species experiences dramatic loss.
We can't reasonably move to another planet. Barring breakthroughs in terraforming or the invention of FTL engines, we're stuck here. Which means we need to continue to live here for the foreseeable future, and we don't want to cross that tipping point and screw over the up-and-coming generations. We've become largely dependent on a series of things that won't be able to continue to exist in their current form.
We will continue to exploit and manipulate the natural world. We just need to change that manipulation so it can continue to persist. We're not talking about reducing our consumption of power - we instead talk about more efficient or less damaging ways to consume it.
- ThomPete 7y agoI think its important to undrstand that we are the resources. Oil was useless before we found ways to get it up from the underground and refine it to energy and the thousands of products we use in modern society, coal was useless before we found ways to turn it into energy, concrete etc, uranium was useless before we found ways to use it, stainless steel and i could go on.
- shakna 7y agoI think the answer to "What is Earth's most valuable resource?" is frequently answered with "the people". By common folk, dictators, and ordinary politicians. I'd put that into the common knowledge pile.
- ThomPete 7y agoNot in the climate debate. In that humans are seen as the problem, a cancer if you like, that destroys nature.
- shakna 7y agoThey are also seen as the solution in the climate debate. That the tools and technologies that can be deployed by the ingenuity of humanity can change the landscape to suit us. It's a problem both caused by and solved by humanity. Which is why focusing on this part of the topic is largely irrelevant to the debate.
- ThomPete 7y agoMostly by those who are called climate skeptics, the GTs of the world, the Erlichs consider humans the problem and want us to live a very different way or for there to be less of us. You claimed it was common knowledge, its not.