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I don't think I can handle the article seeing as merely your above comment was so strikingly beautiful and sad! And business-as-usual will just keep churning

I don't think I can handle the article seeing as merely your above comment was so strikingly beautiful and sad! And business-as-usual will just keep churning along, everything is fine, everything is peachy. Profits profits profits. Exploitation, single use plastics, dead oceans, destruction.

javajosh 5y ago
The shocking truth is that, even if you exclude empathy (which is sadly quite common), this represents a total abrogation of humanities collective responsibility to protect ourselves. Earth and her biosphere is our space-ship and our life-support system, respectively, and we cannot seem to come to grips with this simple fact. It doesn't anger me when people act in ignorance. What angers me are those who know better, and keep others in ignorance with their cynically spent PR money, and those who know better and repeat the lies to pander to ignorance and garner votes. It is not a message that can be addressed with reason, since it appeals to the basest instincts of men: don't worry, everything is fine, keep doing what you want, you're justified. The ability to doubt (let alone challenge) authority when authority is telling you what you want to hear is vanishingly rare.
- relax88 5y ago
  Not that I disagree with anything you’ve said, but I feel it’s important to acknowledge the often ignored fact that the same process of industrialization and capitalism that has impacted the environment has also lifted billions of people out of poverty and brought about the the highest standards of living in human history. We are only now seeing the structural changes that will stabilize the human population after generations of growth from the advent of industrial agriculture. Contraception has only been widely available in most parts of the world for ~30 years and there are still places without it. It’s very different to deliver this moral lecture to a Starbucks sipping, SUV driving North American, than to someone who lives in a rural village in Mongolia. Effective environmental altruism must recognize the human element as it forms a key piece of the ethical dilemma. You will never convince someone who lives in poverty or other forms of hardship to make sacrifices to preserve the environment, and it may not even be ethical to attempt to do so.
  - bittercynic 5y ago
    For me this is proves the urgency of alleviating poverty.

javajosh 5y ago

The shocking truth is that, even if you exclude empathy (which is sadly quite common), this represents a total abrogation of humanities collective responsibility to protect ourselves. Earth and her biosphere is our space-ship and our life-support system, respectively, and we cannot seem to come to grips with this simple fact. It doesn't anger me when people act in ignorance. What angers me are those who know better, and keep others in ignorance with their cynically spent PR money, and those who know better and repeat the lies to pander to ignorance and garner votes. It is not a message that can be addressed with reason, since it appeals to the basest instincts of men: don't worry, everything is fine, keep doing what you want, you're justified. The ability to doubt (let alone challenge) authority when authority is telling you what you want to hear is vanishingly rare.

relax88 5y ago
Not that I disagree with anything you’ve said, but I feel it’s important to acknowledge the often ignored fact that the same process of industrialization and capitalism that has impacted the environment has also lifted billions of people out of poverty and brought about the the highest standards of living in human history. We are only now seeing the structural changes that will stabilize the human population after generations of growth from the advent of industrial agriculture. Contraception has only been widely available in most parts of the world for ~30 years and there are still places without it. It’s very different to deliver this moral lecture to a Starbucks sipping, SUV driving North American, than to someone who lives in a rural village in Mongolia. Effective environmental altruism must recognize the human element as it forms a key piece of the ethical dilemma. You will never convince someone who lives in poverty or other forms of hardship to make sacrifices to preserve the environment, and it may not even be ethical to attempt to do so.
- bittercynic 5y ago
  For me this is proves the urgency of alleviating poverty.