3 ms·
> Our water sources are polluted. Our oceans are acidifying. We've strip mined our topsoil. Our rainforests are at a tipping point, on the verge of catastrophic
by quotemstr 5y ago
> Our water sources are polluted. Our oceans are acidifying. We've strip mined our topsoil. Our rainforests are at a tipping point, on the verge of catastrophic loss. Did you see those fires in Australia last year? Disastrous weather events are up 83% in only twenty years. Top strategists and CEOs are preparing for water wars and refugee crises
Every single generation points to things going wrong now and thinks the end of nigh. It's been that way since at least the invention of writing. All you've done is present a list of problems. You have done nothing to build an actual case that the engine of human innovation is breaking down. What makes you think we won't overcome the problems you mention just as we've overcome all our previous problems?
> And you're here telling us there's no need to limit growth, that doing so is criminal, that the environmentalist cult predictions are failing?
Yes, I am. Because those predictions are failing, and they are failing because they imagine that we exist in a bizarre alternative world where we don't invent technology to solve problems but instead just breed, like deer or something, until we collapse. Wrong model, thus wrong predictions.
Did you know forest cover has actually increased over the past 100 years? Under your theory, we should have chopped down the last tree ages ago.
Our rivers don't catch on fire anymore either. Under your theory, we should all be drinking turpentine by now.
Turns out we can live in a clean world without arbitrary and murderously limiting growth or capping the number of people who can exist.
> In the comments of an article about how there's no American Bumblebees in eight states, which was predicted 20 years ago?
Well, yeah. Doing something about the neoniconoid pesticides causing the bee problem is probably wise. That's not the object of my objection.
The object of my objection is this idea that bees are suffering because humanity arrogantly tries to "play god" with technology and that we should stop and go back to the trees or something. That's an absurd and destructive worldview, and one that's embarrassingly common among comfortable tech types.
- mandmandam 5y agoYour argument reduces to, well we haven't destroyed ourselves yet. ... It's not a strong argument.
- quotemstr 5y agoSure, in the same way that your argument "reduces" to chicken little. Isn't this a fun game, creating ridiculous strawmen justifying it with this word "reduces"?
- mandmandam 5y agoWhat you seem to not be getting is that the damage to the environment is HERE. Hundreds of thousands of all kinds of species are DEAD and NOT COMING BACK. Water sources are DEPLETED and TOXIC, NOW. Etc. Plastic is on Everest and the Mariana Trench. That's not Chicken Little, that's the denouement of The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Except in this case, the boy had decades of charts and photos and graphs showing that a whole pack of wolves were on their way.