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I'm acutely aware that middle to upper class, mostly white, Americans are the worst offenders of overconsumption and that people who make overpopulation claims
by salt-thrower 4y ago
I'm acutely aware that middle to upper class, mostly white, Americans are the worst offenders of overconsumption and that people who make overpopulation claims about the third world are being racist. Britain, and then America, led the charge of industrial imperialism that doomed us to this current timeline. And we colonized and brutalized people of color the world over to get there. I understand that, and I understand the hypocrisy of living a middle class American lifestyle while I type this. Though at least I live in a small-ish duplex without AC :)
I'm also aware that people have been predicting the apocalypse for as long as there have been people. But this is not as simple as manure storage, and it's a bit disingenuous to draw that comparison. You simply cannot have 8 billion people living in huge houses with air conditioning. It will not work. If our definition of racial equality and harmony is to let everyone fuck up the environment equally, rather than restricting everyone's (including rich white people) ability to overconsume, then we are all equally toast.
> And this is why I don’t believe most of the arguments against big houses, cars, air conditioning, are honest or being made in good faith.
Reminder: all the information and points I'm citing come from the world's leading climate and environmental scientists. If you think the IPCC is just being racist when they lay out the data about how bad climate change will be and say we need to reduce our emissions (i.e. consumption), then I don't know what to tell you.
- selfhoster11 4y ago> If our definition of racial equality and harmony is to let everyone fuck up the environment equally, rather than restricting everyone's (including rich white people) ability to overconsume, then we are all equally toast. I wish some people would have this sentence printed and framed on a wall. Yes, equality-wise it's unfair that only we have energy-consuming QoL improvements. Environmentally speaking, it would be a massive disaster if everyone did it while we still rely on fossil fuels for our energy supply.