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My responses shift because I am trying to understand your position. Your original position was "Commuting violence now because you think it’ll happen in the fu

My responses shift because I am trying to understand your position. Your original position was "Commuting violence now because you think it’ll happen in the future is a horrible argument and can be used to justify anything." Your current position is that some level of violence is acceptable to prevent some types of future violence. It therefore seems that you agree with the logic of "just war". Why then did you write "Logic don’t work that way."? You seem to only allow violence when faced with violence. Is dumping toxic pollution into a drinking supply, knowing it will cause deaths in the future, a form of violence? If yes, then violence can be used to oppose such action, proportionate to the expected deaths, illnesses, etc. based on your best model of the effect. If no, then poisoning the drinking water for the board of BigOilCo. is a form of non-violent eco terrorism. > Violence due to climate change doesn’t fulfill any of those requirements Has ExxonMobil committed any form of violence in its contribution to CO2 emissions? Remember, their own staff scientists sounded the warning about future dangers back in the 1980s. The level of eco terrorism now are things like deflating the tires of SUVs. This is not violence, so appears to meet your criteria. However, your comment was in responded to a prediction about the future: "Violence is inevitable, in some form or another, if the climate effects are ignored to such a degree." at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37144135 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37144135 If things progress as many fear, then your own logic says that eco terrorism may be justified, agreeing with dgb23.

refurb 3y ago
“Logic doesn’t work that way” in the sense of equating an immediate, personal, lethal threat to distant, indirect and vague lethal threat. > Is dumping toxic pollution into a drinking supply, knowing it will cause deaths in the future, a form of violence? That is such a vague statement I’m not sure anyone can answer that. If someone puts cyanide in my bottle of water? Sure. If someone dumps a chemical into a river that eventually gets treated and tested such that the threat to me is minimal, then no. > Has ExxonMobil committed any form of violence in its contribution to CO2 emissions? No because there is no proof that CO2 emissions are a direct lethal threat to you personally. We don’t know what the consequences of climate change will be to the degree to say “it’s going to kill this person”. I mean by your logic if your neighbor decides to burn plastic in a camp fire you’re allowed to kill them because “they released carcinogens that I could breath and give me cancer that kills me”.
- eesmith 3y ago
  > equating an immediate, personal, lethal threat to distant, indirect and vague lethal threat You are missing something very fundamental. Eco terrorism requires neither personal threats nor lethal threats. I already gave the example of deflating the tires of SUVs. Spiking trees is a classic example for woodland preservation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_spiking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_spiking . The primary goal is to increase the economic cost (increased damage to saws) and decrease the profit (by causing discoloration). The goal is not to harm people. Common practice is warn people that given area of woods has been spiked. By your definition, this sort of eco terrorism is a valid response. There is no direct lethal threat to spiking a forest and posting plenty of warning signs, so it is not a violent action. Logging the forest becomes riskier, but then again, swimming in many rivers became riskier due to industrial pollution. > That is such a vague statement It was a reminder of the scenario I previously posed, with details that already answered your questions. The main goal is to get you to realize that you are too focused on requiring violence, when there are many other ways to harm or kill people. As a matter of general good governance we must often be informed by statistical models estimating the numbers of people affected and severity, rather than names. We know lead causes health problems, even if we can't single out who will be affected, so we've worked to phase out lead. > I mean by your logic if your neighbor decides to burn plastic in a camp fire you’re allowed to kill them because “they released carcinogens that I could breath and give me cancer that kills me”. There is nothing in what I wrote whereby one can logically draw that conclusion.
  - refurb 3y ago
    > Eco terrorism requires neither personal threats nor lethal threats I know, that's why we call it terrorism. > There is no direct lethal threat to spiking a forest and posting plenty of warning signs, so it is not a violent action No, because spiking is done because loggers can get killed sawing down a spiked tree. Sounds violent to me. > The main goal is to get you to realize that you are too focused on requiring violence, when there are many other ways to harm or kill people. What do you mean "too focused"? I think the problem is you fail to see any difference between someone shooting you in the head and someone poisoning a river. There is no logical train of thought where someone can claim those are equivalent. > There is nothing in what I wrote whereby one can logically draw that conclusion. Of course there is - you've been claiming violence like "polluting" justifies violence and reduced it down to "my life is threatened, so I can threaten yours".

refurb 3y ago

“Logic doesn’t work that way” in the sense of equating an immediate, personal, lethal threat to distant, indirect and vague lethal threat. > Is dumping toxic pollution into a drinking supply, knowing it will cause deaths in the future, a form of violence? That is such a vague statement I’m not sure anyone can answer that. If someone puts cyanide in my bottle of water? Sure. If someone dumps a chemical into a river that eventually gets treated and tested such that the threat to me is minimal, then no. > Has ExxonMobil committed any form of violence in its contribution to CO2 emissions? No because there is no proof that CO2 emissions are a direct lethal threat to you personally. We don’t know what the consequences of climate change will be to the degree to say “it’s going to kill this person”. I mean by your logic if your neighbor decides to burn plastic in a camp fire you’re allowed to kill them because “they released carcinogens that I could breath and give me cancer that kills me”.

eesmith 3y ago
> equating an immediate, personal, lethal threat to distant, indirect and vague lethal threat You are missing something very fundamental. Eco terrorism requires neither personal threats nor lethal threats. I already gave the example of deflating the tires of SUVs. Spiking trees is a classic example for woodland preservation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_spiking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_spiking . The primary goal is to increase the economic cost (increased damage to saws) and decrease the profit (by causing discoloration). The goal is not to harm people. Common practice is warn people that given area of woods has been spiked. By your definition, this sort of eco terrorism is a valid response. There is no direct lethal threat to spiking a forest and posting plenty of warning signs, so it is not a violent action. Logging the forest becomes riskier, but then again, swimming in many rivers became riskier due to industrial pollution. > That is such a vague statement It was a reminder of the scenario I previously posed, with details that already answered your questions. The main goal is to get you to realize that you are too focused on requiring violence, when there are many other ways to harm or kill people. As a matter of general good governance we must often be informed by statistical models estimating the numbers of people affected and severity, rather than names. We know lead causes health problems, even if we can't single out who will be affected, so we've worked to phase out lead. > I mean by your logic if your neighbor decides to burn plastic in a camp fire you’re allowed to kill them because “they released carcinogens that I could breath and give me cancer that kills me”. There is nothing in what I wrote whereby one can logically draw that conclusion.
- refurb 3y ago
  > Eco terrorism requires neither personal threats nor lethal threats I know, that's why we call it terrorism. > There is no direct lethal threat to spiking a forest and posting plenty of warning signs, so it is not a violent action No, because spiking is done because loggers can get killed sawing down a spiked tree. Sounds violent to me. > The main goal is to get you to realize that you are too focused on requiring violence, when there are many other ways to harm or kill people. What do you mean "too focused"? I think the problem is you fail to see any difference between someone shooting you in the head and someone poisoning a river. There is no logical train of thought where someone can claim those are equivalent. > There is nothing in what I wrote whereby one can logically draw that conclusion. Of course there is - you've been claiming violence like "polluting" justifies violence and reduced it down to "my life is threatened, so I can threaten yours".