I often see this thrown around, that the youth today are being peddled some nature-worshipping fantasy, when the "hard truth is that nature is a cruel entity, t

I often see this thrown around, that the youth today are being peddled some nature-worshipping fantasy, when the "hard truth is that nature is a cruel entity, tamed forcefully by the work of our forefathers". It kind of ignores the fact that young people just want clean water. Clean air. I don't want long-lived hormone-like pollutants in my mattress. I don't want the river that supplies most of the clean water to my city to become polluted, and I also do not want it to dry out due to over-diversion to industry (okay, sue me, I want a good view). I do not want to take massive risks with how I affect the environment, before I have a chance to fully understand future repercussions. Last, but not least: I do not want to lose knowledge. Currently, a lot of nanotechnology and pharmaceutical technology is being driven not by de-novo design of proteins, but by trawling through information about existing ensembles (which mostly come from come from organisms we had ready access to). Destroying previously inaccessible/invisible (e.g. 99% of the ocean) ecosystems just because "woops, we didn't bother thinking that we live in a chaotic dynamical system" is akin to purposefully deleting hard-drives with millenia's worth of hard-won data. Climate is an issue too, sure. But its mostly overblown as the reason why people care about environmental issues (especially given how much we do not know about climate, period), rather than: as the scapegoat that the media finds most convenient to trumpet (because it is the easiest for governments and businesses to try and quantify). Most real people (i.e. not the strawmen) aren't nearly so simplistic. On the other hand, the rather simple concerns along the lines of: "hey, can we just be a bit more careful about just pumping this random shit into the air, until we understand better?", "hey, can you not put selinium rich mining byproducts in my local river?", or "can you not use low-grade silicone with questionable health consequences for my cat's grooming brush" don't get much attention. I'm all for believing in the future. It becomes harder to do so when one realizes that a) they are disposable, and b) people in power do not care abou the messes they create, because they will never have to personally deal with cleaning up those messes. Which makes me think: aw shit, I don't want to have clean up those messes either! Why can't they move a little slower, and a lot more thoughtfully? So...uh, nothing to do with "oh no, death cult!".