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> "recklessly dumping substances into the ecosystem" has been Generally Accepted As Safe for literally thousands of years. For hundreds of thousands, substance
by Supermancho 3y ago
> "recklessly dumping substances into the ecosystem" has been Generally Accepted As Safe for literally thousands of years.
For hundreds of thousands, substances that have negative effects (eg human corpses) were disposed of far from populations, precisely because humans learned that consequences quickly. Humans have been cognizant of causation, when they could detect it, for longer than thousands of years. Yes the black plague took awhile to figure out. As we saw with cigarettes, society is always trending to keeping the status quo. Often, to society's own detriment over the short term, along the span of human existence.
> We have 8 billion of us out there, demanding zero impact just isn't going to happen.
That's not relevant.
- ajross 3y ago> precisely because humans learned that consequences quickly Which is exactly my point. Things like corpse burial and fecal sewage management and plague isolation and smoking regulation were all done because the evidence of their effect was clear and measured! They did the science. All the freakouts in this subthread might be true, but right now they are sitting just above the noise floor. All I'm saying is that we should recognize that and not apply moral reasoning that ignores the distinction. It is almost certainly not true that the pthalate linings on your bean can or whatever is as bad as the black plague (we started with smoking, but sure, let's go where you took us). And arguing as if it were is hurting the discourse and making a solution less likely. To wit: please be serious about this stuff.