7 ms·

When Global Warming Kills Your God

40 points by benbreen 12y ago

gd1 12y ago
Yawn. Someone will have to update the list: http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
- phaemon 12y ago
  I have to wonder about the wits of someone who thinks that something can't be true, because it causes so many problems.
  - burke 12y ago
    The list doesn't seem to imply that global warming isn't happening; just that people are pretty quick to blame things on it.
    - DanBC 12y ago
      That's a great point that needs to be made. Science reporting sucks. Sadly that particular version of the list was created by someone who thinks climate change is bunk and the list is a tool used to deny climate change.
      - Pxtl 12y ago
        It doesn't need to be made about the arctic circle anyways. While we can argue until the cows come how about hurricanes and the California drought and things like that, there is no ambiguity about the arctic - it has severely warmed and this is having drastic changes on local weather and ecosystems. Salmon aren't an isolated case, every species up there has been severely screwed up.
      - briandear 12y ago
        Actually everyone agrees that the climate is changing. The debate is over whether humans cause it.
        acdha 12y ago
        A near-total majority of scientists who study the climate say humans are causing climate change and the opposition is a mix of people paid by the fossil fuel industry, conservatives motivated by tribal loyalties to make another tedious attack on environmentalists, and would-be contrarians who may or may not realize they've been duped by the previous two groups. The only debate is how much further death and destruction will be caused by the short-term profit crowd.
gambiting 12y ago
Globar Warming is definitely contributing to this process, but I think some people are definitely trying to fight natural processes which would have happened anyway. Sure, it's sad that a village or a road got taken by water - but that would have happened eventually anyway, right? In Poland there used to be a church build right by the sea on a cliff - but the sea has eroded the cliff(as seas do), and now only one wall of that church stands, on a tiny piece of land , and which is getting further eroded every single year. Yet because the church(or rather, those few bricks of the last remaining wall) have a religious significance to some people, millions of zlotys are spent each year trying to reinforce that one remaining bit of rock. Why? The cliff erosion is a completely natural process which was bound to happen. And there are even people who say it's "work of god" that the wall is still standing - while to others it's completely clear that only massive reinforcements that are built with hard cash are keeping it standing.
- phaemon 12y ago
  Well, yes, it would have happened eventually, but consider that it's like the difference between death and murder.
- spindritf 12y ago
  I don't think the ruins have any particular religious significance. It's protected because it's a landmark. Even the communists tried to stop the erosion. Oh, and it was built like a mile from the sea originally. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruins_of_the_church_in_Trz%C4%99sacz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruins_of_the_church_in_Trz%C4%...
- mikro2nd 12y ago
  > there are even people who say it's "work of god" that the wall is still standing I find it amusing that those same people would probably not be too receptive to a comment that it was the "work of god" that caused the erosion of the cliff and consequent collapse of the other walls of the church.
- bojo 12y ago
  > Sure, it's sad that a village or a road got taken by water - but that would have happened eventually anyway, right? That's not the point of the article anyways. I think we can agree that the Yup’ik people understand that their villages are going to disappear and that they will have to move. Traditionally they were nomadic people as it was, although they don't really have many choices as to where to go these days.
qwerta 12y ago
CO2 is poisoning salmon. Stop it!
themartorana 12y ago
I highly doubt that the Yup’ik fishermen are even contributors to global climate change, but we expect them to then completely stop fishing the waters they have fished for decades because of change we're largely to blame for? From forced settlements to fishing bans, we're still forcing our will on indigenous people. Edit: the religious argument does seem a stretch to me, and wouldn't be necessary if common sense was used.
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  The modern regulatory state forces pretty much everyone to do all sorts of things. People are prevented from aging cheese less than 30 days, from having sex with people for money, forced to purchase unwanted health insurance, and penalized if they don't rent or purchase a home. A person can own a piece of land for decades, and suddenly wetland regulation or a community action board can prevent them from using that land. Why is it bad to impose similar burdens on the Yup'ik?
  - Terretta 12y ago
    > forced to purchase unwanted health insurance Very few are willing to live with the consequences of this which ought to be letting the person who didn't get health insurance die because they chose to not afford care. If you really believe you shouldn't force people to protect themselves, you should believe you shouldn't "force" them to recover when they're sick. Or, if you do believe they shouldn't be left to die, and that you shouldn't force them to purchase individual health insurance, a logical reconciliation of those two positions is universal health care. > Why is it bad to impose similar burdens on the Yup'ik? I would agree with you here. Reading between the lines suggests the dwindling catches are causing them to adopt more aggressive fishing measures, a vicious cycle of bad consequences. Dialing back their new fishing to earlier methods isn't imposing a burden as much as thwarting total collapse from their own changes.
  - Pxtl 12y ago
    Indigenous cultures are kind of a special case because of the whole conquest and genocide thing. You can't say "if you don't like it go back to your home country" when it was taken from them. THe idea is that indigenous groups are supposed to self-govern as much as possible... but there's no way these tiny middle-of-nowhere towns can build up enough infrastructure to run their own federal government.
arlenmark0987 12y ago
Great Point
Gravityloss 12y ago
"The Yup´ik way of life is non negotiable." Sound familiar?
dreamweapon 12y ago
I was hoping the title would refer to, you know, our tacit "God": our unrelenting faith in gratification through material consumption; essentially unbounded and ever-accelerating growth; and the idea that we can safely ignore any non-human impact this pursuit of "happiness" may have (or for that matter, to future human generations).
- maaku 12y ago
  What does consumerism have to do with religion and spirituality? Seriously, what's the non-hyperbolic connection?
  - dreamweapon 12y ago
    Consumerism is the de-facto spirituality for many people in the West. And that's a fairly non-controversial statement to make; no hyperbole, there.
  - locopati 12y ago
    What is religion if not one means to address the suffering we encounter in life? (finding meaning and purpose, existing in a community of shared beliefs and goals, encountering illness and death, etc.) What is consumerism if not another means to the same thing? (if I obtain these material things - a house, a car, a family - I will be happy, I will not suffer)
  - lutusp 12y ago
    Both provide faux meanings, pretend structures, to people with empty lives. Speaking non-hyperbolically, of course. If you're a believer, you're a better person than a nonbeliever. If you're a consumer, you're supporting economic growth and the American Way, even if you live in Burkina Faso.
tokenadult 12y ago
If global warming is killing your god, it may be time to find a new god. After reading the description of Yup’ik religion in the article, all I can say is that their perception of what is necessary to do is not the only possible response to the situation that faces Yup’ik people in that place. The environment has been changing throughout the existence of human beings (we know from archaeology that humankind has lived through ice ages and some major changes in sea level already), so human beings will have to go on being adaptable to face the changes that are inevitable in the environment, and think with sound judgment about how to keep some kinds of changes from happening, if that results in the best trade-offs for humankind. Religion can not be exempted from that general process of human beings reality-checking their own thinking to see if their adaptations to their environment (and adaptations OF their environment) are successful or not.
- orlybadass 12y ago
  You get the prize for missing the point spectacularly and for best display of ignorance, congrats.
- japhyr 12y ago
  This is about much more than religion. The western approach to life is to work at a job to earn money to pay for food an shelter. The subsistence approach is to spend much of your time hunting and gathering, and maybe some of your time working for money. Many people are so far removed from the subsistence approach, that they can't relate to what these people are going through. Asking these people to stop fishing and move to a place where they can find other work is the cultural equivalent to telling everyone on HN to stop working in tech-related fields, and go find something else to do. Sure you could do it, but it would take part of your identity away. When your two-year old kid looks up and asks why you're not doing something your people have done for thousands of years, that's a hard question to answer. The Yup'ik people, and all other people who lived subsistence-based lifestyles responded to previous environmental change by finding a different area to live their subsistence lifestyle. That is not really an option. The move away from subsistence is much more drastic than many people can fully understand. My perspective on this is shaped by having moved to Alaska 12 years ago, and knowing many people who live a subsistence lifestyle to varying degrees.

40 points by benbreen 12y ago

gd1 12y ago

Yawn. Someone will have to update the list: http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm

phaemon 12y ago
I have to wonder about the wits of someone who thinks that something can't be true, because it causes so many problems.
- burke 12y ago
  The list doesn't seem to imply that global warming isn't happening; just that people are pretty quick to blame things on it.
  - DanBC 12y ago
    That's a great point that needs to be made. Science reporting sucks. Sadly that particular version of the list was created by someone who thinks climate change is bunk and the list is a tool used to deny climate change.
    - Pxtl 12y ago
      It doesn't need to be made about the arctic circle anyways. While we can argue until the cows come how about hurricanes and the California drought and things like that, there is no ambiguity about the arctic - it has severely warmed and this is having drastic changes on local weather and ecosystems. Salmon aren't an isolated case, every species up there has been severely screwed up.
    - briandear 12y ago
      Actually everyone agrees that the climate is changing. The debate is over whether humans cause it.
      - acdha 12y ago
        A near-total majority of scientists who study the climate say humans are causing climate change and the opposition is a mix of people paid by the fossil fuel industry, conservatives motivated by tribal loyalties to make another tedious attack on environmentalists, and would-be contrarians who may or may not realize they've been duped by the previous two groups. The only debate is how much further death and destruction will be caused by the short-term profit crowd.

gambiting 12y ago

Globar Warming is definitely contributing to this process, but I think some people are definitely trying to fight natural processes which would have happened anyway. Sure, it's sad that a village or a road got taken by water - but that would have happened eventually anyway, right? In Poland there used to be a church build right by the sea on a cliff - but the sea has eroded the cliff(as seas do), and now only one wall of that church stands, on a tiny piece of land , and which is getting further eroded every single year. Yet because the church(or rather, those few bricks of the last remaining wall) have a religious significance to some people, millions of zlotys are spent each year trying to reinforce that one remaining bit of rock. Why? The cliff erosion is a completely natural process which was bound to happen. And there are even people who say it's "work of god" that the wall is still standing - while to others it's completely clear that only massive reinforcements that are built with hard cash are keeping it standing.

phaemon 12y ago
Well, yes, it would have happened eventually, but consider that it's like the difference between death and murder.
spindritf 12y ago
I don't think the ruins have any particular religious significance. It's protected because it's a landmark. Even the communists tried to stop the erosion. Oh, and it was built like a mile from the sea originally. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruins_of_the_church_in_Trz%C4%99sacz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruins_of_the_church_in_Trz%C4%...
mikro2nd 12y ago
> there are even people who say it's "work of god" that the wall is still standing I find it amusing that those same people would probably not be too receptive to a comment that it was the "work of god" that caused the erosion of the cliff and consequent collapse of the other walls of the church.
bojo 12y ago
> Sure, it's sad that a village or a road got taken by water - but that would have happened eventually anyway, right? That's not the point of the article anyways. I think we can agree that the Yup’ik people understand that their villages are going to disappear and that they will have to move. Traditionally they were nomadic people as it was, although they don't really have many choices as to where to go these days.

qwerta 12y ago

CO2 is poisoning salmon. Stop it!

themartorana 12y ago

I highly doubt that the Yup’ik fishermen are even contributors to global climate change, but we expect them to then completely stop fishing the waters they have fished for decades because of change we're largely to blame for? From forced settlements to fishing bans, we're still forcing our will on indigenous people. Edit: the religious argument does seem a stretch to me, and wouldn't be necessary if common sense was used.

yummyfajitas 12y ago
The modern regulatory state forces pretty much everyone to do all sorts of things. People are prevented from aging cheese less than 30 days, from having sex with people for money, forced to purchase unwanted health insurance, and penalized if they don't rent or purchase a home. A person can own a piece of land for decades, and suddenly wetland regulation or a community action board can prevent them from using that land. Why is it bad to impose similar burdens on the Yup'ik?
- Terretta 12y ago
  > forced to purchase unwanted health insurance Very few are willing to live with the consequences of this which ought to be letting the person who didn't get health insurance die because they chose to not afford care. If you really believe you shouldn't force people to protect themselves, you should believe you shouldn't "force" them to recover when they're sick. Or, if you do believe they shouldn't be left to die, and that you shouldn't force them to purchase individual health insurance, a logical reconciliation of those two positions is universal health care. > Why is it bad to impose similar burdens on the Yup'ik? I would agree with you here. Reading between the lines suggests the dwindling catches are causing them to adopt more aggressive fishing measures, a vicious cycle of bad consequences. Dialing back their new fishing to earlier methods isn't imposing a burden as much as thwarting total collapse from their own changes.
- Pxtl 12y ago
  Indigenous cultures are kind of a special case because of the whole conquest and genocide thing. You can't say "if you don't like it go back to your home country" when it was taken from them. THe idea is that indigenous groups are supposed to self-govern as much as possible... but there's no way these tiny middle-of-nowhere towns can build up enough infrastructure to run their own federal government.

arlenmark0987 12y ago

Great Point

Gravityloss 12y ago

"The Yup´ik way of life is non negotiable." Sound familiar?

dreamweapon 12y ago

I was hoping the title would refer to, you know, our tacit "God": our unrelenting faith in gratification through material consumption; essentially unbounded and ever-accelerating growth; and the idea that we can safely ignore any non-human impact this pursuit of "happiness" may have (or for that matter, to future human generations).

maaku 12y ago
What does consumerism have to do with religion and spirituality? Seriously, what's the non-hyperbolic connection?
- dreamweapon 12y ago
  Consumerism is the de-facto spirituality for many people in the West. And that's a fairly non-controversial statement to make; no hyperbole, there.
- locopati 12y ago
  What is religion if not one means to address the suffering we encounter in life? (finding meaning and purpose, existing in a community of shared beliefs and goals, encountering illness and death, etc.) What is consumerism if not another means to the same thing? (if I obtain these material things - a house, a car, a family - I will be happy, I will not suffer)
- lutusp 12y ago
  Both provide faux meanings, pretend structures, to people with empty lives. Speaking non-hyperbolically, of course. If you're a believer, you're a better person than a nonbeliever. If you're a consumer, you're supporting economic growth and the American Way, even if you live in Burkina Faso.

tokenadult 12y ago

If global warming is killing your god, it may be time to find a new god. After reading the description of Yup’ik religion in the article, all I can say is that their perception of what is necessary to do is not the only possible response to the situation that faces Yup’ik people in that place. The environment has been changing throughout the existence of human beings (we know from archaeology that humankind has lived through ice ages and some major changes in sea level already), so human beings will have to go on being adaptable to face the changes that are inevitable in the environment, and think with sound judgment about how to keep some kinds of changes from happening, if that results in the best trade-offs for humankind. Religion can not be exempted from that general process of human beings reality-checking their own thinking to see if their adaptations to their environment (and adaptations OF their environment) are successful or not.

orlybadass 12y ago
You get the prize for missing the point spectacularly and for best display of ignorance, congrats.
japhyr 12y ago
This is about much more than religion. The western approach to life is to work at a job to earn money to pay for food an shelter. The subsistence approach is to spend much of your time hunting and gathering, and maybe some of your time working for money. Many people are so far removed from the subsistence approach, that they can't relate to what these people are going through. Asking these people to stop fishing and move to a place where they can find other work is the cultural equivalent to telling everyone on HN to stop working in tech-related fields, and go find something else to do. Sure you could do it, but it would take part of your identity away. When your two-year old kid looks up and asks why you're not doing something your people have done for thousands of years, that's a hard question to answer. The Yup'ik people, and all other people who lived subsistence-based lifestyles responded to previous environmental change by finding a different area to live their subsistence lifestyle. That is not really an option. The move away from subsistence is much more drastic than many people can fully understand. My perspective on this is shaped by having moved to Alaska 12 years ago, and knowing many people who live a subsistence lifestyle to varying degrees.