Denial isn't just another ecologically damaged river in Egypt
Rae Ann - I'll be looking forward to you explanation that the environmentalism movement does not try to exclude and/or villify humanity.
You really think that is why the great majority of your fellow Americans are concerned about the environment? The Faux News planet is a strange one indeed.
The environmentalists I know, and I know a bunch of them, are motivated by a desire to preserve a livable world for their children and grandchildren. Many or most of them also hope to preserve as much as possible of the beauty of the natural world that has meant so much to them.
Edward O. Wilson, who represents the environmental mainstream, put it somewhat like this in a recent talk I attended: The world is in the midst of a major extinction event. We can't save everything, but we should aim to bring the human race through it as well as possible and bring as much of the natural world with us as we can.
Jared Diamond is similarly an environmental realist, who recognizes that we can't have civilization without mining, for example, but we can attempt to minimize the collateral damage by sensible policies.
Some bacteria, placed in a dish of nutrient material, will multiply until they all perish in their own wastes. Humans have a couple of advantages over them. The small one is that they can use technology and science to cope with some of the consequences of ecological destruction. The big one is that they can recognize impending disaster and take measures to prevent it. Innumerable cultures throughout human history have faced the challenge of environmental destruction, and many have recognized the threat and dealt with it. Some of them are still around. None of the others are.
Today we have more capability than any other culture in history to understand the environment and our impact on it. If we ignore what we have learned, and the experience of all those other cultures, then we have utterly wasted the big thing that makes us so different from lemmings and bacteria.
You really think that is why the great majority of your fellow Americans are concerned about the environment? The Faux News planet is a strange one indeed.
The environmentalists I know, and I know a bunch of them, are motivated by a desire to preserve a livable world for their children and grandchildren. Many or most of them also hope to preserve as much as possible of the beauty of the natural world that has meant so much to them.
Edward O. Wilson, who represents the environmental mainstream, put it somewhat like this in a recent talk I attended: The world is in the midst of a major extinction event. We can't save everything, but we should aim to bring the human race through it as well as possible and bring as much of the natural world with us as we can.
Jared Diamond is similarly an environmental realist, who recognizes that we can't have civilization without mining, for example, but we can attempt to minimize the collateral damage by sensible policies.
Some bacteria, placed in a dish of nutrient material, will multiply until they all perish in their own wastes. Humans have a couple of advantages over them. The small one is that they can use technology and science to cope with some of the consequences of ecological destruction. The big one is that they can recognize impending disaster and take measures to prevent it. Innumerable cultures throughout human history have faced the challenge of environmental destruction, and many have recognized the threat and dealt with it. Some of them are still around. None of the others are.
Today we have more capability than any other culture in history to understand the environment and our impact on it. If we ignore what we have learned, and the experience of all those other cultures, then we have utterly wasted the big thing that makes us so different from lemmings and bacteria.
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