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Post by Prometheus on Jan 25, 2021 3:16:48 GMT
The Earth is pushing 5 billion years old and has undergone severe climate swings ever since it developed an atmosphere. Those climate changes gave rise to life and snuffed out countless thousands or millions of species over the eons.
Climate change gave rise to our evolutionary ancestors and has nearly killed us off several times.
But we are supremely adaptable. No matter what nature throws at us, we carry on as a species.
So does it really matter if half the human population dies off in the next couple hundred years? Three quarters?
Someone is bound to ask, "Don't you care about the lives of your children and grandchildren?"
Of course I do, but I'm not really sure how much I care about the lives of my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren. I'm not sure that many people do. Sure, it's nice to grandstand and say that you do for the sake of building your social credit score among your peers, but the vast majority of us will never leave any legacy worthy of remembrance to our great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren. If we're lucky, the best we can hope for is to be noted on a genealogical chart.
Is my great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter going to point to my name on the chart and say, "That's great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaddy, Prometheus. He recycled!"?
Of course not.
Am I suggesting that we should continue to pollute our land, air, and water? No. Of course we should be good custodians, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking it has anything to do with our posterity beyond a couple generations. And those couple of generations should do it for the couple generations that follow. And so on.
And if three quarters of the human population does die off in a couple hundred years and my descendants are among the survivors, I don't think my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren will be cursing my name as they struggle for survival. I don't think they'll be saying, "Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaddy, Prometheus didn't recycle enough!"
The human race will adapt and survive. Many, many other species will adapt and survive. What probably won't survive are the wealth and power structures we see today.
So the question becomes: Are we fighting climate change for our posterity's well-being and survival or using it as a convenient flashpoint to change existing wealth and power structures so that maybe a different family tree has a great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparent worthy of remembrance?
Oddly enough, as much as I dislike the exploitation of Greta, I find it amusing that she is held up as a climate change hero while people conveniently forget that what she railed against was all the talk of money rather than actually doing something.
OK
I'm done with my Monday morning rant.
Cheers!
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Nightman
Ardipithecus
Original Eight
Posts: 122
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Post by Nightman on Jan 25, 2021 11:45:30 GMT
Oddly, this is the first time I've ever seen anyone consider their own family trees as a reason to help the environment. People don't care about their descendants or strangers. What really helps sway opinions is to point out economic benefits, as well as how current weather is impacted.
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Post by Prometheus on Jan 26, 2021 0:11:45 GMT
Oddly, this is the first time I've ever seen anyone consider their own family trees as a reason to help the environment. People don't care about their descendants or strangers. What really helps sway opinions is to point out economic benefits, as well as how current weather is impacted. "Think about the CHILDREN!"
You've seriously never heard that before?
How about: "Don't do it for yourself. Do it for your children and grandchildren!"
C'mon. I know that you've heard them. I just decided to address them.
And I'm not really sure what sort of economic benefit I'm going to see by having taxes increased for the sake of helping people in Lesotho reduce emissions from their cooking hearths.
This is where you remind me about my children and grandchildren....
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Nightman
Ardipithecus
Original Eight
Posts: 122
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Post by Nightman on Jan 26, 2021 0:46:19 GMT
Oddly, this is the first time I've ever seen anyone consider their own family trees as a reason to help the environment. People don't care about their descendants or strangers. What really helps sway opinions is to point out economic benefits, as well as how current weather is impacted. "Think about the CHILDREN!"
You've seriously never heard that before?
How about: "Don't do it for yourself. Do it for your children and grandchildren!"
C'mon. I know that you've heard them. I just decided to address them.
And I'm not really sure what sort of economic benefit I'm going to see by having taxes increased for the sake of helping people in Lesotho reduce emissions from their cooking hearths.
This is where you remind me about my children and grandchildren....
They always say the children, not specifically their own children. And oddly enough in real life, usually the people who care most about the climate have no children anyway. |
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Post by Prometheus on Jan 26, 2021 0:51:02 GMT
"Think about the CHILDREN!"
You've seriously never heard that before?
How about: "Don't do it for yourself. Do it for your children and grandchildren!"
C'mon. I know that you've heard them. I just decided to address them.
And I'm not really sure what sort of economic benefit I'm going to see by having taxes increased for the sake of helping people in Lesotho reduce emissions from their cooking hearths.
This is where you remind me about my children and grandchildren....
They always say the children, not specifically their own children. And oddly enough in real life, usually the people who care most about the climate have no children anyway. Interesting... without children, they focus their energy elsewhere then exhort people who do have children to think about those children... as if they didn't so that they can do what the childless want.
What narcissistic twats.
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Post by ant-mac on Jan 26, 2021 1:07:13 GMT
I suppose so, but...
After being bashed over the head by both sides of the argument for over 30 years, I have no idea if I actually care anymore or not.
However, with or without climate change, the fact is we live on a finite planet with finite resources, so the idea of recycling and using renewable energy seems eminently logical to me.
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Post by Prometheus on Jan 26, 2021 1:41:54 GMT
I suppose so, but... After being bashed over the head by both sides of the argument for over 30 years, I have no idea if I actually care anymore or not. However, with or without climate change, the fact is we live on a finite planet with finite resources, so the idea of recycling and using renewable energy seems eminently logical to me. Which is exactly why reasonable and rational people reduce, re-use, recycle, and re-purpose.
Those same people pass on their rationality to their progeny and so on.
The people who don't care about the environment rarely undergo conversion, so it seems a waste of time and energy (pun intended) to bother screaming at them about it.
Climate change, its causes, and solutions are a matter of generations... generations that (beyond the known immediate ones) don't really matter to anyone.
My dad always taught us to turn off lights when leaving a room. He didn't care about wasting energy or how that simple reduction might help the environment. He never worried about climate change. He worried about saving a few pennies on the electric bill (which I'm guessing was Nightman's thrust in his previous post) but if you had told him that he HAD to do it and that he HAD to pay more taxes (eliminating the savings and digging in even deeper) he probably would have snipped the lines to the house and bought a generator (Solar was really expensive back then).
Dad never threw trash on the ground. He was a sportsman. He knew that the trash was bad for the wildlife that he wanted to hunt and fish for. He knew it was bad for the plants that the animals (and we) ate.
He taught my brother and I these things because he wanted us to be responsible citizens of the earth and understand the value of saving money, not because of climate change.
Yes. I know that for every person like dad there were probably dozens who weren't. But my dad was 1. My brother and I are 2. Our children are 3....
Like my dad, those dozens are dead and have been replaced with better role models. When we are gone, we hopefully leave behind even better role models. And so on.
It will take time and things will get worse before they get better.
It always takes more time to fix things than it takes to break them, but yelling at the mechanic won't get your car fixed any sooner.
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Post by ant-mac on Jan 26, 2021 1:54:20 GMT
I suppose so, but... After being bashed over the head by both sides of the argument for over 30 years, I have no idea if I actually care anymore or not. However, with or without climate change, the fact is we live on a finite planet with finite resources, so the idea of recycling and using renewable energy seems eminently logical to me. Which is exactly why reasonable and rational people reduce, re-use, recycle, and re-purpose.
Those same people pass on their rationality to their progeny and so on.
The people who don't care about the environment rarely undergo conversion, so it seems a waste of time and energy (pun intended) to bother screaming at them about it.
Climate change, its causes, and solutions are a matter of generations... generations that (beyond the known immediate ones) don't really matter to anyone.
My dad always taught us to turn off lights when leaving a room. He didn't care about wasting energy or how that simple reduction might help the environment. He never worried about climate change. He worried about saving a few pennies on the electric bill (which I'm guessing was Nightman's thrust in his previous post) but if you had told him that he HAD to do it and that he HAD to pay more taxes (eliminating the savings and digging in even deeper) he probably would have snipped the lines to the house and bought a generator (Solar was really expensive back then).
Dad never threw trash on the ground. He was a sportsman. He knew that the trash was bad for the wildlife that he wanted to hunt and fish for. He knew it was bad for the plants that the animals (and we) ate.
He taught my brother and I these things because he wanted us to be responsible citizens of the earth and understand the value of saving money, not because of climate change.
Yes. I know that for every person like dad there were probably dozens who weren't. But my dad was 1. My brother and I are 2. Our children are 3....
Like my dad, those dozens are dead and have been replaced with better role models. When we are gone, we hopefully leave behind even better role models. And so on.
It will take time and things will get worse before they get better.
It always takes more time to fix things than it takes to break them, but yelling at the mechanic won't get your car fixed any sooner.
That sounds pretty similar to what I heard from my Dad. A whole lot of common sense. The trouble is it no longer seems as common as it used to be. |
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Post by Prometheus on Jan 26, 2021 2:04:18 GMT
Which is exactly why reasonable and rational people reduce, re-use, recycle, and re-purpose.
Those same people pass on their rationality to their progeny and so on.
The people who don't care about the environment rarely undergo conversion, so it seems a waste of time and energy (pun intended) to bother screaming at them about it.
Climate change, its causes, and solutions are a matter of generations... generations that (beyond the known immediate ones) don't really matter to anyone.
My dad always taught us to turn off lights when leaving a room. He didn't care about wasting energy or how that simple reduction might help the environment. He never worried about climate change. He worried about saving a few pennies on the electric bill (which I'm guessing was Nightman's thrust in his previous post) but if you had told him that he HAD to do it and that he HAD to pay more taxes (eliminating the savings and digging in even deeper) he probably would have snipped the lines to the house and bought a generator (Solar was really expensive back then).
Dad never threw trash on the ground. He was a sportsman. He knew that the trash was bad for the wildlife that he wanted to hunt and fish for. He knew it was bad for the plants that the animals (and we) ate.
He taught my brother and I these things because he wanted us to be responsible citizens of the earth and understand the value of saving money, not because of climate change.
Yes. I know that for every person like dad there were probably dozens who weren't. But my dad was 1. My brother and I are 2. Our children are 3....
Like my dad, those dozens are dead and have been replaced with better role models. When we are gone, we hopefully leave behind even better role models. And so on.
It will take time and things will get worse before they get better.
It always takes more time to fix things than it takes to break them, but yelling at the mechanic won't get your car fixed any sooner.
That sounds pretty similar to what I heard from my Dad. A whole lot of common sense. The trouble is it no longer seems as common as it used to be. The "dozens" also were allowed to breed.
Thankfully, many of their progeny were affected by people like my brother and I... and Lester the Lightbulb... and Iron Eyes Cody.
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