My Thoughts On Environmentalism
I consider myself an environmentalist, and I am pretty serious about it, but I disagree with how the idea of global warming has become the sole focus of the environmental movement, because I think that it is counterproductive in a variety of ways.
Humans are destroying the planet and making it uninhabitable for many of the earth’s creatures, including ourselves, at an alarming rate, this much is obvious and not really debatable. You only need to look at the rapidly declining number of diverse plant, animal and insect species on the planet to see that things are totally fucked. The plastic in the ocean, the oil spills, the deforestation, the regular extinction of more and more species is all happening right now and these situations are extremely dangerous by themselves, but they are all happening at the same time.
These are things that need to be addressed immediately, and when taken on a case by case basis, they are very specific issues, with very specific solutions and people to blame.
With the focus on global warming, the general idea is that we are all killing the planet because we drive our cars too much, and someday there will be some giant apocalypse, end of the world scenario that this will all lead up to.
This all may be true, but it has people focused on this future hypothetical scenario, which seems so far away and irrelevant to the average person. It is a problem so big that everyone feels hopeless about it. It also obfuscates the solutions by blurring the case by case situations together, so instead of entirely bankrupting and shutting down an oil company when they have a spill, people are out there protesting for small policy changes, while the water is still poison, endangered species are still dying, and we are dumping more and more plastic into the ocean.
In many ways, I feel that the focus on the temperature of the earth, which is said to bring some giant apocalypse, is distracting us and taking our energy away from the tiny apocalypses that are happening every day.
It's not a future hypothetical, it's a real present. But yeah, if you want to say that our environmental policy needs to take an holistic approach that takes into account more than CO2 emissions, sure, that's what we recommend doing.
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How about the Younger-drys event? That killed tons of species from the planet.
Or the event that destroyed the dinosaurs...
So yeah when is the global warming gonna kill us all if we don't pay carbon taxes...
Wait how is a tax gonna better the planet? It's just great for the rich to collect an extra tax.
Worry about a volcano or major event.. How about some wars? Those are not good...
But if we vanish from the planet? The part will come right back and we will vanish...
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Habitat loss is of immediate and existential concern undeniably. In addition, toxic chemical pollution is of equal import, if not greater. Endocrine disrupting chemicals have dropped testosterone by over 60% in Western men since I hit puberty, and it is impossible to estimate how important this is to those that suffer it, and society as a whole. It is also important to note that this harm is being done to us, but it is also being done to many other species, and not only mammals.
There is a way to end these problems that does not require a global tax, or even any tax at all. It's just to boycott companies whose businesses cause the problems. As decentralization develops, I reckon we'll be boycotting many businesses by default soon anyway.
The problems are dire, but readily soluble, so we should be acting as possible to rectify the problems we can. I'll worry about global warming/cooling when we have some control over the sun.
Thanks!
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