From the IPCC report thread: Kyle Schuant dropping the microphone
Quote from: Cache_Stash on October 09, 2018, 07:07:31 AM
Population is the problem, not mankind's contribution to carbon dioxide in the air.
I have a friend who makes this argument. He is childless and his hobby is flying aircraft. It is perhaps possible that this is a self-serving argument.
It doesn't matter if what we do has an impact or not. "It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support." - your countryman Henry David Thoreau.
Now, what sort of lifestyle might we choose if we wished to wash our hands of personal contribution to climate change, and not to give it practically our support? I would suggest that many of the things we could do are things which would also help our finances and our personal health: stop flying, home and work closer to each-other and walk and cycle rather than drive, eat less junk food and meat, use less natural gas and electricity, and so on. If you care only about finances, these are all good things to do; if you care only about health, these are all good things to do; and if you care only about the environment, these are all good things to do.
Further, once you consider the environment of other countries, and how places like China have worse environmental practices than most of the West, and then consider also the collapse of manufacturing in the West, "buy local" is both an environmentalist and a patriotic maxim.
I'm old-fashioned. I believe: duty first. Whether or not I pay my taxes, do jury duty or military or civilian service of some kind, whether I speak well of my wife behind her back or not, whether or not I call people by racial epithets when out of their hearing, the practical impact of these things is almost zero. Nonetheless an adult in a civilised society has duties. A duty is something which whether you like it or not and whether it makes a difference or not you simply must do. A society is nothing but an accumulation of kept promises and duties met.
Now, some may reply that we as humans have no duties to one another. And I would answer that this is indeed a popular point of view, and explains much of the world's problems now, but I wash my hands of such an idea, and do not give it practically my support.
« Last Edit: Today at 12:25:46 AM by Kyle Schuant »