On Sat, 02 Jul 2005 11:05:56 -0700, Mark & Juanita
wrote:
Snipped for brevity

While we may not destroy the planet, or render it absolutely sterile,
it's certainly possible that we can make it a worse place to live.
That's reason enough to think about using resources sensibly. It may
not take that much dramatic change on the part of every person to make
a huge difference to the whole. We're still going to need oil, we're
still going to have to cut down trees- it's not like we should all go
back to living in caves and riding on horseback or any of that
nonsense, but there is certainly room for admitting that something is
happening and working towards a reasonable solution.

I don't disagree with taking care of things, particularly if for no other
reason than to keep our local environment pleasant. However, the strident
extreme is what is being heard, and often acted upon -- that side will
settle for nothing less than an absolute halt to future development and
desires reversal of a significant portion of our current way of life (for
everybody but themselves of course -- the "enlightened ones" must maintain
their standard of living to assure that the rest of us peons are behaving
appropriately).

Yeah, I don't go for the arguments that we must stop moving forward-
all I'm saying is that sticking one's head in the sand is just about
as dangerous as the "strident extreme" of complete denial. There are
a lot of things we can and should do as inhabitants of the planet to
make sure we leave the place in a decent condition. Most of them are
common sense, and we've already got some good ideas floating around.
We don't need to all recycle our cars and walk everywhere wearing
sandals, but it's not a bad idea to carpool if you can, and get the
most efficient vehicle that meets your actual needs. If a guy is
hauling truckloads of bricks and lumber on a daily basis, then he
probably needs an SUV. If that same person is merely hauling one
person around, a compact car makes more sense. If they've got a large
family but little cargo, a station wagon or minivan is more sensible
than an armored troop transport. Simple stuff. When a local
businessman gets nabbed by the DNR for the fifth or sixth time because
he's dumping toxic waste into the storm drains, he should be shut down
until he fixes the problem- not given a slap on the wrist because he
provides a lot of tax revenue.

It's less a problem of what is actually happening with the enviroment
than it is a problem of what is actually happening with society, once
you cut through some of the BS. When people stop hiding behind insane
opinions supported by plays on words and mindless yes-men, most folks
tend to behave in a decent manner because they know they have to look
their neighbors in the eyes when they get home. For a simplified
example- if you own a company that produces widget X, and that process
creates 1000 gallons of liquid chlorine waste a week, and you decide
that the most cost-effective way to dispose of it is to dump it out
into the grass behind your building, no one should tolerate you
getting huffy and yelling about how the science is not entirely proven
when the neighborhood demands that you stop it. But a slick spin
doctor can turn even the most egregious offence into something that
sounds reasonable to the average person, and that is the brick wall
everyone keeps hitting thier collective head on. If we had a couple
of retarded kids with limited vocabularies reporting the daily news,
people would gag on on the clarity of the real evil we do to one
another on a daily basis. Instead, we have some doofus with an MBA in
business and a thousand dollar haircut arguing with wild-eyed one-pony
pundits on CNN about what the definition of an obscure term is- while
somehow completely ignoring the orginal issues. Every day yields
thousands of classic examples of sophistry, but that's just how things
are "done", I guess.

Less BS would really help the environment the most- it's getting hard
to see anything with all those stinky methane clouds in the way. It's
a good arguement for wind power- the hot air all around us could
supply all the energy we need.... though the poison it drips in our
ears is worse than any black-lung cancers from inefficiently burning
coal, or completely sterile oceans. It doesn't destroy the greenery,
it destroys our minds, and those are the things we cannot afford to
destroy. Everything else can be figured out with a clear head and a
little honesty.