I was texting a rant to a friend about environmental issues and here's what we had to say. I'll fill in between our texts with some comments in parenthesis. . I was telling her about the limits to growth.
Her: Sounds interesting.
Me:Yes describes what humans can and can't do on earth since it is one planet with only finite resources. Contrary to what some businesses propose and some politicians advocate.
Her: Neat
Me: The earth is a complex feedback system and if we fuck it up too much we can not survive.
Her: We're halfway there.
Me: Question is will we fuck it up? Can we even stop ourselves from fucking it up? Like a crack addict are we as humans caught in a negative feedback loop that leds to our self destruction? Some people think most intelligent life in the Universe destroys itself, that's why we don't have ET's visiting us. (An interesting post on the blog Preposterous Universe talks about this question here. This is also the topic of the post that discusses the Enlightentment/Boredom Hypothesis as to why aliens haven't visited us. The question of why aliens haven't visited us is called Fermi's paradox)
(Not sure if it should be negative or positive feedback loop, but anyways a loop that keeps reinforcing the behavior instead of inhibiting it.)
Her: There you go
Me: We do seems to be hell bent on destroying humans. There is only one little blue-green planet we are on and we are on a path to fuck it up.
Her: I believe that. It's why the environmentalists are upset.
Me: Many individuals get stuck on self destruction paths is the whole human race stuck on a self destruction path? Everyone should be upset. Remember Earth Day back in like 1970?
Her: Yes. I was in high school when it started. April right? We just had it.
Me: Even in ultraconservative Idaho (I lived in northern Idaho from the late 60's to the end of the 70's) people knew you needed to take care of the environment. But that conflicted with the logging and mining industries that fueled the economy and hence jobs. ( The same is true now where in live in Louisiana, where the fossil fuel industry is big and helps to drive the state economy. Louisiana Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu is a big fossil fuel promoter. Climate denial is strong here partially because of the importance of fossil fuels in the economy and the fact that this is a very conservative state and is very skeptical of the government and of anything being said by what they view as the liberal media to them. See this post about being a liberal and living in a red state. )
Yes indeed it was April but it was celebrated nationwide? If so I didn't hear about it. Fossil fuel companies want to keep it quiet. Like minded folks own Fox News and other media outlets.
I didn't see it in the liberal blogs I read.
Her: You're on an environmental roll today. I think its every year on April 8.
Me: People just think its another problem and don't want to deal with it. We just want to deny it and ignore it and not think its a problem and that it will go away. (Similar to how people deal with their own damaging personal behavior., like drug addiction, alcoholism or addiction to money. Here's a really good New York Times Op-Ed about a Wall St. guy's addiction to money).
But the same thing is happening to our society and will we wake up and fix it? Right now I'm not so optimistic about it. Fuck people even deny climate change. When looking for that Malaysian plane what they found where huge collections of plastic garbage in the ocean killing fish and animals. Are we fixing that? For the most part people just say fuck it.
They have other things to worry about.
Her: People are so out of sight out of mind.
Me: They have short term things to worry about. Job security, security for themselves and family. Money for food and housing.
Problem is that's what humans might be doing continuously to our planet.
It sucks sometimes
But humanity is doing to this planet what an addict does to their body.
This is nothing new people have been talking about this for years but get shouted down by money and power addicts. They are addicted to money and power like a crack addict.
I might type all this up and put in my blog.
Her: True that.
Me: Do you think I should put this rambling on my blog?
Her: Of course. It's not rambling and you have the science to back it up.
Me: I don't know enough about the science but I know its out there and that's why large numbers of scientists and scientific organizations say we need to fix the environment but get overshadowed by big energy business.
End of our texting session.
Are humans acting collectively as a crack addict and are so addicted to our self-inflicted damaging ways that we will ignore how our pollution of all kinds is killing our planet? We only have one little blue planet and there are no mulligans. No do overs. We fuck it up its game over, fini, done, no more, no happy ending.
Yes indeed it was April but it was celebrated nationwide? If so I didn't hear about it. Fossil fuel companies want to keep it quiet. Like minded folks own Fox News and other media outlets.
I didn't see it in the liberal blogs I read.
Her: You're on an environmental roll today. I think its every year on April 8.
Me: People just think its another problem and don't want to deal with it. We just want to deny it and ignore it and not think its a problem and that it will go away. (Similar to how people deal with their own damaging personal behavior., like drug addiction, alcoholism or addiction to money. Here's a really good New York Times Op-Ed about a Wall St. guy's addiction to money).
But the same thing is happening to our society and will we wake up and fix it? Right now I'm not so optimistic about it. Fuck people even deny climate change. When looking for that Malaysian plane what they found where huge collections of plastic garbage in the ocean killing fish and animals. Are we fixing that? For the most part people just say fuck it.
They have other things to worry about.
Her: People are so out of sight out of mind.
Me: They have short term things to worry about. Job security, security for themselves and family. Money for food and housing.
Problem is that's what humans might be doing continuously to our planet.
It sucks sometimes
But humanity is doing to this planet what an addict does to their body.
This is nothing new people have been talking about this for years but get shouted down by money and power addicts. They are addicted to money and power like a crack addict.
I might type all this up and put in my blog.
Her: True that.
Me: Do you think I should put this rambling on my blog?
Her: Of course. It's not rambling and you have the science to back it up.
Me: I don't know enough about the science but I know its out there and that's why large numbers of scientists and scientific organizations say we need to fix the environment but get overshadowed by big energy business.
End of our texting session.
Are humans acting collectively as a crack addict and are so addicted to our self-inflicted damaging ways that we will ignore how our pollution of all kinds is killing our planet? We only have one little blue planet and there are no mulligans. No do overs. We fuck it up its game over, fini, done, no more, no happy ending.
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