Agent Intellect
Absurd Anti-hero.
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OK, it's on.
Consumerism
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ProxyAmenRa
Here to bring back the love!
Use your analytical mind, become an engineer and help solve some of the problems. Environmental Engineering's main focus is waste management and environmental impact mitigation. The one problem with the profession is its name. The word environmental just defecates on the purpose and integrity. Apparently caused by the false conception that somehow environmental engineers are environmentalists.
Agent Intellect
Absurd Anti-hero.
That does seem to be a problem. Anything that has to do with the environment is immediately seen as either uninteresting or "uncool" - or, at least, this is the sentiments where I live, no matter how much of a crap-heap people are living in.
I think a few of the problem are:
1) Global warming flunkies have been cramming the environment down peoples throats for so long that people just tune it out,
2) Environmentalism requires people to sacrifice small conveniences that they have grown accustomed to,
3) Environmental damage happens so slowly that, like evolution, if people can't see it happen in a couple days, they don't believe it's actually occurring and
4) Western society and particularly american culture is a breeding ground for apathy and myopic thinking - I especially see this in the working class neighborhood where I live where people have to live paycheck to paycheck, they're just happy to have enough food on the table and a roof over their heads for another week it becomes difficult to concern themselves with such seemingly esoteric problems. I think it also creates an attitude that governments/businesses should worry about it (yet nobody wants to pay a cent in taxes for the government to actually do something) so it's not really "my" problem.
ProxyAmenRa
Here to bring back the love!
Environmentalism is the new religion; a religion that mandates we go back to the stone age and live in 'harmony' with nature. They don't seem to realize that we are similar to all other organisms in respects to altering the environment. Bacteria, protozoa, ants, bees, beavers etc. all exert their will and alter their surroundings. The alterations may have detrimental affects on the ability of other organism to propagate or perhaps there is a net benefit.
I was on a tour of a factory once to learn some new technology. From the time I went inside to the time when I left, green peace arrived on scene. They were complaining about the amount of gas being emitted. What they did not realize the gas was steam emanating from the cooling stack. Further more what amused me the place was producing some photovoltic cell components.
Contrary to what environmentalists believe there are ways to maintain levels of affluence without having net detrimental impacts on the surroundings. To do this you need to maintain standards of production and waste management (includes landfilling, reclamation, reuse and recycling). To manage waste the producer of waste must pay. Hence, taxes or paying a private entity. Most circumstances the full cost of waste management is not bared by the producer of waste. Generally people pay for the operational costs rather than mechanisms of efficient management.
If it were only small sacrifices there would be no problem but the sacrifices they require a large in magnitude in respects to the working class. The only way environmental degradation can be solved in through technology such as means of production; creating products that have ease of decomposition and dismantlement.
I was on a tour of a factory once to learn some new technology. From the time I went inside to the time when I left, green peace arrived on scene. They were complaining about the amount of gas being emitted. What they did not realize the gas was steam emanating from the cooling stack. Further more what amused me the place was producing some photovoltic cell components.
Contrary to what environmentalists believe there are ways to maintain levels of affluence without having net detrimental impacts on the surroundings. To do this you need to maintain standards of production and waste management (includes landfilling, reclamation, reuse and recycling). To manage waste the producer of waste must pay. Hence, taxes or paying a private entity. Most circumstances the full cost of waste management is not bared by the producer of waste. Generally people pay for the operational costs rather than mechanisms of efficient management.
If it were only small sacrifices there would be no problem but the sacrifices they require a large in magnitude in respects to the working class. The only way environmental degradation can be solved in through technology such as means of production; creating products that have ease of decomposition and dismantlement.
Cavallier
Oh damn.
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It's just such an overwhelming problem. I try in my own small way to help. I have a reusable canvas bag for grocery trips. I shop at the farmer's market and when I do shop at the supermarket I refuse to use little individual bags for each veggie and piece of fruit. I always carry around a reusable water bottle. I walk instead of drive (I'm lucky in that I can have almost everything I need in walking distance) and bike to the places I can't walk to. I don't eat much preprocessed food so I don't have a bunch of plastic and cardboard waste and what I do have I recycle. I use low energy light bulbs and turn everything off when I leave. I try not to be wasteful. I don't know what else to do. I'm lucky to live in a community where being "green" isn't considered uncool. It's Portland and North West Oregon. Being "green" = being cool. *shrug*
Anthile
Steel marks flesh
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I fail to see how being 'green' can be cool or uncool. How can not sawing the branch off on which you sit anything but rational? Cool and uncool, good and evil - those are just labels people put on things to not bother with them anymore. Who can explain why something is good or why something is evil? They can't. It's just a measure to push their pathetic agendas while they hoist a white flag to logic and rationality. They know nothing but they want everything. Agendas do not belong into the hands of corrupt individuals. If they want to die, let them die, I say, but don't let them take away anything of value from those who wish to live. This life, these few years of existence might be all I'll ever have and every second of it is much to valuable as if I could sacrifice it to these people. They, and not the people who read Nietzsche or Kierkegaard, are the true nihilists.
ProxyAmenRa
Here to bring back the love!
By god it is your economic right to do so but for many they are not so fortunate.
--- Rant Warning ---
It would seem that the new green movement encapsulates the class struggle. It is mandated to the working class that they must sacrifice their standard of living, while the more affluent, the rich and those who own the means of production are not negatively impacted on. The only thing that has ever increased the standards of living of the poorest has been technology. However, when looking at the system as a whole one find that the greatest environmental degradation is caused by the poor. Whether that be in affluent society or third world countries. The poor do not have the means or ability to efficiently produce and manage the waste of their production and consumption. Raising the living standards of the poorest will inevitably reduce the impact that the anthroposphere has in the biosphere at large. Yet, there are those in society which do not want this. Be it those who own the means of production or the environmentalist who is against any form of development. Thus we know when a family is affluent; it is when their child comes home proclaiming they are an environmentalist.
Cavallier
Oh damn.
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@ Anthile: I meant that it's nice to live in a community where doing what I would do normally doesn't mean I get demonized. I've lived in communities where living simply meant being singled out for ridicule. It gets old and I get tired.
It's true that it comes down to logic and not simply qualifying terms designed to press someone's agenda. I've often thought that words like "good" and "evil" are too frighteningly simple to define things that are much more complicated.
It's true that it comes down to logic and not simply qualifying terms designed to press someone's agenda. I've often thought that words like "good" and "evil" are too frighteningly simple to define things that are much more complicated.
What I see here is that they exaggerated the single individual's consumption.
Compared to the total of 6 billion+, mine food is so minuscule.
One person will not create an even single percentage of help.
True Help can only be considered true if the beneficiary receives at least 1% of positive effect.
My conclusion is it's the government's responsibility to forcefully move us.
There's no point in labor if the big bird is not doing it's work.
You can't feed your baby with just a grain of salt.
I disagree. The tendency for the average is to be skeptical of the other citizen. It's simply a natural reaction. The order must come from an outside powerful source, one preferably in control of military. Yes, forceful tyrannical discipline.
Still, the problem I perceive worthwhile isn't this. I feel no need to help a world that doesn't help it's neighbors(poverty in several regions)with enough support. Think about the lifestyle comparison between the average american and the average ethiopian. There is not enough to say...progress is only for the united, no to the "one".
Compared to the total of 6 billion+, mine food is so minuscule.
One person will not create an even single percentage of help.
True Help can only be considered true if the beneficiary receives at least 1% of positive effect.
My conclusion is it's the government's responsibility to forcefully move us.
There's no point in labor if the big bird is not doing it's work.
You can't feed your baby with just a grain of salt.
I disagree. The tendency for the average is to be skeptical of the other citizen. It's simply a natural reaction. The order must come from an outside powerful source, one preferably in control of military. Yes, forceful tyrannical discipline.
Still, the problem I perceive worthwhile isn't this. I feel no need to help a world that doesn't help it's neighbors(poverty in several regions)with enough support. Think about the lifestyle comparison between the average american and the average ethiopian. There is not enough to say...progress is only for the united, no to the "one".
cheese
Prolific Member
It's not necessarily about the people alive now, it's about those who'll come in the future who may or may not be implicated in similar crimes of neglect, and who certainly had nothing to do with the current situations. Do you hand snakes to small children? We try not to.
Agent Intellect
Absurd Anti-hero.
I never claimed there was any logic to it, but people are willing to do things that are "cool" no matter how detrimental they are. People pay thousands for plastic surgery, women destroy their joints by wearing high heels or plaster themselves with makeup just to be "in fashion". People will pump themselves full of steroids just to make themselves bigger.
In the same way, they will laugh off environmentalism of any kind because we sound like a liberal hippy douche talking about saving plants and animals. It's cool to drive hummers and be apathetic about things that aren't shallow and pointless, since that's the realm of stuck up intellectuals and idealistic nerds. It often makes me wonder whether whether people truly don't care, or if they are in denial.
I completely agree. I am not the environmentalist that idealizes nature and thinks we'd be better off living like chimps - I would be more than willing to give up some of my own hard earned money for "green technology" research and development.
When it comes right down to it, I would consider myself a transhumanist and a futurist. The problem is, our economic system isn't based on innovation, it's based on profit margins. New technology is developed if it can make money, and research grants are given to projects that are financially promising in the short term.
There's shit loads of money in marketing cheap plastic crap and environmentally toxic products to the poor, which in turn makes it very profitable for the poor to continue existing. This entrenched system is the result of humans myopic thinking. Human civilization isn't going to go out with bang, but by slowly bleeding itself like a wounded hemophiliac.
How did they exaggerate it? Because people don't consume all of that at once, but instead over 80 years? Of course your consumption is minuscule compared to 6+ billion other people - that's the point. The show was talking about americans only, and they said at one point that if all 6+ billion people consumed as much as americans (which I think has about 300,000 people), we would require 4 planet earths just go supply all the raw materials and store our waste. The magnitude of people does not diminish the fact that westerners, and americans especially, consume copious amounts of crap.
I disagree. The tendency for the average is to be skeptical of the other citizen. It's simply a natural reaction. The order must come from an outside powerful source, one preferably in control of military. Yes, forceful tyrannical discipline.
Still, the problem I perceive worthwhile isn't this. I feel no need to help a world that doesn't help it's neighbors(poverty in several regions)with enough support. Think about the lifestyle comparison between the average american and the average ethiopian. There is not enough to say...progress is only for the united, no to the "one".
In the end, people are responsible only for themselves.
bovinity
Member
It's not denial. It's both a lack of care in the sense that "environmentalism doesn't serve my immediate interests, therefore why bother with it when I could be picking up chicks?" and the human tendency towards shallow, automatic processing and dismissing anything that requires conscious reflection as boring and thus not worth the time required to understand and put effort towards its actualization. People are simply lazy and apathetic; it's always been this way. It's just that now, instead of doing their share of farmwork to get food from the Lord at the end of the day, these lazy and apathetic people are destroying the world with fancy toys and fast food.
Yeah, I like having electricity, plumbing, internet, automobiles, and etc but the extent to which these things control our everyday lives is insane. I think I would be much happier living in the woods with a few friends, growing our own food than I am now. There are just too many questions that society and tradition simply don't answer for us anymore.