For All of the Eco People

[Ninmast]

Received in an e-mail. Yeah, it's two months late, so sue me. I really don't check my e-mail that much ...

For all of you out there in America and across the globe who have fought so hard to tackle the hideous enemy of our planet, namely carbon emissions, that bogus god you worship named "Climate Change" or "Global Warming", there is some really bad news that will be very painful for you to process. But it is my duty to pass it on to you anyway.

Are you sitting down?

Okay, here's the bombshell. The current volcanic eruption going on in Iceland, since it first started spewing volcanic ash a few weeks ago, has, to this point, NEGATED EVERY SINGLE EFFORT you have made in the past five years to control CO2 emissions on our planet. Not only that, this single act of God has added emissions to the earth estimated to be 42 times more than can be corrected by the extreme human regulations proposed for annual reductions.

I know, I know.... (have a group hug)...it's very disheartening to realize that all of the carbon emission savings you have accomplished while suffering the inconvenience and expense of driving Prius hybrids, buying fabric grocery bags, sitting up til midnight to finish your kid's "The Green Revolution" science project, throwing out all of your non-green cleaning supplies, using only two squares of toilet paper, putting a brick in your toilet tank reservoir, selling your SUV and speedboat, going on vacation to a city park instead of Yosemite, nearly getting hit every day on your bicycle, replacing all of your $1 light bulbs with $10 light bulbs ...well, all of those things you have done have all gone down the tubes in just the past few weeks.

The volcanic ash emitted into the Earth's atmosphere in the past few weeks has totally erased every single effort you have made to reduce the evil beast, carbon. And, those hundreds of thousands of American jobs you helped move to Asia with expensive emissions demands on businesses... you know, the ones that are creating even more emissions than when they were creating American jobs, well that must seem really worthwhile now.

I'm so sorry. And I do wish that there was some kind of a silver lining to this volcanic ash cloud but the fact of the matter is that the brush fire season across the western U.S.A. will start in about two months and those fires will negate your efforts to reduce carbon emissions in our world for the next two years.

So, grab a Coke, give the world a hug, and have a nice day!

[This One]

Eyjafjallajokull- polluting your atmosphere, thwarting your hippies.

[Ninmast]

Truth hurts. A shame Mr. Gore got the wrong inconvenient one.

[Silva]

Boy I guess you're right, if nature does something once that we've been doing constantly for the past 60 years, then that makes it all a-o-k.

[Ninmast]

The point is that once again, Mother Nature has proven that our little smokestacks are infinitesimal compared to hers and that we're really not as important or all-powerful as we like to fancy ourselves. One volcanic eruption undid five years of work, one wildfire season, two years of work. In the meantime, we're losing jobs, driving up prices for basic items and worrying ourselves sick ... for what? To line the tree huggers' pockets, who aren't going to be happy until we're living in caves again anyway.

[Silva]

I see, mother nature is dangerous, so it must be destroyed. That explains a lot.

[Ninmast]

Wow, Silva ... Are we even in the same thread? Maybe you're reading a different one and got your posts in the wrong place? Yeah, that must be the case. Because if you were actually posting in response to this one, you would've actually read it and your post would have actually made logical sense in the progression of the discussion, instead of being some random comment pulled out sideways with no relation to the previous posts whatsoever outside of nature being referenced.

[EJP]

Global Warming..... I always thought that was a load of bull. I remember this video on the Discovery channel one year a ways back where the ocean water between Alaska and Russia Froze over so much that you could walk from Alaska to Russia. Anyway... my Astronomy teachers both say Global Warming is a load of crap and that our planet is getting hotter to do recession (NO! Not the same thing that is happening to our economy!).

As for an inconvenient, here is one. Your government is corrupt and lying to you. Have a nice day! ;D

[Ninmast]

Jul 21, 2010 22:52:30 GMT -5 EJP said:

As for an inconvenient, here is one. Your government is corrupt and lying to you. Have a nice day! ;D

Oh, psh, that's nothing new, I think we've all pretty much come to believe that's been happening at least since Nixon and will likely be continuing until they push us too far and we decide we need what my AA Clan instructors call a "manual reset."

[Silva]

You know, I'm only trying to understand your point of view, Ninmast. I'm actually taking a philosophy class on the ethics of environmentalism, but the teacher encourages us to find opposing viewpoints to the issues in order to make a conclusion. I am what you would call an "eco" person, I just want to know why you would want to see the environment totally demolished.

[Ninmast]

That's just it, Silva. NOBODY has said that except you. WE have said that our carbon emissions as they stand make no meaningful impact on Nature. In fact, a recent e-mail leak has blown a HUGE hole in the believability of Global Warming, which was even more full of potholes and flaws than Evolution to begin with.

I'm for cleaner heavy manufacturing for our sake, for safe chemical disposal because it impacts our health and food, for more efficient cars so that we're not bending over backwards for people who want to kill us just so we can get to work for less than fifty dollars a tank, for clean, efficient, inexpensive-as-possible energy because it's better for the economy and the only way our society will progress to the next level. Not for the pygmy marmoset, which will be just fine anyway.

The fact is that we simply are no longer in the gritty age of amoral toxication. Sure, there's some touch-ups we could do, but at this point, they're for our own benefit, not for Mother Nature. Environmentalists live in a dead past that they hallucinate as still existing. They were important in moving us out of an age, but now they're hindering us moving into the next one. Protect us from our past mistakes, but don't stand in the way of our future because you're too blind to see that you are nothing more than a borderline-religious fad now, desperately pining for mankind's extinction or demotion back to mere animal so that we'll realize how inferior we are to our dog's fleas.

[Silva]

Jul 21, 2010 23:28:03 GMT -5 Ninmast said:

I'm for cleaner heavy manufacturing for our sake, for safe chemical disposal because it impacts our health and food, for more efficient cars so that we're not bending over backwards for people who want to kill us just so we can get to work for less than fifty dollars a tank, for clean, efficient, inexpensive-as-possible energy because it's better for the economy and the only way our society will progress to the next level. Not for the pygmy marmoset, which will be just fine anyway.

I'm for all those things as well, for only somewhat different reasons. Does it matter why we should clean up our manufacturing, keep our disposals from hurting anything, increase fuel efficiency, and move towards alternative energy? Isn't it just good that we're doing it?

The fact is that we simply are no longer in the gritty age of amoral toxication. Sure, there's some touch-ups we could do, but at this point, they're for our own benefit, not for Mother Nature. Environmentalists live in a dead past that they hallucinate as still existing. They were important in moving us out of an age, but now they're hindering us moving into the next one. Protect us from our past mistakes, but don't stand in the way of our future because you're too blind to see that you are nothing more than a borderline-religious fad now, desperately pining for mankind's extinction or demotion back to mere animal so that we'll realize how inferior we are to our dog's fleas.

It's true that we've come a long way from recklessly dumping all our trash and pollution unto the earth, and that is great how much we've done to change our ways. The later half of the 20th century saw a big in change in favor of keeping the environment clean and keeping animals alive instead of disregarding the whole thing, and now our country's no longer the biggest polluter in the world (go us! Or China I guess). That's all great and everything, but not ideal. Forests are still disappearing, rivers are drying up, species of animals are going extinct, and contrary to popular belief, the temperature of the earth is in fact steadily increasing.

Environmentalism is still around to make sure that we don't destroy anything else this earth has to offer us. I don't like this prejudice attitude that environmentalists are a bunch of zealots who desire total societal collapse, I have never heard an environmentalist say such a thing. I like technology and social progress and the advancement of civilization as much as the next guy, I just want to make sure that our advancements don't kill off valuable ecologies.

I'll be sure to bring these issues in my next class session. I know my teacher would be interested to hear what you guys have to say about all this.

[Teh Donut]

I'm glad you said "environment" and not "planet." I hate when douchebags confuse the two, because it's so hard to prove to them that it's impossible to destroy the latter


Anywho, he wouldn't want to see the environment go bye-byes, he's just making the point that acts of man, both constructive and destructive, are infinitesimal compared to that awesome force that is Nature.


Personally, I love my planet. It's nice and green and warm and here instead of billions of lightyears away and no constructed on some moon somewhere and I don't have to yet wear a haz-mat suit to go outside. But, I also believe that the "Global Warming" or "Climate Change" or whatever whoey they're calling it these days is a shit. Yeah, the world's getting warmer. It has been since before the Industrial Revolution, when the Little Ice Age ended. It'll get hotter. Then, it'll get cold. Really cold. There's nothing we can do about it, now or ever, even if we all do decide to go live in caves again. Deal with it.


However, environmentalists are going about their arguement completely wrong. Normal people don't act upon that warm fuzzy feeling they get from someone telling them "thank you for buying a Prius! You just saved a puppy that you'll never ever see and that will never ever impact your life ever again with your purchase! Yay!"


Look, I'm also not stupid enough to think that clogging the air with exhaust or burning trash/massive puddles of oil is healthy, for us or anything. I mean, really, have you taken a good whiff of that smoke? That shit's nasty. I sure as hell don't want to breathe it. I also don't like heaps of garbage floating around in the same waters where I get my seafood; I know where that garbage has been, it's unsanitary, and I don't wanna eat it (don't tell me that it's a sham too, that shit's been mapped, there are pictures, and you can't possibly pass this off as "oh, it's just the natural cycle of our planet"). Why the hell would anyone want to turn their one and only home into one massive garbage heap? It's unsanitary. Ew.


Look, it's common sense that improving the conditions of your environment improves the basic health of the people living in that environment. Seriously, compare the health and life expectancy statistics of places with active and enforced environmental regulation with those that don't have any. Even our over-indulgent and wasteful USA is healther than Eastern European nations by orders of magnitude because of those regulations. Cleanliness is Godliness, but it's fine for making you live longer, too. People who live as packrats, hoarding garbage and never cleaning anything are prone to countless more deadly diseases and such. By not dumping nuclear material willy-nilly all over the planet (or maybe exploding nuclear reactors for fun, even) or by not living on a nuclear waste dump site, you don't have an increased risk of being sterile or having cancer (proven by the people still living near Chernobyl). By not dumping mercury into our lakes and rivers for the lulz, you won't eat that same mercury in your seafood.


A healthy environment means a healthy population. A healthy population means less people paying out their ass for medical treatment, which means a more efficient medical system (by virtue of not having 1 in 3 people waiting for medical care) and more money for the purchasing of other shit. Help the Economy; save an environment.


As long as it's my choice to save the environment, that is. Not a big fan of people who commute to work (or, say, environmental conferences in places like Copenhagen, back and forth. Just saying. ) every day by jet telling others that "oh, we need this regulation; we must save the environment!" Here's looking at you, Hollywood/Congress. If you want people to change their attitudes and buy things that are more expensive just because they're environmentally friendly, make buying green tax-deductable. People decide with their wallets. Businesses will catch on to the trend in spending and voluntarily follow green practices. Positive-reinforcement works wonders in that manner.


Anywho, getting off the topic, so I'm done. Point being, I buy green and limit the A/C use and don't litter and recycle and otherwise try to pollute less, not because I feel that "OMG THE EARTH IS DOOMED," but because I want to, because a healthy home means a healthy me. It's really all just common sense.


P.S.: Unless you plug your car directly into a personally-owned solar-powered generator or wind turbine, your beloved Prius polutes more than my Passat. Sorry to be a buzz-kill.

[Ninmast]

Jul 21, 2010 23:56:18 GMT -5 Silva said:

I have never heard an environmentalist say such a thing.

Now you have.

Truthfully, to buy into the tree hugger agenda, you really have to be willfully ignorant, taking in everything they say as fact and never doing any research for yourself.

Yes, cleaning up our cities, refining our production methods and developing new energies is a good thing. The ethanol flop and ten-dollar "green" light bulbs using Mercury are not going to do it, though.

The issue isn't whether or not making our lives cleaner, easier and more productive in both efficiency and economy are good things, but a matter of priority. The priorities of the Environmentalists have driven off jobs, driven up costs and driven down quality of life, all for the purpose of some delusional quest to be Paladins of Gaia and failing miserably. Let's do good things, but let's do them intelligently instead of zealously.

[shinaobi]

But Nin, that's just the thing. Your average environmentalist doesn't imagine being a modern-day knight of Gaia. (In fact, more than a few of the American ones want to move away from oil expressly because foreign powderkegs hold most of the stuff) The smart ones even know that cars aren't going to be doing anything like going away, nor are they going to try to make them (since we've even built surfaces, roads, and structures for the express purposes of storing/moving them around with maximum ease). They simply see a lot of preventible, environmentally related problems (salt-water fish, for instance, are now generally full of plastic [sometimes mercury], and the North Pacific Gyre didn't just grow an island full of things suspciously similar to products that have been thrown out by lots of people) and would like for said problems to be prevented, or at least kept from growing bigger (that whole spewing oil business in the Gulf of Mexico could have been avoided if we had slightly stricter drilling regulations/regulators not in the pocket of oil companies)