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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
The rest of the solutions are band aids. Period. But whatever. Nature will sort out our shit if we don't.
. . .not the problem. Human beings are a net positive.
"It will take something like the death toll of one 2004-tsunami each day for the next 18 years(!!!) to bring the human population back to levels that Earth can sustain!" - disagreed. We have enough to sustain ourselves even now. The starvation and easily preventable diseases are occurring in commie places like North Korea and Zimbabwe, and are entirely preventable. Just get rid of communism and corrupt dictators.
As Mark Steyn said,
"There's no such thing as "sustainable" development. Human progress and individual liberty have advanced on the backs of one unsustainable development after another: When we needed trees for heating and transportation, we chopped 'em down. Then we discovered oil, and the trees grew back. When the oil runs out, we won't notice because our SUVs will be powered by something else. Bet on human ingenuity every time. We're not animals, and it's a cult as deranged as the screwiest fringe religion to insist we are. Earth's most valuable resource is us."
Reducing right vs. wrong to a set of statistics or a biology class is the perfect way for any given group of us with a vested interest in self-promotion to turn environmentalism into the very thing it should not be: an ism.
PETA is ridiculous, but so are just about all the rest of us, both those of us who care about the fate of the planet only because it feeds and supports us and gives us a place to hang out, and those who care only about how much profit they can accrue before the whole joint blows up. This article is ridiculous. The problem isn't any one thing, it's all the things we hold dear as we multiply our arrogant ass into the sea.
Last night I took a walk from my home through the neighborhood and onto the parking lot of the local mall, where I almost immediately found three half-grown deer milling around on the vast asphalt parking lot. Filled first with wonder then soon after that perplexity, I began to realize these little guys had been living somewhere in our midst before all the infill had taken place, and even then they were just doing a magnificent job of adapting to an impossible situation. Now they've been forced onto a parking lot. I can't even imagine where they came from - not now. Twenty or thirty years ago it would have made sense but now...
The herd needs thinning, and we are the herd. I don't need PETA to tell me that the hunters are wrong about which herd needs to be thinned. In fact, as far as I'm concerned they could be the first to go (PETA? Hunters? You choose).
The least we could do is slow down. Eventually maybe we could even stop for a brief while. Slow down? Stop? Reproducing. It is we who are responsible for global warming but moreso the rape of Eden. Half of us have no reason to exist,have no clue, have no real life - yes, I'm dismissing the importance of a great part of humanity, at the risk of sounding like a PETA sympathizer, which I am not. Neither am I suggesting a liquidation starting with the stupid and the evil - although many of us are morally down to the task. I am, however, suggesting we quit having children just because it makes us feel "whole", just because babies make us feel like god - for a while.
The Nova Mob now running the country would like to see us continue to produce betas to continue to feed the machine and fuel their vehicle to leave this globe before it blows. We've done everything else they want without question, we've all sold our souls for a few trinkets.
We don't need PETA to help us find some novel way to reap the whirlwind. We don't need to say a mass over the carcass of each chicken we consume either - they are clearly here for no other reason than to be served to us, evil, alien creatures who peck each others eyes out and eat anything off the ground. They're so much like us. We can be idiots each in our own way, like so many chickens.
I've been saying this (and pissing people off) for years: if you eat a meat-based diet then deal's off - just shut your yap about being an enviromentalist. You do NOT need to eat meat. It's a choice, just like the car you drive or how many lights are on in your house.
Yeah, you'd piss me off too with that arrogant, self-righteous crap.
I think that the thing that most ardent advocates of vegetarianism/veganism for the environment's sake completely (and foolishly) ignore is that food is an intrinsic part of culture. If you're dedicated to doing everything that you can to reduce your impact on your environment, it's a great thing to completely switch over to tofu or tempura or algae or soylent green or whatever. Knock yourself out.
But what would we really be giving up with a large-scale switch over to a completely plant-based diet? Our recipes, the food we enjoy, is no less important to our cultures than language or any other tradition. I'm not one to defend the cheeseburger as a daily meal, but why cast stones at a family that enjoys a turkey at Thanksgiving? Why look down upon anyone that would want to enjoy BBQ chicken or roast duck from an old recipe handed down from one's grandmother? And why would anyone suggest that eating meat as part of a local diet would be any worse than eating a plant-based diet consisting of apples from New Zealand, strawberries from Chile, and other foods shipped in from across the world?
Furthermore, there are (pardon the pun) bigger fish to fry. Eliminating one plane trip that some household would take to Europe for vacation, for example, *completely* overpowers any change to diet. (About five tons per round trip!) Reducing our household electricity use in half? Same effect. And this is nothing when compared to the changes that could be made if many of our industrial (including agro-industrial) processes and commercial operations are fundamentally restructured.
So... change the structure of the underlying systems. Work to make things local and/or sustainable in food production. Try to make wise choices in food selection. Reduce waste. And yes, reduce meat consumption! (Who really needs to eat a large steak for every meal, anyway?) But looking down upon anyone because of their food choices? Idiotic. It's cutting your nose off to spite your face, and a demonstration of class-based environmental elitism at its worst. It alienates most of the people that are needed to actually make an effective change, without actually making a large change in environmental impacts.
And in the end, that kind of arrogance does *nothing* to save the planet.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
