Letters to the Editor
-
I personally vote to save the planet
Do not know of their credentials or previous work, but based on this article the authors do come off as opinioned without basis and often make little sense. What is this para-phrased wail they have, "We see hope and environmentalists only see despair". What? Did they not have an editor?
And did they miss the part where the modern industrial revolution just occured like really recently in the past 100+ years or so and thereby we as humans really just started to have a global impact? In the past, pockets of humanity here and there could and have screwed their local environment in such a way to screw themselves. To say this is just nature at work is stupendously stupid. Yeah, why don't we explode our tens of thousands of nuclear war heads, I mean if we did it would just be an act of nature like a volcanoe or something right? Yeah, right. We are now RESPONSIBLE for the new ability we have to wipe out most if not all of the human race. It's not a question whether the earth will survive our most stupid moves, the earth will take care of itself and actually the earth itself could decide to wipe out the human race. But for us it is not even a question whether we want to protect and preserve the earth. We have to live on it. We need the earth to survive. It’s simple. Damn.
They do kind of strike a chord with me, reasonable or not, in the notion that the environmentalist movement can hold nature “too” precious or sacred. Nature is sacred but it is also ruthless and brutal. I see tremendous beauty in nature but also horror, precluding my ability to get too romantic about it. And again, this does not diminish our responsibility in our stewardship of the earth.
"This faith in science is often accompanied by the antiquated view that there are facts separate from values and interpretations."
This statement seems to strike a number of emotional chords, maybe from having to live under the Bush anti-science dark ages. If they meant that facts are immutable but that based on values, perceptions of those facts are variable, then cheers, they have actually made sense. If they meant that facts are variable based on perceptions and values, than boo, they are some of the worst assholes to inhabit the planet. That’s the kind of thinking that keeps Neanderthals in power.