Originally posted by: Rainsford
Originally posted by: palehorse74
I believe the only decent reaction to all this GW nonsense is this: No matter what the cause, or the effects, cleaning up our industries and lifestyles cant be a bad thing, so why fight against it so hard?
Will mandating alternative or more efficient sources of energy cause more problems? no? then why not just go along for the ride? Will changing the way we dispose of waste effect our lives that much? no? Then why not do it?!
regardless of the root cause(s) -- the who/what to blame for GW (if it even exists) -- any changes we make to clean up our lives can't frickin hurt. Heck, as with the Internet thing, we can even let Al Gore go on believing that he saved everyone!
That makes a fair amount of sense, which is probably why the environmental debate doesn't sound more like this. I think most people are going into the debate with a political agenda of one sort or another, and the great thing about global warming is that it's a complicated, hard to understand issue that can basically be anything you want it to be...because most of the people aren't able to tell one way or another.
On one side, you can make the argument that it's just environmentalist fringe lunatics gone wild, which is an implied argument to not do ANYTHING, because why should we listen to anything Al Gore and his crowd say? On the other side, it's a great argument to FORCE us to clean up our act. There are other reasons to do so, of course, but none so compelling as mass extinction. I think there is actual truth at the center of the debate, but that's pretty irrelevant to the debate as it's conducted in public. As in many areas of politics, I think the fight is way more important than actually getting anything done. Using the terms loosely, the "left" has long objected to the "right's" rejection of everything about the environmental movement, so "You're all going to die, you stupid fucks" is a pretty good way to try to get them to listen. And the "right" has long believed that the "lefty" environmental movement isn't worth listening to because it's densely packed with complete space loons, so mocking Al Gore is an excellent way to try and silence all the pro-environment people.