Why are we so passive when it comes to the destruction of the planet?

Just wondering. I'm not doing much about it, so my criticism, what there is of it, is directed at me, too. It just seems strange that we're going to sit around, go to work or school, hang out at the mall, buy whatever it is that we don't really need but kind of want, at least until we have it, while at the same time the world heads at a fairly fast clip towards a future that's not going to be very happy for life as we know it. Seems like we should at least be able to muster up the gumption to shut down the country for a day or two and demand the insanity stop while there's still a chance (albeit, a thin one) to salvage the situation. Maybe we're conditioned to believe technology or g(G)od(s) or Democrats will save us, but it's hard to believe we're really that stupid.

Anyway, here's a link to a particularly despressing article by Mike Davis. He ends the essay wondering whether our children's children will have children of their own. Reminds me of the song where Sting sings, "I hope the Russians love their children, too." Maybe the problem is we don't really love our children, at least not enough to save them.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=57&ItemID=8876

The Other Hurricane
Has the Age of Chaos Begun?

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But all the major components of global climate -- air, water, ice, and vegetation -- are actually nonlinear: At certain thresholds they can switch from one state of organization to another, with catastrophic consequences for species too finely-tuned to the old norms. Until the early 1990s, however, it was generally believed that these major climate transitions took centuries, if not millennia, to accomplish. Now, thanks to the decoding of subtle signatures in ice cores and sea-bottom sediments, we know that global temperatures and ocean circulation can, under the right circumstances, change abruptly -- in a decade or even less.

The paradigmatic example is the so-called "Younger Dryas" event, 12,800 years ago, when an ice dam collapsed, releasing an immense volume of meltwater from the shrinking Laurentian ice-sheet into the Atlantic Ocean via the instantly-created St. Lawrence River. This "freshening" of the North Atlantic suppressed the northward conveyance of warm water by the Gulf Stream and plunged Europe back into a thousand-year ice age.

Abrupt switching mechanisms in the climate system -- such as relatively small changes in ocean salinity -- are augmented by causal loops that act as amplifiers. Perhaps the most famous example is sea-ice albedo: The vast expanses of white, frozen Arctic Ocean ice reflect heat back into space, thus providing positive feedback for cooling trends; alternatively, shrinking sea-ice increases heat absorption, accelerating both its own further melting and planetary warming.

Thresholds, switches, amplifiers, chaos -- contemporary geophysics assumes that earth history is inherently revolutionary. This is why many prominent researchers -- especially those who study topics like ice-sheet stability and North Atlantic circulation -- have always had qualms about the consensus projections of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world authority on global warming.

In contrast to Bushite flat-Earthers and shills for the oil industry, their skepticism has been founded on fears that the IPCC models fail to adequately allow for catastrophic nonlinearities like the Younger Dryas. Where other researchers model the late 21st-century climate that our children will live with upon the precedents of the Altithermal (the hottest phase of the current Holocene period, 8,000 years ago) or the Eemian (the previous, even warmer interglacial episode, 120,000 years ago), growing numbers of geophysicists toy with the possibilities of runaway warming returning the earth to the torrid chaos of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM: 55 million years ago) when the extreme and rapid heating of the oceans led to massive extinctions.

more...

When we go too far, the planet will destroy us.

Then keep on spinning for another gazillion years while the cockroaches evolve and mutate into the next race of republicans.

something like--"What's all this shit about saving the planet? The planet is gonna shake us off like a bad case of fleas!"

"Save the planet? The planet's doing fine. It's people who are fucked!"

what we are destroying are the conditions on the planet conducive to the survival of humans and many other life forms . . . but no matter what we do, the Earth will keep on spinning away long after we humans no longer exist . . .

why the human race is in such a rush to foul our own nest beyond habitation is beyond me . . .

some people (e.g the right wing and other idiots) just accept that devastation is inevitable, and get theirs while they still can . . .

others (e.g. the left, environmentalists, and other thinkers) believe that it is humankind's responsibility -- to ourselves, to other species, to the planet, to God/Creation/Universe (take your pick) -- to live more lightly and try to reverse the apocalyptic trend . . .

given the millions of years it has taken evolution to create lions and tigers and bears (oh, my!), we have a choice . . . we can become co-creators with God/Creation/Universe (your choice) and continue the evolutionary process, or we can destroy everything . . .

our current path is certainly one of destruction . . . but most humans, I'm quite sure, don't want destruction . . . they want creation to continue, to grow, to evolve . . . and to that end they want all of the planet's inhabitants to learn to live together in peace and mutual respect . . .

what we need today is a new "Prime Directive" . . . something like "The welfare of the planet and the environment will take precedence over all human activity -- no exceptions!" . . .

yeah, it will cause some economic hardships, particularly for corporations . . . but those will be NOTHING compared to what we'll end up paying if we DON'T act . . . and soon . . .

LOL! I can hear the righties now. Oh, and it will mean hardship for corporations? We can't have that, now, can we? They'll need all of our cash for the End Times. I guess they think they'll have to spread a lot of greenbacks around "up there," grease St. Peter's palm and all, to get favorable regulations allowing them to foul up Heaven, too.

Denial: "It's not really going to happen to humanity." or "Those scientists who are talking about global warming (etc etc) are all wrong."

Laziness: "I personally can't do anything about it. I have to go to work / do this, that, and the other thing."

Um, I don't know. I think the idea hasn't worked its way out into the mainstream enough yet? People aren't facing up to reality?

I, like you, include myself in these categories, FWIW.....

I actually do pay close attention to these issues, and just about everything I see in daily life I find myself processing through the lense of what will happen to it in the midst of catastrophic climate change.

But I feel like the only entities that have the power to affect the necessary change are governments and big corporations. There isn't much we as citizens can do except complain about the lack of action to our legislators and be politiely dismissed; and of course, going off on our own to prepare for the worst. Some governments, such as the EU, may actually be taking steps that will have an effect, but there is no way ours *ever* will, not until it's far too late. And that goes for Democrats too; even we regain power, it will take too much of a shake-up of the current economic paradigm to save things, and American politicians will never risk that.

One day the public will finally wake up, maybe when winter lasts six months in the northern states and no one has heard from Canada for a long time. It'll take that much of a change, I think.

The old banking families that control the central banks are like Casey Jones, the coked-out engineer of an out-of-control freight train.

Since the creation of the Federal Reserve, fractional reserve banking, fiat currency and the end of the gold standard, we've been on a course that will inevitably end with hyperinflation, and the collapse of the dollar and the world economy. It is inevitable -- soon -- as in, it is happening right now before our very eyes. Anyone who says otherwise is full of shit, whether they know it or not.

This will result in what is politely referred to as "demand destruction." Various experts figure there will be about 2 billion people left on the planet after the convulsive social upheaval and widespread starvation that will result in the total collapse of the dollar and the world economy. That would be about 4.5 billion fewer people than now.

We really have passed the point of no return on this. Inflation and the concerted devaluation of the world's fiat currencies is accelerating at a frightening rate every day. This is apparent in the rising price of gold and energy relative to the fiat currencies. There's no good currency. They're all being devalued.

The environment of the planet, likewise, is now completely out of control. The feedback mechanisms, such as the melting of the ice caps and permafrost methane release are fully underway. There is no way we can stop this now.

Informed minds have understood this for more than half a century. The bankers know all this. They've been profiting like bandits, because, really, that's all bankers know how to do.

Have a nice night.

On Edit: Karmadillo, I went off on a rant and really didn't address your simple question. My take is that we've been conditioned to be passive, through our educational system and media.

hits the fan as it won't be worth anything either. Wawa top 1/10th of 1% will be suckin' it just like us...wawa

http://www.avhub.net/congressionalhideawaygreenbriar.htm

This is the kind of thing they have in mind when the scat really hits the fan. This place was built 45 years ago, and is considered somewhat obsolete. I'm sure there's all kinds of places like this all over the world where the cockroaches will go when the going gets good.

they are. I will never go in a hole until I'm dead, and even then I'd rather let the birds pick me. LOL

false alarms in the past. I remember back in the 80s, we were told all the rainforests in the world would disappear by the year 2000. Here it is 2005 and the rainforests are still there - and still being cut down. Makes me wonder how many other false alarms have turned folks into skeptics.

rate?

I just wonder if we can believe what we are told. Exaggerating and outright lying don't help the cause.

There wasn't much you could do about it as an individual.

Here's a link to the pdf of the article referenced above:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=162809&mesg_id=162828

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1007-21.htm



Yes, I know: the environmental community has stumbled on many fronts. All of us in this room have heard and reported the charges: that the rhetoric is alarmist and the ideology polarizing; that command-and-control regulation produces bureaucratic bungles, slows economic growth, and delays technological advances that save lives; that what began as a grassroots movement has now become an entrenched green bureaucracy precariously hanging on in occupied Washington while passionate citizens across the country are starved for financial resources. There is some truth in these charges; all movements flounder and must periodically regroup.

Before we consider the case closed, however, let me urge you to take a hard look at the backlash. I didn't reckon on the backlash. If the Green Revolution is a bloody pulp today, it is not just because the environmental movement mugged itself. It is because the corporate, political, and religious right ganged up on it in the back alleys of power. Big companies fund a relentless assault on green values and policies. Political ideologues launch countless campaigns to strip from government all its functions except those that reward their rich benefactors. And homegrown ayatollahs are more set on savaging gay people than saving the green earth.

I especially failed to reckon with how ruthless the reactionaries would be. What they did to Rachel Carson when Silent Spring appeared in 1962 has been honed to a sharp edge aimed at the jugular of anyone who challenges them.

My parents gave it to me when I was a kid. And a bio of MLK. Probably shaped my life in pretty profound ways. But you're right...protecting the environment has been turned into "tree hugging" by the right, denegrated as something bad in the same way the did to the word "liberal."

Noah was a doom and gloom environmentalist.

nt

vulgar t-shirt, but our own survival gets a big ol' yawn. Peak oil freaks many DUers out, but inability to grow food, massive forest failures and the inability to even breathe from climate change doesn't inspire a similar response. Perhaps the RW won with their memes about the environment being a non-issue important only to hysterical "bleeding hearts"; perhaps most people feel that it's too big an issue, or they just have different priorities (the Iraq war, civil rights, the economy etc.). How much will any of those other issues matter if we're not around to fight for them? Having a planet to live on that can support human life is pretty damn important, IMHO.

Just as PETA tends to create space for people to act on their concerns regarding animals, maybe PETP (well, maybe we need a better acronym) could create space for similar actions regarding the earth. Patience and trust in our leaders sure doesn't seem to be getting us anywhere.

It's dead.

It's unpopular. It's too depressing.

The popular mental-ism is 'I want it, and I want it now.'

Even I, a Liberal Environmentalist Tree Hugger, occasionally fall into that more popular mental-ism. How in the world can I expect someone who never even mentalizes their environment, to see what is happening?

Take away oil, and its a whole new ballgame. It's coming, and then environmentalism will be reborn.

want to bring about conditions which will result in a sparsely populated planet inhabited only by the privileged? :scared:

And while new economic models show that becoming an enviromentally friendly economy would be a boom, it requires long term thinking and planning that the short-term-profits-uber-all mindset of today's crony capitalism simply can't grasp. Thus, corporate America continues to remain enviromentally destructive, and their lapdogs in government follow right along.

For many individuals however it is simply a matter of envirmental fatigue. For years now they've recycled, conserved, and tried to do what they can, but given our notoriously short attention span, they are now either fed up with what they see as sacrifice(especially since they see so many around them who never have sacrificed), or they are simply bored with the whole matter. Either way, they've given up.

Then there are those who just don't care. Short sighted, narrow minded, they are actually quite proud of how much they waste. Bigger, badder, louder, more destructive is their motto, and they go all out. Any sort of sacrifice simply can't be made, even the most miniscule. God forbid that they buy a motorcycle with a four stroke, less polluting engine, that would shave 5mph off the top end. These folks somehow have intertwined being polluting and wasteful with the American dream, and are persuing it with a vengance.

Then there are those of us who are still plugging along, doing what we can on our own. We have embraced the philosophy of Think Globally, Act locally with a vengance, and are proceeding apace. For a long while, it seemed more like an exercise in futility, as the Earth became even more polluted despite our best efforts. But now as oil and gas prices rise, we are actually seeing some benefits to our wallets, and such positive results are always encouraging. I buzz to work on a small motorcycle that cranks out 100mpg, and each and every day I say to myself with great glee"Six dollars save on gas!".

And that ultimately might be our salvation, our own economic self interests. As more and more people become strapped for cash, they will find ways to save on their energy costs. Trade in that SUV for a hybrid. Trade in that Civic for a scooter. Implement biodiesel for the family farm machinery. And on and on. Will we reach the critical mass of people doing these actions that we will actually start reversing our polluting ways? Quite possibly. But the real question is whether it will be in time to keep us from going down the way of the dinosaurs? We will have to wait and see on that one.