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Re: Brashears on Hanson



charliew wrote:
> 

> So what do you propose?  Sewage treatment for animal waste?  This
> particular point is ridiculous, unless you are trying to tell me that we
> need to get rid of cattle, introduce a bunch of predators to keep animal
> populations down, and all become vegetarian.
> 
>   Acid rain is still with us, and high elevation
> >lakes in the Adirondaks and White mountains are still dead, and red spruce
> >is still in decline. All our gains can be steadily eroded, because of
> >population growth, and our sprawling, consumptive lifestyle.
> 
> Certainly, we are irresponsible for consuming more than the bare minimum
> necessary for survival.  If all of us would just get rid of all our tools
> and technology, and live as animals with the rest of nature's beasts,
> everything would take care of itself.  NOT!  I for one, am immensely more
> intelligent than the non-human animals in nature, and I intend to use every
> bit of IQ I can muster.  If some animals are inconvenienced by this, that's
> their problem.

I would submit that environmental problems are not sufficiently
described by "some animals being inconvienced". Although knowledge of
global biodiversity is sketchy, virtually all biologists are in
agreement that mankind is causing what would be the sixth mass
extinction the earth has experienced, and may cause a majority of the
world's species to go extinct.

I also assert that most of this destruction is unnecessary and
unjustified. When we throw away as much usable materials as we do, and
use as much land as we do, that our lifestyle could indeed be described
as wasteful, and far, far more than needed to support even a luxurious
lifestyle, let alone "the bare minimum necassary for surviaval." I
believe we could do many things to counter the destructive tendencies of
society and reduce our impact on the biosphere, and still not 'live as
animals' as charliew says it would require. Because so much
environmental damage is done by western civilization's wastefulness,
much improvement could be made at a rather low economic cost. And I am
firmly convinced that a healthy biosphere is very necassary to
humanity's survival, and thus is more important than the relatively
small amount of economic wealth we would have to relinquish. 

I also believe we have become hipersensitive to our own material wants.
When people support extravagant ecnomic growth, even when it requires
that our planet face biological meltdown, something is wrong. I think it
is clear that our priorities must be reordered to reflect the relative
imporantance of things. On both utilitarian and ethical grounds, the
environmental agenda, is the logically justified one.



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