The climate change thread

[Az]

Now I am not a vegetarian, nor would I ever propose we stop using animal products... but you are sounding like you want to round up all animal life, destroy what is not useful, and create animal factories to exploit all that we can!!!

Are you some sort of moron? That's exactly what life is now. Nature is there simply because WE fancy having it around, and have nothing more useful to do than to watch at it ( And this isn't a dismissive statement, because enjoying the outdoors is one of the best things about being human )



Eli is 100% right.

[Sava]

IMO, we should strive to minimize our impact on the environment, live and let live... and find alternative means of producing goods which are currently made using products from animals. In addition, we should enact (or enforce) laws that minimize abuse done to animals.

I'm not saying we stop using all animal products all together. But we should research technologies and phase out products that use animal products.

Az and Eli... it's attitudes like yours that make me hate humans and make me wish for human extinction

Fine, call me a moron, but something in the fiber of my being tells me its wrong to destroy life and exploit it just for our pleasure.

Only sociopaths would think its okay to destroy life like that.

Hopefully humanity will become civilized enough to see what they are doing is wrong.

[Az]

Az and Eli... it's attitudes like yours that make me hate humans and make me wish for human extinction

Boowoo. I am sorry to hear that your so self hating and that you're probably hating and whining everything, but your hatred to me nullifies any such sympathy.

Only sociopaths would think its okay to destroy life like that.

Sociopaths are uncaring about the fait of humans. This has nothing to do with anything.

IMO, we should strive to minimize our impact on the environment, live and let live... and find alternative means of producing goods which are currently made using products from animals. In addition, we should enact (or enforce) laws that minimize abuse done to animals.

Why? don't get me wrong, I think that cruelty against animals is wrong, on itself, too, since harming animals often harms humans, in many ways, but you have to weigh it against possible benefits to humans.

I'm not saying we stop using all animal products all together. But we should research technologies and phase out products that use animal products.

How so? why so? If cruelty to animals is that terrible, you shouldn't be so goddamn half-assed about protesting it, be a 'man' about it, like ludd.


I, too, hope that in a distant future we'll be able to build a whole planet in which puppies and kittens and little calfs will be able to play together. But not before humanity covers the galaxy, and no child is left behind.

[Sava]

so self hating

then you don't know me at all...

I don't self hate at all.

I hate everyone else.

I think that cruelty against animals is wrong

obviously you don't


And it's people like you that make it easier for me to not feel guilty about wanting the earth to get hit with an asteroid.

[Immortal Wombat]

Originally posted by Az

A self-replicating bag of chemicals only has the right to existence if it knows it is a self-replicating bag of chemicals?

Your reductionist approach is selective."right" is meaningless without humans.

But since we have, we are, a human society, we can choose what those rights are. Personally, I fail to see the point of being a sentient and rational organism if we don't use those faculties to rise above our billion-year instinct to replicate at all costs. What use is being sentient if we remain selfish biological machines?
If the speed of light remains inviolable, we will probably never meet alien races to compete with, and we have already won at Earth. Given this scenario, I would rather humanity grew up to become a gardener rather than a stock broker.
Though I suspect it is too late.

[Flip McWho]

(The following refers to something posted a little while ago in the thread):
Well it definitely ain't racist, unless hes advocating wiping out a whole race.

Human supremacist or speciest maybe.



Also, Sava love the avatar

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Az


WTF????!!!

QFT

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat

But since we have, we are, a human society, we can choose what those rights are. Personally, I fail to see the point of being a sentient and rational organism if we don't use those faculties to rise above our billion-year instinct to replicate at all costs. What use is being sentient if we remain selfish biological machines?
If the speed of light remains inviolable, we will probably never meet alien races to compete with, and we have already won at Earth. Given this scenario, I would rather humanity grew up to become a gardener rather than a stock broker.
Though I suspect it is too late.

Your problem is that you think there is a reason to be sentinent. There isn't any reason to be that besides it gives an advantage in the fight for survival.

Conservation of species and habitats has only one purpose for humans, and that is to preserve potential knowledge.

[Eli]

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat

But since we have, we are, a human society, we can choose what those rights are. Personally, I fail to see the point of being a sentient and rational organism if we don't use those faculties to rise above our billion-year instinct to replicate at all costs. What use is being sentient if we remain selfish biological machines?
If the speed of light remains inviolable, we will probably never meet alien races to compete with, and we have already won at Earth. Given this scenario, I would rather humanity grew up to become a gardener rather than a stock broker.
Though I suspect it is too late.

You simply painted one option in black("selfish biological machines", "stock broker") and the other in pretty colors("grew up to become a gardener") and then made the obvious choice.

Where is the justification? How can you justify not going the course that does maximum good to ourselves? How can you justify having more rhinos and elephants stomping around when the price is having less people living less fulfilling lives?


You are all focusing on how much damage will be done to non-human, non-sentient life. Why do you ignore the enormous benefits to human life?

[Atahualpa]

Hey Eli, Blackcat, Az, wake up, it's not the elephants that hinder people from having a more fulfilling life, it's greed and avarice and this is what you are advocating exactly: more of it.

[Sandman]

Originally posted by Eli
You are all focusing on how much damage will be done to non-human, non-sentient life. Why do you ignore the enormous benefits to human life?

What enormous benefits?

[Eli]

Originally posted by Atahualpa
Hey Eli, Blackcat, Az, wake up, it's not the elephants that hinder people from having a more fulfilling life, it's greed and avarice and this is what you are advocating exactly: more of it.

You're confusing the targets of this "greed".
The greed that you claim to be hindering people from living more fulfilling lives is directed at humans while the "avarice" I'm advocating is directed at nature.

What enormous benefits?

Our entire rich, technological society.

If you visualize our progress as a trail, you'll see trillions of animal corpses lying behind us, surrounded by millions of extinct species and thousands of ruined habitats.

The enormous benefits are not only in the future, we're enjoying them now and have been enjoying them for millenia.



The view that i'm advocating is nothing new. We've been always doing it, all our accomplishments are based on using nature for our purposes.

But we are doing all that with our eyes closed and our fingers stuck in our ears. It's stupid. We need to exploit nature to survive and improve our condition and it's about time we stop denying it.

[Sandman]

I don't think that human domination of nature necessarily translates into the sort of ethical pronouncements you're making. It's the standard is/ought problem.

On an entirely different level, you seem to hold the opinion that when animals are destroyed it's always a result of progress, rather than stupidity or backwardness.

[Proteus_MST]

We can see the results of people thinking like Eli all around the world.
Look at Africa, many of the deserts were caused because first the early african kingdoms and later the european colonists needed timber for their progress and therefore felled a lot of trees in these regions.
Same goes for italy; Rome needed a lot of timber to build large navies. As a result of rome felling a lot of forests in their sphere of influence you will find a lot regions which as a result turned from once had lush forests and fertile soil into rocky areas where you will have problems to grow any food.

All of these people "just" did it because they thought it would be a good thing to exploit nature to improve their own conditions

[Eli]

No, no, no.

This is the third time I'm putting a disclaimer in this thread.

I do not call for unstoppable immediate exploitation of nature. I even believe we have gone somewhat overboard today. Again, looking on policies and not rhetorics, I can see myself voting for the Greens.

Pictures of the examples Proteus_MST raised should hang on the walls of every President, Prime Minister and CEO in the world. But not because the results of such policies are not pretty, but because in the long run they did more damage to humans than good.

But we are not ancient Rome or the Eastern Islanders, we have our science and technology and we have huge nation states and international organizations and we are much better at coordinating our actions and predicting their results.

We should be spending more money on weather and environment research, because there are so many of us and our impact on our environment is huge and can result in a catastrophe.
But whenever and wherever we can predict with reasonable certainty the results of our actions and act accordingly to remove or minimize to acceptable levels the damage that we causing to ourselves, we should by no means let nature stand in our way.

For example, I'm not saying we should cut down the entire rain forest today. That would do enormous damage to the environment and eventually to ourselves since we depend on the environment for our living. It will also cause the extinction of countless species we havent studied and catalogued.

But when/if a time comes and we will no longer be needing the rainforest to do whatever it does(for example, much more efficient CO2->O converters than trees), then I would fully support cutting most of it down and filling the land with fields, farms and cities.