Anti-Humans 30

[zdas04]

I've often referred to the environmental lobby as "anti-human". I just came across a document on the U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration (EIA) web site that supports that idea. The whole document is at Laramie Energy, but I've extracted a page from it that I've attached.

The attached is a series of quotes from noted environmentalists. I especially like the quote from John Davis (editor of Earth First) who said

Human beings as a species have no more value than slugs

or

I do not believe that a human being has a right to life ... I would rather have medical experiments done on our children than on animals

I think that the quotes in the attached fully support the idea that the law firms generally called "Environmental Non-Government Organizations (e-NGO)" are totally and completely against their own species.

David

 

[cranky108]

If there are lots of reforestation projects, they must not be as important as the deforestation. The reasoning is that they are not given as much mention, and deforestation is.

Nobel Peace Prize can't be worth much. They gave them to people who haven't done anything.

Or is this some of the bias in news. Show the bad, and not the good. Such a depressing viewpoint.

 

[rconnor]

zdas04,

My intent was not to turn this into an AGW debate, it was to express my concern over the terms that both sides use to identify the other side (anti-human vs. deniers) that polarize the debate and turn it into an emotional argument rather than an intellectual debate. Moreover, my intent was to discuss the base ideology of both sides, which I believe you attempted to comment on.

(I liked the George Carlin video; I'm a big fan of his)

jwm,

Are you saying that the environmental lobby is more powerful/influential/corrupt than the corporate/oil lobby? Really? Now, I'm not one of those that believes that the oil lobby is some evil entity set on destroying the planet but if you want to call the environmetal lobby as something similar than I think you are pretty far off.

ImminentCollapse,

You bring up a very good point and I agree with you; there are more immediate issues that developing countries are concerned with. However, I feel that a lot of these, at least where Western civilizations hold some blame, is in the exploitation of these countries due to capitalistic ideology. The same ideology that is strongly opposed to the idea of environmental reform and the same ideology that is responsible for the current economic climate.

This is where environmentally driven reform meets with economic and sociologic reform. The idea that environmental reform may alter our capitalistic system may also have economic and sociologic benefits as well.

The opposition to this is largely based on the concept of cultural cognition that I spoke to before. Because our current capitalistic system is so engrained in our very being, it is hard to accept that it is failing us on many fronts. And if you don't believe the environmental or sociological reasons then just the economic reasons alone are cause for change. We can no longer have a greedy, short-term thinking corporate culture that is solely based on maximizing profits this quarter while damning the entire global economic system (not to mention exploitation of developing nations and careless use of resources).

Deregulation has caused catastrophic damage to the global economy, just as it did with the whole Enron issue and healthcare, and so I'm not sure why people so zealously defend deregulation, given its track record. Granted, careless and short sighted regulation can cause equal (if not worse) harm, which is why this topic is so important. But the idea that change is needed is (or ought to be) accepted by both sides. This brings me full circle to the idea that polarizing terms like "anti-human" and "denier" undermine the core of this debate.

Also, to compare Darfur/Rwanda with Iraq is apples and oranges. One was a mass genocide where Western society largely ignored it. The other was a dictator who was oppressing his people/had WMD's/hiding a world-wide wanted terrorist (opps, scratch those last two) and western society started a multi-billion dollar multi-year war/occupation. Also, one was based in a country with large oil reserves and the other was in a largely resourceless area of Africa...(not that I feel that was the only reason for the Iraq war but it might be a key difference on why we didn't move in as whole-heartedly to aid in Rwanda, which was a much worse situation)

Very sorry for another lengthy post.

 

[zdas04]

rconnor,
My intention in posting the attachment to my first post was to show the e-NGO's in a light that is not quite as flattering as the media presents them. They are run by people (mostly lawyers) who act as though they see the world as either "perfect" or "perfectly wrong". An "unspoiled" ANWAR (even with natural oil seeps) is perfect. ANWAR with a drilling rig, pipeline construction, and significant limitations on environmental impact is perfectly wrong.

Reading their published documents makes me certain that their agenda has less to do with "protecting the environment" than it does in punishing industry. "Industry" has done some reprehensible things, but so have environmentalists. I get very sick of hearing these lawyers protrayed as saints.

David

 

[TheTick]

Save the planet. Kill yourself.

 

[satchmo]

If you already believe that capitalism is failing on many fronts and deregulation has caused "catastrophic damage", i guess you'll only see government fixes as acceptable.

 

[berkshire]

JMW,
You said
""" This is exampled by the way Militant tendency nearly took of the UK labour party.
They do it not by targeting the apparently important jobs in the public eye, like Parliamentary candidate but by becoming officials within the party machine.
They are the Uriah heaps who are only too happy to do all the grunt work, the unglamorous organising work. Progressively they take over the key posts in the party machine and are then the puppet masters.
It doesn't matter that the vast majority of the party members have completely different political views, they are now being manipulated by a very few extremists."""

Now are you suggesting that people opposed to these views should do the same by infiltrating these groups at the bottom.
I cannot see the people who inhabit these forums having the inclination or the stomach to do that. It would be like going out and socialising with the hogs.
B.E.




The good engineer does not need to memorize every formula; he just needs to know where he can find them when he needs them. Old professor

 

[zdas04]

berkshire,
That's awful. Hogs can be very nice people. They only eat their young sometimes. I would rather socalize with them than with enviro-lawyers.

David

 

[Longinthetooth]

People ask why we have not been contacted by alien beings from more advanced species on other worlds. Could it be that all intelligent life is a dead end on the evolutionary ladder? Do all civilisations eventaly kill themseles with nuclear weapons or deplete/poison their world and die in whatever remains?
Just a thought.

 

[jmw]

Berkshire,
I reported how Militant tendency nearly obtained control and that the methods to do so are described by Saul Alinsky in one of his books and that this pretty much how many NGOs have also been taken over by extremists.
I said nothing about doing the same to regain control.
The fact that these people are usually a minority means that by resolute action the rest of the membership can take suitable democratic steps to remove these people once identified.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[TheTick]

We live in a world where "moderate" has become an epithet.

 

[SNORGY]

geordie87:

No, the destruction of civilization as we know it occurs when enough people become MBAs.

Regards,

SNORGY.

 

[jmw]

Geordie:
Question asked and answers offered many times.
The search for alien life has been a long standing project and a great deal of thought given to what we should expect.
One of the ways to search is for radio signatures. In fact this is the basis of some of the work being done now.
The problem is the speed of light. If we ever detect an alien life signature it will be from a civilisation that existed long ago. Unless, of course, we can find some signatures transmitted via wormholes.... so we need to find a few of these maybe if we want to find current civilisations.

The existence of aliens is a statistical probability.
Recent astronomical work has now revealed a number of "earth-like" planets round other stars so we can be assured they exist and 99.999999999999% sure of alien civilisations.

The question of alien visitation is something else.
The first consideration is timelines.... what is the likelihood of an alien civilisation having solved the problem of travelling over vast interstellar distances (with a reasonable journey time)and deciding to visit the earth at this time?
Is there anything special about the earth? We are pretty remote from anywhere interesting. More likely initial journeys would be in search of scientific data. There are plenty of astronomical phenomena that would provide a much more relevant focus of interest than sifting through lots of "earth-like" planets, especially if they prove common, simply to find some primitive civilisations. (love the Gateway stories....)

Would we be the polynesian natives visited by Captain Cook or would we be the Native Americans or Native Australians visited by "superior" cultures or would those cultures have also learned the lessons of culture clashes and taken care not to contact us just yet?
Do UFO's exist, or rather, are some UFO sightings evidence of alien visitations?
Or should we expect any culture capable of interstellar travel would have better stealth mode than to be detected by our primitive technology?
More importantly, why would they be interested in a vastly inferior culture that can just about manage to get to its own moon but has problems landing anything on MARS (unless THEY are there on Mars observing and don't want to be found?

The assumptions have to be that for whatever percentage of alien civilisations that destroy themselves in nuclear war, some proportion, however small, will avoid this catastrophe and the next and the next after that etc and survive. Sort of like a knock out contest where we have to expect that at least some alien civilisations will survive.
These will be pretty smart and advanced to be able then to develop routine interstellar traffic.
We might better hope we remain undiscovered until such time as we also have reached that level.




JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[Longinthetooth]

I guess the premise of my question (or theory?) is that intelligent life always ends in diasaster- no exceptions! I dont see a problem with this, based on observation of life on earth to date. (Admitedly a small sample in the cosmic scheme of things).

 

[ewh]

I tend to think that a truly advanced, intelligent civilization would know better than to introduce themselves to such a barbaric planet as ours.

"Good to know you got shoes to wear when you find the floor." - [small]Robert Hunter[/small]

 

[cranky108]

Why would any intelligent civilization want to visit us?
We spent most of our energies on petty endevers, to enrich ourselves or control others. Only a few of us bother to explore the universe, for which the rest of us become angry for the riches spent on doing so.

And we can't even feed and educate a large part of the world population, although we have the means.

 

[beej67]

Humorous and marginally related:

Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -

http://www.campbellcivil.com

 

[jgailla]

beej, that looks like xkcd.
I had a conversation last night about why the term sustainable growth is an oxymoron.

 

[beej67]

It's Monday's XKCD.

I'm a huge fan, ever since I read the one about traffic engineering.

Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -

http://www.campbellcivil.com

 

[drawoh]

I tend to think that a truly advanced, intelligent civilization would know better than to introduce themselves to such a barbaric planet as ours.

Why do we keep assuming that an alien civilization will be wise and virtuous? Perhaps they are searching for a new planet because they destroyed theirs.

Terrestrial species last an average of something like four million years. Probably, we would not survive a end-of-Cretaceous style meteorite impact.

I think an environmental collapse would be survivable, at least in the gene vector sense. There would just be less of us, with a reduced quality of life.

JHG

 

[jmw]

The more ethical a race is the more likely it is to have a non-interventionist policy either out of politeness or respect for the laws of evolution. They probably would watch us go down in flames and shake their heads, but saving the antelope from the lions is not a good evolutionary policy.

Our best bet for survival, if we need rescuing, is a mercenary race which would exact a price.
If we don't need rescuing, better a moral race discovers us and stay the heck out of the way knowing full well the perils of culture shock.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com