F**k the Earth: Save man’s mind
Posted by overmanwarrior 10 years ago to Science
The videos on this article are real. Those people are really out there, and they think they are correct in their social position. They are what we are up against. The fight of our day is really along these battle lines. The earth, or man's mind and who values what more and why.
"The earth has its best chance because of mankind, not in spite of it. Of the two, man’s mind is more valuable and if one has to be saved, it must be the imagination of human beings." This sentence put the emphasis on the priorities of a rational mind on a system that is controlled and directed by physical forces and interaction. Man's employment of ethics based on logic and rationality in the development of science and technology have allowed the Gaia worshiper to hitch a free ride on the productivity of the human mind while they imprison their mind to the the forces of inter galactic physics. The blank out. The Earth is only one CME (corona mass ejection from the sun) away from bringing physical survival back into a real and personal perspective. Gaia, Mother Earth, and the loony left is helpless against it, but man's logical, rational mind has the capacity and capability to know the threat and prepare for it and survive . The other organisms on this planet are just along for the ride.
Cheers.
Some of my technical work puts me in direct contact with what I call "leedy greenies". These people really are in some sort of religious cult. When a though is no longer allowed to be tested by science it becomes religion. And, frankly, we have a lot of that in our culture now...in medicine, in the enviro movement, in economics...
In order to survive, man has to discover and produce everything he needs, which means that he has to alter his background and adapt it to his needs. Nature has not equipped him for adapting himself to his background in the manner of animals. From the most primitive cultures to the most advanced civilizations, man has had to manufacture things; his well-being depends on his success at production. The lowest human tribe cannot survive without that alleged source of pollution: fire. It is not merely symbolic that fire was the property of the gods which Prometheus brought to man. The ecologists are the new vultures swarming to extinguish that fire."-AR, Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution
Unless you claim that the mind can have an independent existence outside of its meat machine, sort of like religious belief in a soul that survives physical death, or unless you think we can store our individual mental content in machines or in natural forces that don't depend on an earth to maintain their perpetual continuity, you cannot have mind without its entire planetary support system.
Yes, nature is red in tooth and claw, and that is the selection process of what will survive. We humans and our much-vaunted minds are not advanced enough yet to have developed beyond the stage of devouring each other. We are still pragmatic and virtual cannibals of each other's energies instead of using our intelligence to secure long-term survivability of each individual within the existing reality.
To detach mind from its living host so that it will survive past the extinguishing of our solar system and the cosmic cataclysms of galaxies colliding and black holes reabsorbing all the stuff of the universe, you'll have to find a storage medium that is indestructible and yet self-directed, capable of being anywhere and everywhere, and having reached a stage of development of being able to control its environment or of being immutable to any changes in its environment; in brief, immortality, omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience.
And then what? Where is the joy in that? Where is the purpose of existence beyond that? Is that really what you think was the project of a deity in engineering the evolution of lifeforms from microorganisms through all the layers of complexification until an apeman emerged with a brain capable of abstract thought and self-aware reasoning? As science fiction writers have speculated, maybe all our Universe and creation of sentient minds was just some godling's school project.
To sum up your false choice, mind and earth are not separable and divisible where one has to be destroyed for the sake of the other. Our longest-range self-interest is in preserving both. A mind detached from its physical environment is a vacuous ideal, and the memes (the mind's content) promulgating that notion are on a self-destruct course. Not even a trillion-dollar profit is worth that.
You seemed to have missed the point of the article completely, which is that environmentalism is a religion, it is a religion of hate, a religion that believes man should live like animals – without the use of their mind, and believes killing 5.5 billion people would be a good start.
“We humans and our much-vaunted minds are not advanced enough yet to have developed beyond the stage of devouring each other. We are still pragmatic and virtual cannibals of each other's energies instead of using our intelligence to secure long-term survivability of each individual within the existing reality.” This is complete BS unless you are talking about countries dominated by socialism or environmentalism.
Overman was never postulating a disembodied mind - if you had read the first part of the article you would have seen that. Quit putting words in his mouth.
I subscribe fully to Pantheism not as a religion but as a paradigm. If the Universe and God are an identity, then couldn't scientists and philosophers--men of the mind--be considered the true prophets? Wouldn't God smile on his children striving to uncover the secrets of the Universe? Perhaps its this journey that is the true meaning of life.
I proudly admit to being "green" (although my favorite color is orange), and I am damn sure not a communist.
They have been very successful because they have paralyzed our opinions by taking hostage our values, dressed up like nice grandmas to lure us closer.
Who doesn't like nature? When that answer is provided, then comes,,,,,,,,,,,,who doesn't like various forms of socialism and communism? Because the progressive values have been affiliated by the nature lovers it helps lead minds to the statement, capitalism is bad for nature. Managed societies by government is good for nature. That is what we find out when we get close to grandma and discover that she's a wolf.
"green"in m context means I'm frugal. I like to recycle stuff or re-purpose things where I can, walk or bicycle for the exercise when I don't have to go a long way or carry a load. Grow some of my own food and flowers, use worm tea instead of Ortho to get rid of white flys on my hibiscus, etc.
I do think the earth may be getting over populated with respect to potable water and arable land, but I don't support wiping out people or any other life form if I can help it. Better to promote quality of life than quantity. Better to free up time for using ones mind instead of struggling with a hand-to-mouth subsistence every day.
I don't understand what you mean by opportunity costs associated with my faith. Would you please elucidate?
DDT as an effective, low-cost insecticide eradicated malaria in the southern US (although banned in the US since 1972) and has greatly reduced it in South America. Although considered harmless to humans, it is unfortunately lethal to some marine life and has a drastic impact on bird populations due to egg shell thinning. You and Rich may not agree with me but I don't think its necessary to wipe out a bird species for man to survive.
I read that DDT is still made in Mexico and other places and is still used in malarial hot spots in Africa. That's a good thing. But I think it should be used sparingly where necessary and curtailed when no longer needed. Don't want to OD on it and risk mutations of super resistant bugs.
DB, I guess you are referring to the 100s that perished from heat prostration in Paris during a particularly hot "ete" due to lack of air conditioning and blamed on French energy policy. What can I say? France seems to have always had some weird policies on lots of things. Should have gotten better after the revolution but didn't. What's ironic is that France is a leader in nuclear power usage. http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Countr...
Actually I'm a supporter of nuclear power--even took a couple of courses in Nuclear Engineering at UCLA. It's unfortunate that our San Onofre plant was shut down last year due to technical problems and obsolescense.
BTW thanks for leading me to the Atlas Society site. I read the excellent article, "Green Cathedrals" by Robert James
I agree with you on the nuclear power issue. Thorium is a far better option than smart meters shutting off our appliances because some pin head thinks we are consuming too much power--afraid that we'll kill some turtle in Nevada.
Sorry, I couldn't resist this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUUKrHO3w...
Let 's start there. If you believe that to be the case what do you see as the ideal solution?
An ideal goal would be to reach an equilibrium between people and water. How to get there? Education on best practices for water treatment, sanitation and conservation. Reclaimation and tertiary treatment. Desalination. All of which require money and energy. Unfortunately I see this as a (choke... dare I say) collective effort.
Getting back to Rich's (OMW) conjecture, even though man is the reasoning, dominant species, without these measures there is only going to be a finite amount of potable water even if we allow the rest of the planet to dry to death.
For instance, environmental and other regulations (cronism) have caused the cost of a 60 mile water pipe line from Pueblo reservoir to Colorado Springs to balloon to almost $3 Billion. Note the Keystone pipeline carry oil and going over 2000 miles was only suppose to cost $5 Billion. That has nothing to do with technology. That pipeline could easily be built for under $100 million.
Meanwhile we have a much more expensive boondoggle about to happen her in California. Jerry Brown wants to dig tunnels under the San Joaquin Delta to move water from northern to southern CA in order to save the Delta Smelt among other things. We are already drinking some "Astronaught" water, as the West Basin Reclaimation District euphemistically calls it and a desalination plant is in our future as well. As you noted, the cost of clean water has historically become cheaper, but I fear that trend is going to reverse.
“Man is the only living species that has the power to act as his own destroyer - and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.” - Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism
"Philosophy studies the fundamental nature of existence, of man, and of man’s relationship to existence. As against the special sciences, which deal only with particular aspects, philosophy deals with those aspects of the universe which pertain to everything that exists. In the realm of cognition, the special sciences are the trees, but philosophy is the soil which makes the forest possible." AR Philosophy Who Needs It?
not a bubble. I don't buy into the ethic that all things are created equal. I am a humanist.
" ...philosophy deals with those aspects of the universe which pertain to everything that exists." Again, the totality of the universe comes before man.
If you ask anyone to narrate the evolution of the world since the "Big Bang" the story will no doubt end with the state of the world today. Try to block out the "emergence of Man" for a moment and see the world as it is... a vastly evolved menagerie of many, many life forms, some here today, many not. Then put Man (humanity) into the mix and you will see that, even though we humans are the dominant species on the face of the Earth today, we have not been doing a very good job as "Stewards of our world."
Think about it. We should not be content to think that we are the best of creation/evolution. We should be thinking "How can we improve upon what Nature has given us?"
Peace out! Live well and KEEP THINKING!
How does "Our species preserve other species?"
Please give examples.
If you think that "the goal is human life" and "we are incredibly successful at it" can you offer examples to back that up?
I think that you need to expand your world-view. I can help you.
I would really like to know where your thoughts are coming from.
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/sfallo...
What in the world does it take to get people to understand objective reality?
What is amazing is that environmentalists will complain that creationism is not scientific. Both of them ignore the evidence and logic and they are two peas in a pod.
Those that know, will seldom say, while those that don't, continually say. Or something very similar.
Do you admit they have lied over and over to advance their agenda?
Al Gore and his hockey stick graph is just one of thousands of lies by AGW prophets. Anyone who knows anything about history knew immediately saw that the graph ignored the Little Ice age and the Roman warming period. Did AGW prophets disown this blatant lie? No they tried to cover it up with Climategate.
The anti-nuclear environmentalist consistently lied about the dangers. Their favorite one was that the half-life of some of the by products was hundreds of thousands of years. If you had any chemistry or physics in life, think about it. By their reasoning an infinite half-life would be the most dangerous. What is an element with an infinite half-life?
We do have an unwritten rule [often bent] that threads will stay on topic. Abortion is not the topic of this thread, or of every thread.
You make a great point in few words that have great meaning because they are true.
Fred Speckmann
commonsenseforamericans@yahoo.com
I can only comment on one theme: "At some point the modern worshipers of Mother Earth decided that the way to deal with these tragedies is to revert to the past worship of earth as a deity and to appeal to its sensibilities hoping that human life would be spared some of this tragedy."
I just think it's both shallower and deeper than that. So very, very few of us can really think and imagine beyond our own lives, our little eye blink of reality. Most can't even think very well about next year, some just next month - and don't want to do the work necessary to learn how to. Those are the majority that are the subject of so much of the manipulation of others, anyone that can gain their attention through the manipulation of their emotions. Cry for the little puppy, weep for the cow so cruelly murdered to feed and cloth you, bleed for nature that supports you. Be frightened of a god or just wild nature, express and share your pain, hear the message from the wiser men, save the whales, then go on with your day to day life feeling better about yourself and your own future. Learn from that, that humans are the evil by daring to try to do more than the rest of nature. We're describing the actuality of all religions and all supernatural worship.
You speak eloquently of the importance of the 'mind' and 'imagination' of man - but the majority don't really have the use of their minds and have very little imagination. There have always existed a very few that realize that their minds can imagine and create, can as you say actually release mankind from the binds of nature's whimsy. It's a fact that though we might be born equally, we all progress to different levels or steps of consciousness in different time frames, and that those at equal development can relate well and comprehend what their peers and those still developing, experience and think of. But those that lag in development or stop at some level, can't even begin to imagine or dream of what the more developed or progressed, experience and think of.
But again most of those more developed or progressed, don't really want to imagine and create. They want to control and gain power for their lives. A few of them want to pass that on to their progeny as foundations and trusts and governments. But regardless of how much of that control and power they gain, they still can't really use or trust imagination and they fear, they're frightened. Rather than rely individually on their own creative and imaginative ability, they've manipulated the emotions of the mass and/or controlled those masses in a way to advance their own purposes, and some in doing that so assiduously, have even convinced themselves. So the manipulation of emotions and control increase, and increase. It is the actuality of human nature.
It's a long and arduous trek ahead, as it's always been for those that wish to free the human mind's imagination and creativity. How many, even on a site such as this still maintain that hold on their emotional life instead of that life of the mind?
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174...
Jan
I' m sure he will be happy to know that my son just got underway from San Diego as an officer on a 170 megawatt nuclear powered LA Class fast attack submarine for 6 months. The cleanest energy on the planet, by the way, mr nut case environmental wacko. The entire core of the earth is radioactive you freaking moron. The sun is a giant nuclear fire. I guess that isn't part of nature. But without it you would be F***ing dead.
OBTW. Your link to the Brit chicks YouTube has probably increased her "hits" by 'a factor of 10 to the fifth power.
Thank OMW. I will forward you excellent narrative to as many as possible.
Cheers
Couldn't finish watching. What a lot of beautifully artistic load of horse-pucky. The whole climate change (a phrase used only because "global warming" has become anathema) is an offshoot of environmentalism which is the new religion substitute. It's not even a matter of the earth vs. man's mind, rather it is troubling over trumped-up inconsequentialities.
We don't have to choose between screwing the earth and sanity. Sanity leads to protecting the earth. This acid trip will no protect the earth. (Maybe it will inspire some 3 y/o or something, but it won't lead directly to the technology that stops climate change.)
Maybe I missed something. Or maybe next time it'll be something worth reading.
I think that we are the stewards of this earth. If we foul our water and land we will be forced to eat at a toxic table. Should we be concerned about the future earth.... Hell YES. Otherwise all of those great minds will be too poisoned to do very much.
We wash ourselves, our clothes, use common sense about sanitation so why would we want to kill our environment ? Our minds are great but sometimes the product of great minds can create great vulnerabilities ... Like genetic engineering. We are not so advanced that we can understand the implications of our actions. Case in point. There was a lab that was supplying Avian flu to research labs around the world. The virus was supposed to be dead. What this lab sent out was live human flu virus cells along with live avian virus cells in the same containers. There are very few mutations to get to a highly lethal avian flu that has human to human transmission capabilities. We are very lucky to have missed the deadly consequences of a viable H to H transmission mutation. Apparently we are capable of killing ourselves on a grand scale. Doesn't it make sense to only act with the highest ethical and moral standards in our dealing with our home...this earth... So far as we know there is nowhere else for us to go to rival this beautiful sky , water and land....We are of nature and nature encompasses us.
Science can also tell us about genetics and avian flu. Medicine can give us ways to use them responsibly.
I agree we are part of interconnected web of existence. That does not mean the same thing as nature = good. I consider that to be the naturalistic fallacy.
We agree on most points though-- nature is valuable, so let's not trash it.
What a bunch of nonsense. Every inventor, every productive person is improving the environment. The inventor of the light bulb is making light so people have a better environment at night to do productive work or to avoid dangers. The inventor of the steam engine provided us with the ability to move our goods to make life better for human beings. Even by the absurd standards of environmentalists, the richest, most economically free countries are the best “stewards” of the environment. But you are not interested in the environment as it relates to man, you are interested in an environment free from man. Environmentalism is an evil, mind hating, man hating, religion that thinks killing 5.5 billion people would be a good start.
You ask like?
Just a small list... So much for All inventors and All producers:
Cigarette industry
Coal mining
Genetic engineering. - like Monsanto
Paper industry
Utility Companies - not all but enough
Here are some of the worst polluters:
Archer Daniels Midland
AES
PPL
Progress Energy - how ironic
Duke Energy
Southern
Bunge
First Energy
ConAgra Foods
Peabody Energy
I can go on and on.
Your assumptions are incorrect. Your statement is incorrect. Not everyone realizes the implications of their products and good intentions.
Plastic bags... Etc etc
Some detergents are poisoning our water... Please think before spouting off.
Please take Rousseau BS and head over the Sierra Club website with the other haters of mankind. I sure you will find company in their goal to kill off 5.5 billion people. This site is for rational people, who love life and humans.
Everything changes.... Take a yeast culture. Sugar is good, it's food, but as the yeast eat the sugar they release waste. At some point the culture grows until it's environment is filled with waste and the culture dies.
Coal was a good thing many decades ago BUT we are smarted and more informed and we have choices to make. Today coal,as an energy source, is not such a good choice. So should we continue to use coal? I read about the recent smog in China where people are wearing masks, a good thing, but health is being negatively affected. So those of us , who are not man-hating, can witness the consequences of continuing to burn coal. We who are the living, want to continue living without carrying around oxygen dispensers, another good invention.
Dbhalling if you are not the author of this site and do not contribute to this site then you have no right to tell me to go elsewhere. I'd say you were angry , at what I am not sure. You may want to consider Prozac.
Lana, you are not pro-human, not pro-reason, and not objectivist. This is not the Huffington Post, perhaps you should learn some history and logic..
Academic institutions now offer courses, such as environmental studies, environmental management and environmental engineering, that teach the history and methods of environment protection. Protection of the environment is needed due to various human activities. Waste production, air pollution, and loss of biodiversity (resulting from the introduction of invasive species and species extinction) are some of the issues related to environmental protection.
Environmental protection is influenced by three interwoven factors: environmental legislation, ethics and education. Each of these factors plays its part in influencing national-level environmental decisions and personal-level environmental values and behaviors. For environmental protection to become a reality, it is important for societies to develop each of these areas that, together, will inform and drive environmental decisions.[1]
Deaths Caused by Global Warming Hoax
The United States is spending about $10 billion a year on Global Warming research. http://frontpagemag.com/2011/01/28/the-b... I think it is safe to say that at least $100 billion has been spent worldwide on Global Warming over the last decade. It costs about $20 to provide infrastructure for clean water for one person. According to WHO, 30,000 deaths occur every week from unsafe water and unhygienic living conditions. Most of these deaths are children under five years old. That is over 600,000 deaths per year because of poor water infrastructure. If the $10 billion being wasted on Global Warming research were instead applied to water infrastructure, this could save 50 million lives. The Global Warming Hoax has cost the lives of at 6 million people.?
How AGW Advocates Have Lied
“The latest data released by the Met Office, based on readings from 30,000 measuring stations, confirms there has been no global warming for 15 years.” http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...
It is well known that the main driver of the temperature on Earth are the variations in the amount of solar energy the Earth receives. “Experiments at the CERN laboratory in Geneva have supported the theory of Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark that the sun — not man-made CO2 — is the biggest driver of climate change.” http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...
The biggest greenhouse gas is water vapor – over 95%, but you never hear about this from AGW advocates. http://www.creators.com/opinion/walter-w...
“Natural wetlands produce more greenhouse gas contributions annually than all human sources combined.” http://www.creators.com/opinion/walter-w...
Below, IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -UN) Experts comment on the IPCC, which is the group at the UN that has been saying a consensus of scientist s “believe” in Global Warming http://ukipscotland.wordpress.com/2011/1...
Dr Vincent Gray: “The (IPCC) climate change statement is an orchestrated litany of lies.”
Dr. Lucka Bogataj: “Rising levels of airborne carbon dioxide don’t cause global temperatures to rise…. temperature changed first and some 700 years later a change in aerial content of carbon dioxide followed.”
Dr Richard Courtney: “The empirical evidence strongly indicates that the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis is wrong.”
Dr Eigil Friis-Christensen: “The IPCC refused to consider the sun’s effect on the Earth’s climate as a topic worthy of investigation. The IPCC conceived its task only as investigating potential human causes of climate change.”
Goal of AGW
The goal of AGW is to kill capitalism and as a result kill millions of people. Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace explained. (Environmentalism today is) more about globalism and anti-capitalism than it is about science or ecology….
“Ultimately, no problem may be more threatening to the Earth’s environment than the proliferation of the human species.”
— Anastasia Toufexis, “Overpopulation: Too Many Mouths,” article in Time’s special “Planet of the Year” edition, January 2, 1989. http://newsbusters.org/blogs/geoffrey-di...
“Today, life on Earth is disappearing faster than the days when dinosaurs breathed their last, but for a very different reason….Us homo sapiens are turning out to be as destructive a force as any asteroid. Earth’s intricate web of ecosystems thrived for millions of years as natural paradises, until we came along, paved paradise, and put up a parking lot. Our assault on nature is killing off the very things we depend on for our own lives….The stark reality is that there are simply too many of us, and we consume way too much, especially here at home….It will take a massive global effort to make things right, but the solutions are not a secret: control population, recycle, reduce consumption, develop green technologies.”
— NBC’s Matt Lauer hosting Countdown to Doomsday, a two-hour June 14, 2006 Sci-Fi Channel special. http://newsbusters.org/blogs/geoffrey-di...
“My own doubts came when DDT was introduced. In Guyana, within two years, it had almost eliminated malaria. So my chief quarrel with DDT, in hindsight, is that it has greatly added to the population problem.” http://jiminmontana.wordpress.com/2012/0...
Dr. Charles Wurster, one of the major opponents of DDT, is reported to have said,
“People are the cause of all the problems. We have too many of them. We need to get rid of some of them, and this (referring to malaria deaths) is as good a way as any.” http://jiminmontana.wordpress.com/2012/0...
“A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal,” Turner stated in 1996.[1]
A leading environmentalist, Dr. Eric R. Pianka advocated the elimination of 90 percent of Earth’s population by airborne Ebola in front of few hundred members of the Texas Academy of Science who rose to their feet, and gave him a standing ovation.[2] Dr. Pianka attempted to deny this, but the evidence was overwhelming including his student evaluations.
Environmentalism is a Religion – and that religion is anti-human and EVIL
And your last statement is just plain, I want to say stupid but I will not....there...... it's always proper to exhibit restraint.
Let's have the foresight to create now without hurting future generations of potential human intelligent creativity. You cannot separate nature from humanity .... We are part of nature.
I can see why people get turned off. When I was in the Mpls libertarian party, people were knowledgeable and open minded. There was respectful discourse and we all enjoyed the intellectual exercises. A few people suggested I leave. I may consider their suggestion. It's not fun anymore..
Your comments that I've read so far are mere regurgitations of demonstrably distorted and exaggerated politically derived consensus science, rather than reasoned and logically derived discussion. This site can be tough for those not steeped in Objectivist philosophy and first principles.
And do you really believe that we actually have capitalism?
In Western Europe, in the preindustrial Middle Ages, man’s life expectancy was 30 years. In the nineteenth century, Europe’s population grew by 300 percent—which is the best proof of the fact that for the first time in human history, industry gave the great masses of people a chance to survive.
If it were true that a heavy concentration of industry is destructive to human life, one would find life expectancy declining in the more advanced countries. But it has been rising steadily. Here are the figures on life expectancy in the United States (from the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company):
1900
47.3 years
1920
53 years
1940
60 years
1968
70.2 years (the latest figures compiled)
Anyone over 30 years of age today, give a silent “Thank you” to the nearest, grimiest, sootiest smokestacks you can find.
If it were true that a heavy concentration of industry is destructive to human life, one would find life expectancy declining in the more advanced countries. But it has been rising steadily. Here are the figures on life expectancy in the United States (from the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company):
1900
47.3 years
1920
53 years
1940
60 years
1968
70.2 years (the latest figures compiled)
Anyone over 30 years of age today, give a silent “Thank you” to the nearest, grimiest, sootiest smokestacks you can find.
Nature is a hostile unfriendly environment to man, if unshaped by man.
Environmentalism is not about a better environment for humans, it is about an evil, man hating religion.
Remember that only wealthy nations can afford to keep pollution at bay. The worst polluters on earth are poor nations and yes, that included the old soviet Union and China. They are considered wealthy now, but were the worst polluters for decades. Only functioning economies can afford to clean up their environment. Sadly we are falling in economic terms for the last 8-10 years and especially the last five due to the mismanagement of our economy by the present administration.
Fred Speckmann
commonsenseforamericans@yahoo.com
Case in point: India and China have been dumping millions of tons of C02 into the air for the past two decades, yet global temperatures have remained constant. Sorry, but the global warming nonsense is all a fraud. Only 40 years ago in the late 70's these same climate models were predicting another mini ice age. Until they can get better at predicting the weather two days from now, I have zero trust in their predictions about the climate ten years from now.
Cap and trade is not perfect, but it seems like a a good alternative to hard limits. Someone at church passed around a petition against cap-and-trade b/c they want hard limits. I say we should do our best to calculate the cost of our activities on the environment and tax that instead of taxing good things like work.
If the scientific consensus turns out to be wrong, it will be like how they discovered a low-fat diet isn't necessarily better for you. We'll all be happy.
It hasn't happened yet with the claim that burning stuff is affecting the climate. We all wish it weren't true, but some people take that a step further and look only for evidence that supports what we wish were true. I understand the tendency. When I fix a bug in electronics I'm designing, I find myself wanting to dismiss evidence that the fix didn't work as exceptions. Eventually reality catches up with you.
I was taught that philosophy encompasses a never ending series of questions (unlike religion which is a finite list of answers). It is the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and most of all, the totality of all existing things.
To center the world around the human world is to live in a bubble and leads to thinking one has all the answers. This turns philosophy into religion.
I see many of those on the conservative right treating Ayn's philosophy as a religion for their own selfish purposes, and those on the liberal left condemning her because of that.
Reading the dialogues of Plato, there is never a negative response to the issues raised. There is always a never ending series of questions which may or may not arrive at a conclusion but, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said “Life is a journey, not a destination.”
Thanks for the connection!