A simple question about the environment I have never understood

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

Why do seemingly rational, successful human beings and companies deny that our actions have consequences and that our activities affect the environment? Why does someone like Rush Limbaugh deny it, why do the oil and chemical companies resist change, why do politicians ignore it as a matter of public policy? I know that the simple answer is bucks, but can people be that shortsighted and stupid? I mean, chemical company executives and politicians have families and children too, right?

It doesn't matter how many how many shekels you have in your Swiss bank or the Cayman Islands or your freezer if you can't spend them because the crops have failed and the rising water is now up to your chin. Do these guys have secret underground cities we don't know about? How else to explain their complacency, obstinacy and denial?

[Skittles]

1. I was just asking that question not long ago to a coworker

how on earth did something like global warming become a politically divisive issue? My guess would be that conservative repukes have always seen the environment as just another profit-making enterprise - they just don't give a shit anything as long as they can make money from it

[philosophie_en_rose]

2. This world doesn't matter.

If you believed that this world was only a temporary place and that you had divine authority to treat it as you will, perhaps this world wouldn't matter so much.

[Dean Martin]

3. I don't understand

How anyone can look at a planet with billions of human beings on it, several crammed into crowded dirty cities, millions of vehicles, factories, buildings, pouring crap into the air, water, ground and NOT think it has an adverse affect on the planet?

[karlrschneider]

4. How else, indeed? You answered part of the question yourself, "bucks" but

it doesn't explain the other part unless you think (I don't believe you do) they're all waiting on an imminent rapture. It just might be that a lot of people in these times just don't really give a shit about their descendants. Maybe the "I got mine, fuck everyone else" mentality has actually become mainstream. I wish I knew. :eyes:

[porphyrian]

5. If they admit it's real, they must also admit the horror of it and of their role...

...in allowing it to get this bad. In light of this, they cling to any explanation, no matter how illogical, which allows them to deny this possibility. The same is true of people and religion quite often.

[Sugarcoated]

6. $$$$$$$

Kaching.

[baldguy]

12. Bingo

Short term profit is more important than long term sustainability.

[Robbien]

7. They don't believe it will have any drastic effect on the environment

They really don't. Yes they know the pollution is causing damage, but no damage is done to their wealthy part of the world (so far). They figure the damage will either go away or just never effect them personally.

[Cleita]

8. The same reason that they don't understand why giving

employees a decent wage and lobbying government for decent health care reforms will make them richer because the same employees will have more money to spend on their products.

Henry Ford said he didn't want to make an automobile that his employees couldn't afford to buy. Clever guy Henry, he knew there were only so many automobiles to be bought by a rich elite, but so many to be bought by the population at large if they made enough money to do it.

[Gregorian]

9. I just had this discussion two days ago.

I don't recall the book that was mentioned. But it is on this subject, of societies that have disappeared. And how and what happened.

In a nutshell, here is what has been observed. And I apologize for lack of EVERYTHING. I just don't remember the name of the book, or the places discussed. But I do remember this- The rich found a way to distance themselves from the poor. As things progressed, in one case due to deforestation, the rich could move to higher ground. The poor suffered from disease, or flood, or starvation. Eventually, though, even the rich went.

It's a fallacy. In their minds these people are superior. But the reality is, we're all staying on the same planet. We're all fragile. They're shortsighted and greedy. Toss in bigoted and not as smart as they think they are, and you've got the recipe for calamity.

My eyes have been opened in the last six years. Having grown up in a place of intelligence and civility, I never had a clue that people were this shitty. O'Reilly. Limbaugh. Bush. It's hard for me to believe.

So in a word or two, I'd call it greed and survival.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

10. You're talking about the book "Collapse" by Jared Diamond - great point

Text

http://www.grist.org/advice/books/2005/02/08/kavanagh-collapse/

Don't Do as the Romans Do
Jared Diamond's Collapse traces the fates of societies to their treatment of the environment
By Michael J. Kavanagh
08 Feb 2005

skip

If Guns venerated the role that geographic chance played in societal development, Diamond's newest book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, restores human agency to the picture. Through a grab bag of case studies that range from the Mayan Empire to modern China, Diamond tries to distill a unified theory about why societies fail or succeed. He identifies five factors that contribute to collapse: climate change, hostile neighbors, trade partners (that is, alternative sources of essential goods), environmental problems, and, finally, a society's response to its environmental problems. The first four may or may not prove significant in each society's demise, Diamond claims, but the fifth always does. The salient point, of course, is that a society's response to environmental problems is completely within its control, which is not always true of the other factors. In other words, as his subtitle puts it, a society can "choose to fail."


Collapse by Jared Diamond, Viking Books, 592 pgs., 2005.Diamond then identifies the 12 environmental problems that are portents of doom: destruction of natural habitats (mainly through deforestation); reduction of wild foods; loss of biodiversity; erosion of soil; depletion of natural resources; pollution of freshwater; maximizing of natural photosynthetic resources; introduction by humans of toxins and alien species; artificially induced climate change; and, finally, overpopulation and its impact.

But, those older societies were confined somewhat geographically. This book discusses the collapse of some civilizations, whereas global warming has the power to be the engine for the collapse of ALL civilizations.

[Gregorian]

24. Yes. Thank you!

I have horrible memory. I can remember Avagadro's number, but not names and words.

[Robbien]

14. In their world nasty things such as the poor, pollution and sacrifice

do not exist. Those nasty things happen to lessor mortals, not to them.

[SanCristobal]

11. Because liberals got to it first.

Political junkies are violently opposed to the other sides ideas, even when those ideas make sense. Labels close people minds faster then the Bush admin can close the books on its records.

Consider the following (impossible) situation:

Nancy Pelosi forces through a Constitutional amendment banning gay marraige. Bush responds by instituting universal health care.

I would be willing to bet any amount of money that there would be no shortage on conservatives bashing Pelosi's "big government interference in personal lives" and liberals claiming Bush was trying to "destroy America's small health care businesses for corporate profit". At the very least people on both sides would question their motives, despite getting what they wanted.

Or take the following real life examples:

Democrats institute PayGo rules, a conservative fiscal policy. Conservatives go nuts about Democrats secret plans to raise taxes, despite getting what they (in theory if not in practice) want. Bush creates the largest protected marine habitat. Liberals go nuts trying to find his secret corporate reason for doing so, despite getting that they want. People are quite often slaves to their perceived identities.

[frogcycle]

13. All of the above and...

I think most of the deniers do so because they really convince themselves "it can't be all that bad" because they are fundamentally incapable of dealing with reality. Ever since the first time momma kissed their boo boo to make it better, they have relied on "bad stuff" just going away. Scarlet O'Hara: "Tomorrow is another day". Actually dealing with it is tough, saying it isn't so is easy. But when they DO say it isn't so, they actually believe themselves. The ones that get really belligerent are the ones who are starting to doubt their cozy "happy place".

[MazeRat7]

15. Truthiness- Because they "believe" they know best at that they are "right"....

I dunno either, but I do know there is a general need to be right even when its wrong.



MZr7

[Nay]

16. It's amazing what u can get people to believe if paychecks are on

the line.

[KT2000]

17. Psychopathological thinking

Often the argument is given that "corporations are made up of people and they have children too" therefore we are to assume that they will make decisions in everyone's best interest.


That is not true as you know. Wealth clouds thinking. Money can protect people from most of life's problems, so they have a distorted sense of reality. They believe they can buy their way out of any problem.
They define themselves by their power and money - not their behavior in the greater community.

Simply, they are different than the average person. They are mentally ill.

[tavalon]

18. Stupid and shortsighted.

That about sums up Rush and his mindless army of freaks.

[Aristus]

19. You have to understand something about these people;

Everything takes a back seat to money. EVERYTHING. Right now, God and a pious public image are very profitable. But there is not one of these money-crazed yahoos who wouldn't sell his own soul if the price was right. Money, money, money, is all they understand. All they will ever understand. Nothing else even comes close. So when you talk about the fact that they breathe the same air we do, and that global warming, air and water pollution, and the diminishment of natural resources affect them as well as us, they will just shrug and say 'that's the cost of doin' bidness.'

Money is ALL they understand. These people are worse than Judas, because Judas gave the money back and killed himself out of remorse. The anti-environmentalists would keep the money and go looking for someone else to betray profitably.

[The2ndWheel]

20. The belief in progress

In that we can transcend nature. In that we can build a completely artificial world. In that we have no limits. In that there is a solution to every problem.

[applegrove]

21. The longer they hide the science, the longer they put off change & regulation,

the more time they have to make money.

[OnionPatch]

22. They talk themselves into believing there is no problem with the help

of their "leaders" because it's what they WANT to believe. To believe otherwise, would mean they would have to take action to stop the devastation and they would lose money on their Earth-raping businesses. This way they can just say, "Don't worry, God will take care of it all..." and continue to be lazy, greedy and inconsiderate of the environment.

[rman]

23. The world could well support the multi-billionaires

while most of the rest of us perish. 'They' need far less than 6 billion people to do the dirty work for them.
That's why they don't care about the environment.

[Marie26]

25. Denial is a powerful thing.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair