Sadly too often simply trying to increase awareness of the current environmental costs of our global post-industrial constant growth based economy gets interpreted by some of those who are concerned with individual liberty as also being for increasing statist controls over peoples behaviors. I believe it is important to be able to bring up simple facts such as bottom trawlers scraping large nets across the sea floor have already affected 20 million square miles of ocean, turning parts of the continental shelf to rubble and then discuss how we can through voluntary bottom up grass roots actions change the paradigm - from the debilitating desires for maximizing short term profits (that then inspire short cuts that permanently cripple our long term prosperity because of the damage those short cuts do to the only earth we have) - to what Dylan Ratigan termed being long term greedy - where our actions instead allow future generations to also be able to have prosperous lives as well. I dont necessarily have any special solution to the multitude of environmental problems we face that I can offer here in short soundbites myself - but I do think that the first step is being able to have a conversation about these critical issues without having solely knee jerk partisan reactions - of complete denial from the right giving license for any kind of abuse to the environment businesses wish to inflict simply to extract greater short term profits - or total opportunism from the left by using these issues as an excuse for greater government controls over all aspects from our lives. Somewhere in the center in this I still believe there is way to work to mitigate the problems without trampling over the protection of individuals rights. And Id say were going to have to figure this out if we want to have any kind of decent future at all. - Steve B. nytimes/2015/01/16/science/earth/study-raises-alarm-for-health-of-ocean-life.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=1
Posted on: Fri, 16 Jan 2015 06:42:08 +0000
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