andrewducker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
andrewducker) wrote2006-02-08 08:39 am
andrewducker) wrote2006-02-08 08:39 am
Big Surprise
I post saying that the government should make the decisions that individuals find hard, but are in our own best interests, and I get multiple comments from people saying "But I don't want things made hard for me."
Not a single week has gone past in the last few months, and not a month in the last 10 years when I haven't read more about the climate of the whole fucking planet going horribly wrong, because we're polluting it. A large part of that pollution comes from flying machines inefficiently burning up hydrocarbons and releasing great wodges of Carbon Dioxide and Nitrogen Oxides at high altitude.
Imagine if every time you took a flight you had to grind up a couple of people and put them in the fuel tank. You can bet that people would still be saying "But I want to see my family a lot." At the _very_ least, airline fuel should be taxed enough to pay for the planting of trees to soak up the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide - at the moment there's no tax on aircraft fuel at all, making it effectively heavily subsidised compared to all other means of transport.
I'm sorry, but when the whole bloody planet is at stake, maybe we'll all have to make a few sacrifices.
Not a single week has gone past in the last few months, and not a month in the last 10 years when I haven't read more about the climate of the whole fucking planet going horribly wrong, because we're polluting it. A large part of that pollution comes from flying machines inefficiently burning up hydrocarbons and releasing great wodges of Carbon Dioxide and Nitrogen Oxides at high altitude.
Imagine if every time you took a flight you had to grind up a couple of people and put them in the fuel tank. You can bet that people would still be saying "But I want to see my family a lot." At the _very_ least, airline fuel should be taxed enough to pay for the planting of trees to soak up the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide - at the moment there's no tax on aircraft fuel at all, making it effectively heavily subsidised compared to all other means of transport.
I'm sorry, but when the whole bloody planet is at stake, maybe we'll all have to make a few sacrifices.
no subject
What *is* at stake is our current set of societies - human civilisations, constructs, cities, ways of life... There being so damn many of us...
Personally, I say 'speed the day'. Get out there and help push the climate over the edge and make it happen as quickly as possible...
no subject
I happen to really like living with electricity, adequate food and similar things that would all vanish if we manage to mess up sufficiently (which would take significant effort given how resilient modern industrial civilization is, but is also possible) to collapse civilization in most of the first world.
I've run into a number of people who are allegedly (or in some cases actually) pro-apocalypse, and in all cases that I know of, they either dream of a "simpler, better world" being rebuilt from the ruins of the old world (which IMHO is utterly foolish nonsense that works in fantasy novels but not in real-life) or hate their lives sufficiently that they want civilization to collapse so they can stop working at a job they loathe. Needless to say, I am not pro-apocalypse.
no subject
I'm not after a dream of "a simpler better world" - I really just don't give 2 f**ks about people as a concept, as a mass. They can all die off in any manner that happens along for all I care. Including me (cos it has to happen sometime).
Or not, as the case may be.
Maybe I'm not actually pro-apocalypse - I don't suppose I care either way. If I live to see it all go tits-up then I do, if I don't I dont' and if it happens and that's what kills me then so what?
Just (as someone else said) pointing out that it's not accurate to say 'saving the planet' - it's 'Saving most of our lifestyle' that people actually mean...
no subject
If we were more honest about the fact that we're trying to save ourselves, save humanity, rather than pretending it's all altruistic "save the planet" stuff, then we might get around to doing more about it, I think.
no subject
I think it's impossible to know this. We can't seem to act to prevent species becoming extinct now, who's to say how may will be lost if there is radical human-influenced environmental change? Will a only few thousand species be lost and the rest soldier on, or will we end up with just the ant and microbes? I personally prefer the planet with higher forms of life, even if one of them is us. ;-)
no subject