andrewducker: (cute)
andrewducker ([personal profile] 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.

[identity profile] channelpenguin.livejournal.com 2006-02-08 02:01 pm (UTC)(link)
I personally really don't care because I'll be dead by then - in all likelihood.

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...