So I'm coming to realize that I have quite the cynical view of... well, everything. And that has certainly shined through in these first few posts. But you have to understand, anything that is not Arvydas Sabonis is met with immense skepticism and bitterness on my part.
But I'm going to attempt to be a little more positive in this post.
So there are these guys, Nordhaus and Shellenberger, and they totally suck...and... wait. What?
Dammit.
I'm not very good at this positivity business. I think I'll go watch Rush Hour. Hopefully that will put me in a better mood, and make this a little easier.
Ah. That's a good movie. Always a treat.
Anyway, back to my original point. SO. These guys. Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger. They wrote this essay, a couple years back. Called it, (PDF WARNING!) The Death of Environmentalism. Pissed a lot of people off. Why? Because environmentalists love environmentalism. And These guys were saying it was dead. That's like... that's like a veterenarian writing a book called The Death of Puppies. That'll make people cry. Everybody loves puppies.
Except George Lucas. That bastard.
Nordhaus and Shellenberger argue that environmentalists have actually set their own movement back by doing something that is, like sex and violence, quite popular among members of the human race: short-term thinking.
They don't question environmentalist's resolve or motives; they're not accusing environmentalists of greenwashing; they're simply saying that the steps environmentalists have been recommending for decades aren't going to solve the problems that face the planet these days. Basically, they say environmentalists are thinking too small.
Sure, buying a hybrid or coating your house with solar panels is good, (or at least better than driving a dumptruck around or heating your house with whale blubber) but Nordhaus and Shellenberger would argue that it is not enough. Even if everyone in the country did that, it wouldn't offset the harm we are still doing to the environment. Their basic argument is that the only way to prevent deterioration of human habitat is to DRASTICALLY reinvent how our industry functions.
Not just churning out recyleable whatnots and hybrid hootenannies, but completely changing the means of production within industry so as to make ours a truly viable, sustainable way of life. Of course, their plan would involve such a radical overhaul of how we do things that it would cost millions of jobs and billions of dollars.
Nordhaus and Shellenberger openly admit this, and counter with the notion that to save the earth in the long run, sacrifices need to be made in the short run. If the entire workforce of the United States could be trained to operate within their proposed sustainable industry, their plan would generate even more jobs than it initially lost.
Here is an article from Wired about the two, in which a much smarter person than myself talks much more intelligently about the subject than I possibly could, while also providing a great outline of Nordhaus and Shellenberger's proposal.
And yes, I realize the fitting nature of me lifting my veil of cynicism and making my first positive post about a pair of cynics. Go me.
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