Comments on: Are Environmentalists Just “Fiddling While Rome Burns”?

By: Decatur Metro

Decatur Metro — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 13:41:40 +0000

In bringing up beavers, I was only attempting to show that what we do to our natural environment is not restricted to conscious human beings. It’s just how the law operates. We don’t operate outside the system.

As for the moral obligation that we take on as a result of our undeniable success to those species which we dominate, I again state that I believe we SHOULD protect those species, however I still can’t help but see it as cheating the system.

Another type of rat or a pigeon won’t inspire the imagination like a humpback or a tree frog, but I betcha that “life” has already found a way to adapt to the human environment. It might not be as visually pleasing to our evolved eyes, but life always finds a way. And to me, that’s the MOST beautiful thing.

By: Skeptic

Skeptic — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 13:13:09 +0000

Subsidies are a bad thing, particularly at a global level because they cannot mathmatically be sustained – they are an equivlalent to a pyramid scheme. If everyone were to make use of the susiduzed technology (as would be required for China or India to go solar in a meaningful way) – there would not be enough money to pay for the subsidy required to make the cost of implementation attractive.

By: Bobby

Bobby — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 02:25:10 +0000

When I was thinking of quoting Darwin’s work, I remembered that’s not why I’m here. So… thanks for picking up my slack, but I think DM’s response signaled an end. Let this be the “just walk away” point.

By: unclecharlie

unclecharlie — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 01:51:12 +0000

Regarding paradigm shifts, this is a good read:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/the-ashtray-the-ultimatum-part-1/

By: unclecharlie

unclecharlie — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 01:47:42 +0000

Are you seriously saying we are the moral equivalent of beavers? Since they couldn’t reflect on environmental manipulation then we don’t have to?

Okay, I have to apologize. I have since learned that the Darwin quote is not really from Darwin nor “On the Origin of Species”. It is a common misquote and nobody is exactly sure where it came from. Darwin actually wrote about natural selection and only used the term “survival of the fittest”, coined by the philosopher Herbert Spencer, in the fifth and later editions of his book.

Meanwhile, of course I’m writing about how we think about evolution, I don’t know any other way to talk about it. It’s a theory, a construction of human thought. Inside the theory are what some people claim are natural laws but that is a matter of debate. I will agree that evolution is a fact but it is a far different thing to say that survival of the fittest is a law. At any particular time the overriding principle may be survival of the lucky. Survival doesn’t equate with superiority, (at least in a biological sense, maybe so in an economic sense).

Survival of the fittest is a narrow and specific part of the theory that is about successful reproduction while competing for resources with other species within a local environment. We no longer compete for resources with any other species. We successfully reproduce in all spheres. We may still be evolving but not in the context of natural selection that Darwin wrote about. We take our habitat with us on vacation to the Galapagos. We have become the environment. Whales lived in an entirely different environment before we started to harpoon them. There is a moral obligation that comes with this kind of success. The fact that we can foresee the annihilation of the whales, (or the frogs or the spotted owls), places a burden on us to change our behavior. That is what separates us from the beavers.