When I see forests being torn down to build corporations, or apartment complexes, so we can all live stacked on top of one another, who is responsible for that? The state governments? The county governments? That's troubling to me on a very granular level, when I commute to work, one more forest being destroyed, bulldozers everywhere, building more housing developments, and industrial parks. Animals being displaced, etc. It's a global battle, and it's a battle right in our backyards, but the fact that I see this weekly, tells me that no government entity is stopping this from happening. I don't have a lot of hope in the government that it will react in the way we need it to. That's just the way I feel.
It is necessary. Not, by itself, sufficient. But necessary. Consider what the environment involved must be protected from - entities such as the fossil fuel industry.
Yes, and yes. It's their job to plan the use of public lands, to give or withhold permits for construction, to set standards, to regulate, to collect taxes and levy fines. Are you aware of how many state regulations have been rescinded or not enforced where you live? Are you aware of the funding structure of watchdog and oversight agencies, both federal and state? Are you aware of how many presidential edicts have gone out permitting lands and waters to be despoiled? Yes. Some governments do it quite effectively. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/...and-least-environmentally-friendly-countries/ You have yet to name an alternative.
All valid points and questions. Unfortunately, the US has a current administration that doesn't ''believe'' in climate change and global warming, so what should we do? If said administration wins again, I'm not quite sure of the alternative. I can only say that ''big government'' at least in the US, doesn't always save the day. I'll ponder your points and reply later.
Lobby for change, support you local and state initiatives https://www.georgetownclimate.org/adaptation/index.html inform yourself of the position of your candidate, help the good ones get elected, protest the bad ones, inundate them with demands for action If said administration wins again, we are all screwed so royally that it won't matter. It's up to you - you sound young enough to have a future - to make sure that doesn't happen. Please refrain from repeating their slogan. The Obama administration put a lot pretty decent policies in place, supported positive initiatives and empowered effective agencies - in the face of rabid opposition. No other entity can do that. But, of course, neither can any other entity undo it so vindictively. Big government is pretty much the only thing that can save some of your asses. http://statesatrisk.org/ Not Florida - you can write that off. Not anything on the Gulf of Mexico; probably not New Jersey or Rhode Island, in spite of their relatively sound climate change policy: just too vulnerable. Maybe not the middle stripe where the tornadoes and blizzards roam freely. But some of the up-slope, inland, non-mudslide bits might still be all right. The loss of life life will be considerable in any case; the loss of property will be counted in the $trillions for a little while, until we simply lose the count and stop caring about money.
--- "so we can all live stacked on top of one another," ----- "Actually better for the environment than suburbia". I believe the point was that high-rises displace fewer animals and trees than sprawling ranch-style bungalows with swimming pools and four-car garages - which, incidentally, also require extensive streets, sewer systems, electric grids and those horrific highways to drive to the city and make oodles of money to support the sprawling etc. Human habitation can be organized a helluva lot better. https://www.narcity.com/ca/on/toron...er-will-be-completely-covered-in-trees-photos
Yea, it's not that I don't see the point. I don't disagree with that piece of it, but where I live, forests/wooded areas are being demolished on the daily/weekly. It's quite excessive because there is a raging influx of people moving here. So, sure, your point is fine if it isn't excessive.
We need to stop making so many people. This should have been solved back in the 1960's and 70's, when I was activating about this kind of stuff. The catastrophe could have been prevented. Now it can't, for several reasons. We already have too many people, and all those people have to be someplace. Stacked up is better than spread out, and there are far more efficient ways of servicing all these human dwellings than we've employed in the past. But, even with the smartest possible organization - which won't happen - the crowding in livable areas will still keep getting worse as more areas become unliveable. Just saying "go someplace else." - which is what the nationalist-conservative administrations are trying to do - won't work. There is no way around the catastrophe. And there is no way to halt the extinction of species. https://www.biologicaldiversity.org...y/elements_of_biodiversity/extinction_crisis/; all you can hope for is mitigation - and not very much of that.
We all are. Almost everyone wants to protect the environment and reduce pollution, even right wingers. But almost everyone also wants a nice house/apartment/job, and those two are often in conflict. And history has shown that while we want to protect the environment in an abstract way, we want to get that nice apartment in a very concrete way.
No, we all aren't. The people who have been trying to stop this for two generations now, often at serious personal cost, are not responsible for it. The Republican voter doesn't care about the environment. They will sacrifice the landscape for anything - ATV trails, V8 engines, a lawn with no living beings except grass in it, properly landscaped roadsides with no unkempt weeds growing in them, anything at all. There is no such "we". There are those who have bought the line that a "nice" yard has no insects or reptiles in it, gasoline engines are as basic to human activity as shoes, and a round of golf is a walk in "nature". For the rest of us, for whom such a world is a desolation, those people are political enemies - it's us or them.
And then there is the way the situation is regularly presented to the not-so-bright conservative voter - and I mean, so consistently and often for so long that they've internalized it along with religion and references to the constitutio0n they have never actually read: the Environment vs the Economy as if they were mutually exclusive and inimical.
The same ones who drive to work, have a big house and order stuff from Amazon? Yes, they are. There is this idea that if you spend a lot of money on EV's, solar, go meatless, recycle everything etc that you are part of the solution, not the problem. But anyone living in the US is part of the problem; we have a huge environmental footprint compared to someone living in Sandire, Niger. It's great that people are trying to solve the problem here - but they are still part of it. That's a facile and meaningless statement, akin to "democrats want to abort all babies." Then it will be "them." Because for people who see the world in black and white, there will always be a way to move more people to the "them" category - and they will always outnumber you.
It's already their world. We have already lost. The sleeping giant in the middle took too long to smell the forests being burned down for coffee plantations. Yes, everyone in developed countries is partly to blame - but not equally.
I definitely agree with you there. Some people damage the environment less, some more. Some people work to make the future a better place, and some people just work to consume.
