Is saving the environment,
or helping other people more important?guildelf9
To me, saving the environment is helping other people. No one can live without an environment. If we destroy it, everyone will need help. Though the environment may not be in imminent jeopardy for our generation, our indifference to the downward trend we can see in environmental events like the destruction of the ice caps, the spread of tropical zones and corresponding insect-spread illnesses, even the socio-economic plague that is the epic-fail of oil and gasoline production and usage, all impact as much on human life as they do life on this planet. It’s the next generation which is in jeopardy and for which we need to sacrifice our pleasures now so that they have a future worth speaking of.
I tend to take the far view in most decisions. It’s not so much how will this affect me tomorrow (which is still important), but how will this affect everyone next year (or in thirty years or a hundred). Granted, my personal decisions are not likely to have far reaching ramifications for the next generation, but every little bit helps. If everyone recycled as much as possible, instead of just assuming that someone else will do it so they don’t have to, then the future would at least have a bit more hope in its pocket. But the majority of people can barely be bothered to pick up their own litter if they happen to drop something or have no ready receptacle for it, let alone pause long enough to pick up a bit of trash blowing in the wind and dispose of it properly. It’s really this lack of concern for things which do not immediately affect us which is destroying our environment and a reasonably comfortable future for generations after us. What do we care after all, if four or five generations down the road, uncontaminated food, water, and even air become high priced commodities. We’ll all be dead by then so it hardly impacts us, does it?
So how is helping the environment not helping people? It’s just taking the long view in what people need, what our species will need, at a later time. Really, the only people that can make this decision are the people living now. The people of tomorrow can’t come back in time and say, hey, look guys, we’re really going to need fresh water to drink and food uncontaminated by oil based pollutants. Oh, and you know… we kind of need oxygen so could you take steps not to kill the ocean while you’re at it? kthanxbai!
(But if they all talk in lolspeak in the future, they deserve what they get!)
April 15th
This is the fourth day of the Cerealia.
A feast was organized by the Vestal Virgins in honor of Tellus Mater, an Italian Earth-mother, to insure plenty during the year. To ensure a productive year and the continued health of the world, farmers sacrificed a pregnant cow and cremated the unborn calf. Tellus is the matron goddess of all environmentalists.
This is the New Year in Bangladesh.
The Festival of the Iron Phallus, Kanamara Matsuri, is celebrated annually in Kawasaki City, Japan. The ancient Japanese deities associated with sexuality and human reproduction give their sacred blessings and encouragement, especially to couples who wed late in life or to men who suffer from declining potency. Originally the shrine existed to honor the gods of iron, but historically, the area was also the site of lots of brothels. The workers used the temple to pray not to get syphilis and from that this festival started.
The Pi-Puppids meteor shower begins today and ends on the twenty-eighth, peaking on the twenty-third. This is a relatively young stream, only been detected since 1972, and produced by the Comet P/Grigg-Skjellerup. It is best viewed from the southern hemisphere.
The first day of Payni is a Festival of Horus and also for Bast.
Comments (9)
That’s a very odd question to me. In what cases is helping the environment harmful to people? I suppose if your “people” want to dump their pollution in a river or clear cut a forest, there would be a conflict there; but for the most part, people like their environments to be nice.
@heidenkind - Actually, I think the question was more a matter of which is more immediately important, helping the environment or helping people. For instance, helping the environment or sending food and medicine to war torn parts of Africa. I’m all for helping people if someone can guarantee the supplies will actually reach them, but I think helping the environment is just as important for the continuation of our species. And it’s something that can only be done now, not later. Later it will only be worse and call for stronger measures.
@harmony0stars - Aha, I see. In that case, it seems like food & medicine, while important, only offer temporary solutions to an ongoing problem. I’m not sure whether or not the same can be said of environmental projects… even if we do make the environment better, you know some generation not too far down the road is just going to ruin it again.
@heidenkind - Actually, if we deal with the environmental issues now, chances are that there would be policies in place to prevent such dire straights in the future. (Just as there are no policies in place to deal with rapidly falling stock prices due to the Depression.) If anything, whichever cabinet person is responsible for the environment should start a committee to ensure every policy going forward has addressed any environmental concerns in advance with the proper steps taken to prosecute anyone who plays with the findings (unlike the USDA which can’t even be bothered to do independent studies on the drugs they say are safe for human consumption).
I think the best we can hope for is that FTL drives are invented, most everyone leaves the earth in colonizing starships (and hopefully get swallowed by blackholes), and the rest of us can get down to the business of restoration. :-/
@harmony0stars - Hahaha. That would be nice, but it’s a pipe dream.
@heidenkind - Eh, I’m pretty famous for my pipe dreams… and I don’t even smoke! lol
@harmony0stars - You and me both.
You are right, if it is not convenient we can’t be bothered to do, or pickup, anything. What we need is for people to develop a sense of responsibility and conscience for the environment. Practices that destroy our planet should be a direct insult to us, a dishonor. That and humans need to develop a little humbleness; we may be at the top of the food chain but that doesn’t give us the right to do whatever we so please to animals or the environment.
@Altered_Sight - I couldn’t agree with you more. Personal responsibility is a major pet peeve of mine, humbleness as well. Humans are not as superior as we like to think we are. I like the idea that environmentally destructive practices should be a direct insult to us, but you and I both know that some idiot would take it too far… environmental jihad anyone?? I yell at my mom for throwing her cigarette butts out the window all the time because birds will eat them. Can you imagine if one of those people who throw paint on people in fur coats started force feeding smokers their own cigarette butts (I initially just wrote butts, but that sounded so wrong lol). I see wanton pollution and littering as an affront to my reverence for nature, but I just know that someone out there would take it one step further and start assaulting people over it. Make us all look like wackos.