Green - Polluting and Protecting
I’m not a scientist. I don’t understand the presentation of complex data that points, or not, to imminent disaster? I can’t tell whether the earth is going through a cycle or whether, if it is, that this cycle is quantitatively different than in the past? Not sure the ‘experts can pronounce with prescient certainly either, although they do.
But there are some things that can be said by a layman.
Careless, mindless and cynical polluting is a crime. There is nothing good about dolphins or seals choking on discarded plastic.
Profit before people is accepted but not acceptable. Cutting down the Amazon isn’t smart. Profit that enhances, or at least doesn’t harm, humanity is a different matter.
We can and should do all we can and should to minimise pollution and harm to the environment. Recycling may be a good place to start - the collective power of the small can bring huge dividends.
But governments will need to insist on some things that bring change as the likelihood of most individuals and corporations voluntarily getting on board is unlikely. We don’t like a perceived loss.
These and a number of other initiatives could help. They would be reasonable whether or not the doom being predicted was likely or never came to pass. It would seem like good management of resource to manage resourcefully.
The tired argument that Protestantism is responsible for the alleged rape of the planet is exactly that - tired. The same document (the bible) that has been used to hose down the Christian west is the same document that clearly states humans are servants to God’s good earth and responsible for care and development, not rape, pillage and desecration. These are the inevitable result of human greed and fear – themselves predicted in the same document (under the rubric of the fall of humankind).
I am however struck by something that doesn’t belong to the canon of science and its over-developed sense of its own importance.
It is the outrageous hubris (excessive pride) that states humans can save the planet. Aside from care and the minimisation of harm (themselves valuable and in both our power and our responsibility) we can no more save the planet than we can swim to Mars.
Who on earth do we think we are? Does our pride know no end? Are we God? Our life is but a vapour that appears for a while, yet we pronounce as though we were gods.