I had this coworker who frequently shared their thoughts on resolving ecology issues and at some point it just started to come across as “everyone should just lay down and die so we stop having a negative impact on the environment.”
I appreciate we have a very long way to go to resolve our environmental impact, and that the most effective means are wholesale abandonment of many practices, but this kind of logic always strikes me as privileged, impractical, and inconsiderate of its effect on people.
Life has to be worth living if you want to convince people they should ensure it can happen.
> Life has to be worth living if you want to convince people they should ensure it can happen.
One can agree both with your sentiment and that of the comment you responded to.
I'm all for producing, shipping and consuming less goods, not only because of the positive impact it would have on the climate and life diversity, but also because I believe it would yield a world that'd be more worth living; and I believe many of the "let's produce/consume local products" supporters actually feel this way too; To say nothing about the more extreme examples of people -- sometimes former tech workers -- who give up "technology" and the niceties of modern confort, to embrace a new life of woodworker, long-haul sailor, farmers...
I think we are way past the point where the industry moved us from chilled-to-the-bone-legged-stomachs to sufficiently-warm-and-well-fed-to-turn-our-mind-to-the-interesting-stuff. :-)
The GP provided a cogent argument regarding need for fertilizer and its climate impact. I don't see any connection between what they posted and the parent, which sets up a strawperson and tries to hang it on the GP (and a coworker), and contributes nothing to our knowledge.
I mean, can we agree that life would still be worth living without the majority of the luxurious crap that has come into being just in the last century?
Was life not worth living for Homo sapiens for the ~200k years prior?
Not to mention that if our alternative is to have the majority of humanity die in a global ecological and social collapse, I don’t think anyone could think that’s a better option and more worth living for.
I appreciate we have a very long way to go to resolve our environmental impact, and that the most effective means are wholesale abandonment of many practices, but this kind of logic always strikes me as privileged, impractical, and inconsiderate of its effect on people.
Life has to be worth living if you want to convince people they should ensure it can happen.