Comments beelo has made

  • Good God, y'all.

    Hey, everybody, d'you hear that? He called me a hippy again! Har har!
    You're hysterical.

    Okay, G. Gordon Liddy, cut the wisecracks and just tell me where the
    recycling bin is.

    [Shoving the trash you just picked up in the litterer's shirt:] How's
    that for dirty?

    Recycling/picking up trash makes me a hippy? What is this, 1965?

    Cleaning litter makes me a hippy? What are you, on the board of Dow Chemical?

    Wait, cleaning litter makes me "dirty?" How's that, Einstein?

    Hey! I don't go around calling your ConsumerBot 3000, do I?

    Ooh, yeah, man. Municipal curbside recycling is my scene, and it freaks me out.

    Cool it, Alex P. Keaton, or I'll recycle your face.

    Why do you hate America?

    Yeah, I recycle. Jealous? Hate the game, not the playa!

    Yeah, I got a tree you can hug.

    Oh, hug this.On Umbra on deflecting eco-insults posted 1 year, 1 month ago 18 Responses

  • The Only Game in Town?

    I don't understand; isn't industrial capitalism what got us here in the first place? Really, what am I missing? Doesn't this talk of capitalism as inevitable, a force of nature, "the only game in town," belong more on the Cato Institute website than on Grist?

    I agree that we need a new kind of capitalism: one that is about 75% socialism. Not having read the book, I don't know what its particular prescriptions are, but it seems inescapable to me that capitalism can be redeemed (or made "sustainable") by nothing less than a large infusion of what it is de rigeur these days to sneer at as socialism. (For an example see the historical American "New Deal.")

    Why does this kind of thing sound to me like trying to lead a small child away from oncoming traffic by enticing him with candy when what she needs is to be yanked forcefully and with all possible speed out of the way of danger? Do we have the time to make sustainable practices palatable to the corporate class? Can we really expect more from the brute machines of capital than the most predictable greenwashing and feel-good marketing?

    AMC89: What Trock is saying is pretty basic, as I understand it: if we're not here, who cares about the environment? After all, even the fact that we call it "the environment" makes us central.On New book by Porritt argues that we need to reshape capitalism to deliver a sustainable future posted 2 years, 2 months ago 5 Responses

  • Children vs. Planet?

    Thank you for this wonderful series. I wish I could recommend it unqualifiedly.

    What has irritated me about this series so far is the underlying tone that says, "if you must be so irresponsible as to have a child, here's how to mitigate your blunder." Children, new beings, are not an occasion for hand-wringing by environmentally minded parents and superciliousness on the part of the "conscientiously childless." They are to be celebrated unequivocally, even as we find ways to slow population growth and reduce the impact of each new person on the planet. To do any less is to court genuine misanthropy.

    I am actually fairly startled by this essay, the posts about the irresponsibility of parents, and the talk of reproduction as an environmental issue. To talk about whether to have children or not in terms of environment and sacrifice invites reductio ad absurdum: we could really cut down our carbon emissions if we all stopped breathing, and if the human race suddenly went extinct, climate change would stop in its tracks! Not having children for the sake of the environment fails the test of universal applicability. If everyone who drives a car now rode a bicycle instead, the world would be better off. If everyone stopped having children, the species would die.

    (The same goes, coincidentally, for the ridiculous
    argument against immigration for the sake of the
    environment: if you feel that way, then you should attempt to reverse the ill effects of immigration by leaving the country and encouraging mass emigration. The point is to reduce the strain on resources everywhere and reduce consumption here, not limit entry to the lands of plenty.)

    We are organisms, we reproduce. That is what we do. In fact, it's the closest thing we have to a purpose on this Earth. Reproduction is a biological imperative on par with eating and breathing. And if environmentalism is not, at
    its core, about reverence for and promotion of life in all its forms, then what is it about?

    Let me be clear: overpopulation is a problem, and not everyone should have children. In fact, only those who really, really want them, and are temperamentally ready and willing to put in the work and make the sacrifices, should, and even they should limit the number of children they have and consider adoption first. I find no fault at all with childlessness; in fact, I think the childless are often unfairly judged and discriminated against, and, yes, I can conceive that they do perform a service to the environment. But in terms of the species, in terms of our deepest biological beings, reproduction is all, alpha and omega, and must be respected as such in those who do choose to have children. And the last thing we need at a time like this is for intelligent, compassionate people, like Kurmann, who want to have children to withhold their genes and their capacity to nurture and teach. What the future needs is more people like him and fewer people like, say, Sean Hannity (two children!).

    I suppose this is the kind of thing that comes from years of vague rhetoric about saving "the Earth," or "the environment," or even "the biosphere": it obscures the obvious and confuses priorities. These things would continue to be, would adapt and change and continue to be "nature", even if we ravaged the earth and then died off suddenly. The "environment" is supremely indifferent to us; it works around us or dies, but doesn't really "see" us. It is to be cherished, respected, and nurturedâ€"perhaps even worshipedâ€"but it is not what is central. What environmentalism is ultimately seeking to save is the human race; it is an attempt to stop us from killing ourselves by making our habitation uninhabitable and to
    make the world safe for future humans. If environmentalists aren't among the loudest in their championing and celebration of children (and, after all, without children, who cares what happens to the planet after we die? and who can claim to care about children if they don't care about the planet?), then it's no wonder the "family values" right has such an easy time caricaturing us as dour weirdos who get more sentimental about obscure, unpronounceable species than about humans and their families.On A Grist special series on parenting and health posted 2 years, 2 months ago 4 Responses