My whining is not towards you.



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送交者: mangolasi 于 2005-3-08, 15:14:40:

回答: No need to whin, at least not you :) 由 自如 于 2005-3-08, 11:16:08:

I don't even dare too, for having seen your lucidity. It's even slightly off-topic of yoru post.

Most of my concern is actually about climate. I do have the aesthetic urge to protect the wildlife diversity, but minor indeed.

I still insists the dilemma can be avoided, in terms of physical material. That "I don't see how that can automatically happen" is exactly what I am whining. The problem lies in distribution, not production. I think it's physically possible to let everyone to have a decent life without further abusing the environment--as long as decency doesn't involve a SUV and keeping 25C in the room regardless of the season and time. Face it, we can not get a SUV for everyone. But we can feed everyone, make everyone warm, educate everyone, health care everyone (to a certain degree) and providing leisure for everyone. Those are not natural resource free, but not natural-resource intensive either. I don't see any difficulty of archieving this in the world nowaday.

Blame mostly lies in the luckier. My ex got it right: there is really something going wrong with us (she is refering to Americans and guys in the industrial world). Our need of care and the feeling of archieved can be barely satisfied without the proxy of material: if you love someone, you need to buy her something, if you want to be recognized as "winner" you need to own this and that...Actually, one pragmatic rationale for promoting environmentalism is to make people (the lucky) feel self-rightous, i.e. making them feel as good while consuming less, or making them feel worse if consuming more.

I do keep a minimum life style (through the interaction of ideology and self-rightous), though I don't have to starve. I am willing to pay more tax, having higher utility bills and forgo the constant temperature in the room if this can make the energy last longer--at least paying subsidy for not letting small coal mine with low efficiency mined (Well, if we don't restrict ourself, the day of reckoning might come and we still face higher utility bill etc...anyway). As those petty mine is the only thing they got, without government aid, they do have no choice. But the country, the society can have a choice. However, I don't have the right to impose my lifestyle on anyone else. I am not willing to do so either. And I am a cynic, I confess. I don't believe in /want utopia of a "fair" system so everyone can live happily without destroying the environment. I see the danger of forced collective action more immense than global warming. Without the comforting illusion of utopia, you know why I feel depressed.

My comparision of CD and cooking birds with burning zithers is a bad one, I admit. Because CD is a choice for the luckier people, while destroying is usually carried out by the less fortunate. When they destroy, they indeed have no choice. But AS A WHOLE, we have enough physical resource for not getting this senario. Maybe the comparision of buying a CD and owning a SUV is better.

Besides that the lucky is requiring more resource extracted by the less fortunate on cheaper price, the other thing I am complaining about is people see developement as "catching up with the Jones". Again, starving is miserable, but forgoing a SUV is not. The problem is your (maybe my, too) example is too extreme. Destroying forest or mining small coal mine is not driven by hunger. People in those cases are usually better off than people without any other resource who must relie solely on their crops: Mining that small mine might give the coal miner a better CD player, the mine owner a better car, but the consequence is someone somewhere else suffer from drought, and no food at all.

I don't believe in the existence of 100 percent (I said it clearly: "Decision means that, in some sense, you are choosing how to be wrong."). I am just suggesting we should avoid ways with less confident level, e.g. introducing high-yield GM crop might be a better choice than cutting a forest to plant additional crop. Promoting solar energy car/small car is better than drilling Alaska. But many "developement" is far from being too prudential than rushing, driven by short-sign economic interest. My choice is actually 2. But optimism based on unexistent (or yet existent) measures is crazy. Actually, I want the voice of the professional environmental scientists to be heard to getting better approximation of confident level. I want the inventions of their energy saving measures to be noticed. But environmental advice from a rigorously trained quantum machanic physicst? Thanks.



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