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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: neolib who wrote (96643)	1/24/2005 10:14:24 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793677

People X do something which impacts people Y. If X does something to Y, X should compensate Y. That's pretty basic. Preferably, X should be prohibited from doing something to Y since the "something" in this case may not be recoverable. You don't dump toxics in rivers, preferably, but if you do, you pay the folks downstream. Where I think we're having some confusion is, in part, that global warming isn't such a direct cause and effect. But where we're really talking past each other is over the temporal difference. How do I compensate someone whose farm turns into a desert three hundred years from now because I didn't recycle my grocery bags? You want to make my descendants pay? I don't see how that's constructive. The desert is still there. And, in any event, I may not have descendants in a position to provide compensation. I agree with the notion of compensation for harm but there needs to be a direct cause and effect and the penalty has to be paid by the perpetrators, not their progeny. You can't extend the nuclear waste dumping to global warming. Global warming is diffuse and distant. For all we know, my progeny may during those three centuries have moved to that very same desert so should be on the receiving end of the compensation. Your proposal doesn't seem practical to me. Impossible to implement. Besides being impractical, it doesn't do anything to stop global warming. Which is the point, isn't it? I'm still trying to understand your POV, that whatever happens is natural (human caused or otherwise). I'm looking at it from a more distant perspective. The last few centuries during which whatever human pollution exists was created are but a moment in time. Maybe in the future humans will evolve to thrive on carbon dioxide. Or maybe humans will die out. Or maybe the earth will die. Actually, the earth WILL die sooner or later. At some future point in time, it may not matter if or where banana trees grow. There are many things that people thought were essential that have died out and new people coming along don't miss them at all because we never knew them. It saddens me that future generations won't be able to dive on coral reefs. Coral reefs have given me so much pleasure. But future generations will thrive on other things, things unimaginable to me. That's natural.