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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Grainne who wrote (106435)	6/23/2005 1:08:18 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Living does not have to cause pollution or disease. Your attitude seems sort of fatalistic. I suppose that depends on your definition of pollution. Human beings simply by living do create carbon dioxide, which is a pollutant. They do excrete wastes and gasses, which are pollutants. That's even before they cut down a single tree, mine a single mineral, burn a single log or coal or oil or other substance for heat, pave a single road, throw away a single outworn refrigerator. Just by being alive, people pollute. And in the way we live -- you, I, virtually everyone alive -- we pollute. The fact that you and I are on computers discussing this issue means we were responsible for certain pollution which was necessary to make these computers, generate the power to run them, and discard or burn the boxes they came in. Simply by being alive, you and I pollute. I try to reduce the amount of pollution I cause, but overall if I have to pollute the earth to live, that's a price I'm willing to pay for life.

To: Grainne who wrote (106435)	6/23/2005 1:13:59 PM
From: The Philosopher	Respond to of 108807

I don't think people should have the right to be cruel to animals, and so I believe narrowing that "corridor of freedom" is completely right and appropriate. And it is completely your right to believe that way. And many people agree with you (including to a reasonable degree me; I do, though, feel perfectly justified in killing rats in our henhouse, and if I have to do so by poison in what may be a cruel manner because the rats are too smart to enter humane traps, I'll do it). But it is the right of others to believe differently. And of course there are those who also believe that plants are sentient beings and that it iw cruel to cut down trees, that we should use only stone and naturally dead trees to build our houses. I don't agree with them, and probably you don't either, but they have a right to those beliefs, as as much right to seek laws protecting plants from cruel treatment -- preventing trees from being chainsawed down, carrots from being ripped from the earth, broccoli from being sliced into pieces -- as you have to seek laws protecting animals from cruel treatment