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Politics : The Environmentalist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TigerPaw who wrote (9330)	2/5/2007 11:06:25 PM
From: average joe	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 36917

"Observe that in all the propaganda of the ecologists—amidst all their appeals to nature and pleas for "harmony with nature"—there is no discussion of man's needs and the requirements of his survival. Man is treated as if he were an unnatural phenomenon. Man cannot survive in the kind of state of nature that the ecologists envision—i.e., on the level of sea urchins or polar bears. . . . In order to survive, man has to discover and produce everything he needs, which means that he has to alter his background and adapt it to his needs. Nature has not equipped him for adapting himself to his background in the manner of animals. From the most primitive cultures to the most advanced civilizations, man has had to manufacture things; his well-being depends on his success at production. The lowest human tribe cannot survive without that alleged source of pollution: fire. It is not merely symbolic that fire was the property of the gods which Prometheus brought to man. The ecologists are the new vultures swarming to extinguish that fire." [Ayn Rand (1971), "The Anti-Industrial Revolution," Return of the Primitive, 277.]

To: TigerPaw who wrote (9330)	2/5/2007 11:08:52 PM
From: Triffin	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 36917

The point is, if humans cause climate to change at an accelerated rate then there will be a huge financial and ecological mess to pay. It would still be a mess if the climate changed for some other reason, but the evidence is that the causes of the current changes are within our control. I firmly believe that we as a species have managed to get to where we are in large part due to the relative climatic equilibrium of the past 8000 years or so .. The consequences of too much climate change in either direction; warming or cooling, will have enormous mitigation costs .. If I had to choose one or the other, I'd rather deal with the consequences of a continued warming scenario .. Imagine trying to mitigate advancing continental ice sheets, falling sea level that would leave all port cities high and dry, loss of farmland, inability to provide heat due to lack of fossil fuels, Peak Oil and an Ice Age .. Triff ..