[lbo-talk] Politics or the environment; whats more critical?

John Thornton jthorn65 at mchsi.com
Tue Aug 19 09:30:17 PDT 2003


At 12:42 PM 8/18/03 -0700, Dwayne Monroe wrote:
>It seems to me that .... there is an immense problem
>looming over all of this:
>
>global warming.
>
>So I’m wondering about priorities now. If we spend,
>for example, 40 years working to secure the rights of
>people of any sexuality to marry but pay no attention
>to the average temperature increase of 5 ­ 7 degrees
>across the globe that occurred over the same period
>have we achieved a victory onboard a sinking ship?

First off I have to state that I fit more in the catastrophists camp (with reservations) than the optimists one. Minor institutional reforms and incremental technological fixes will not, in my opinion, add up to sustainability. Best case projections by scientists in relevant fields who are not on the payroll of energy, auto, etc are far from promising. We are more closely aligning to worst case scenarios as far as we can tell with the currently available data. Predictions about the number of years before any specific catastrophe are generally bound to be wrong. Forty years or eighty years; it doesn't matter. I don't believe it is probable that the necessary changes to prevent an environmental catastrophe will come about in time. I doubt it will mean the extinction of our species however. No one can know which cause will give the greatest "bang for the buck" so to speak in bringing about change. We can assume that some will be more effective than others and simply focus our energies on those. Will fighting for the rights of same-sex couples to marry have a direct effect on anthropomophic climate change? Probably not, but you're unlikely to find many people fighting for this cause to the exclusion of all others. Pick a decent battle and fight it.

John Thornton



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