[ExI] ​Existential hysteria

[Mirco Romanato]

Il 27/07/2014 20:05, Angel Arturo Ramirez Suárez ha scritto:

> ​Agreed that I don't see exactly how does it impact the collective of
> humanity to start doing what should have been done years ago.

Because economy is about the seen and the unseen.
I would also say "the glamorous" and the "unglamorous".

Policymakers, more than people, are all interested in the "seen", what 
is "glamorous", "cool" and useful for their career.

> ​It's true that it costs money to protect the environment but by
> generating a culture of conservation we ensure that not only our general
> surroundings are better to live in (or climate deniers also deny that
> cities with too many cars and factories get filled with smog?) but we
> also reduce the amount of waste we have to deal with (plastics that take
> decades to degrade, nuclear waste, chemical and biological hazards). It
> also helps if we reduce the amount of resources and regulate the
> expansion of cities so that we can maintain the flora and fauna from
> which we feed and draw inspiration from.

All fine and dandy but "generating a culture" is synonymous of "central 
planning". Not only this, "generating a culture" is synonymous of 
thinking you or any group is able to program people in doing what you 
want without consequences.

A "culture" is something always changing and adapting. A "culture" must 
spring from the bottom, not from the top. It thrive in P2P, not 
centralized, thinking and acting.

Because if a culture can be imposed from the top to the bottom, by fiat 
of a cadre of leaders, today will be conservation, tomorrow will be mass 
slaughter of unbelievers. If YOU can do the former YOU can do the 
latter. And if YOU can do it, then others also can do it.

The facts is a culture can not be imposed by design, it must be self 
reinforcing and self maintaining.

The only way to have a culture of conservation and keep it is to have a 
profitable culture of conservation. The same is for recycling. The same 
if for wildlife biodiversity. The same is for all.

> That's something I don't get about climate deniers. Even if we weren't
> the cause for global warming, what's so wrong about creating recycling
> programs or establishing flora and fauna protected areas? What do they
> propose instead, to keep polluting the environment and throwing our
> trash everywhere (even space, which brings to mind a Futurama episode
> where mankind threw their garbage to space and it came back as a huge
> ball trying to stomp them, LOL) so that even other planets get polluted
> as we expand through the universe?

There is nothing wrong in creating a self supporting economic program. 
You do not need to create it; if it is economic, it will create itself 
out of market forces.

People care for their environment. And more wealthy they become, more 
the care for it. They care so much they will pay out of their own pocket 
without being forced to have a clean environment.
How much clean? Exactly how much they can afford.

Environment is everything around us interacting directly or indirectly 
with us. It is the food I eat, the room where I sleep, and the sea where 
I swim and the air I breath.

I believe it is stupid to concentrate too much effort and resources to a 
few facets of the environment and disregard others completely.
One must take a step, little step usually, at time. The future is 
unknown territory, traveling it like it is fully mapped is for fools.

I see this continuously in my field of work: psychiatry.
People obsessing about cleanness in the ward and keeping their 
excrements in plastic bags at home.

How it is so different from people obsessing about buy "zero miles" when 
the costs to drive from home to the market is larger than the costs to 
bring the same fish from Tanzania to Italy or the banana from Somalia?

Is it so different from people obsessing about eating "organic" food 
produced by very inefficient cultivations and then lamenting the 
destruction of wildlife because too much land is dedicated to grow foods?

The differences is my patients damage mainly themselves with their 
obsession and marginally others. These people damage mainly others and 
marginally themselves. But it is always someone else fault things do not 
work as they would like.

Mirco