Cobb

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August 06, 2003

The Planet is Fine

George Carlin made the point that environmental activists have their priorities all wrong. Instead of worshiping the planet and suggesting that we should take better care of it, they should admit that the planet is fine.

The planet is fine, and its weather systems, bacteria, viruses, tectonic plates and other parts are all rather oblivious to us. The planet will survive our worst. We won't.

In the end, environmentalists ought to help us to understand what it is that we do wrong doesn't threaten snail darters and other biodiversity, but threatens human beings ourselves. The problem is of course that we have another 150 years or so until we're paved over, and people will notice.

But environmentalists have another enemy and that is the capitalist market. You see the market will inculcate upon us a consciousness of choice and price. We will either have high prices or limited choices and those will change so gradually that we will adjust. like frogs in the broth. I am thinking of this specifically because, after all these years, I have found that my favorite drinking water ever, Dasani, is manufactured, bottled and distributed by the CocaCola Company. I prefer drinking this to water out of the tap. You ask me about the environmental effects of water pollution and I don't care because I drink Dasani. When Dasani costs too much for someone with my income, like never, then I'll pay more attention to the lead levels of the Mississippi River. You see the problem.

There is a simple and clever solution to this problem, and it's something that even a politician as notoriously reviled as Cynthia McKinney has learned. Go local.

McKinney, who was and is a lightning rod for racial politics of the most contentious kind, nevertheless won re-election after her district was jerrymandered from overwhelmingly black to majority white several years ago. What saved her? Lead paint on children's playground toys and the failure to clean up toxic dumps in her district. Everybody got it. In fact, McKinney and similarly minded black activists have taken their show on the road to Durban, South Africa and added 'environmental racism' to the political lexicon. Obviously you can't fix the same problem twice, but the initial lesson stands. Show what individual polluters do to local communities.

Chaining oneself to a tree fifty miles from the nearest McDonalds only brands one a weirdo. Allowing McDonalds to take credit for using paper instead of plastic wrappers on its billion burgers is genius. Trying to cram scientific research about global warming down the throats of Joe SixPack is foolhardy if not suicidal. Lobbying to change how sixpacks are package, with cardboard instead of plastic, with aluminum instead of tin, with tabs that stay on instead of being tossed away, that's inspired.

People care about quality of life issues, they don't care about the planet. My suggestion is to eyeball your school yard, not the habitat of the spotted owl.

Update: Now take this ethics lesson and apply it to the question of vultures. I leave that as an exercise.

Posted by mbowen at August 6, 2003 04:56 PM

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Comments

Posted by: Lobo Lopez at February 7, 2004 07:08 AM

Posted by: Cobb at February 10, 2004 05:41 PM