From: gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Sacrifice (was Re: Save the Planet ...)
Distribution: world
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 92 06:24:43 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <1992Dec30.180835.26471@vexcel.com> dean@vexcel.com writes:

 > >People don't have to sacrifice anything, just get on with it and
 > >*benefit*, for the same reasons you wipe your arse whenever you go
 > >to the toilet, or wash the dishes, or do the household chores. It is
 > >just *housekeeping*, fundamentally, and if you don't want to do it
 > >then you have to live in the shit accumulated around you, yes?
 >  
 > No, you can leave the shit for someone else to live in in 50 years.

Dean, the language is limited. If we were posting in French I would
plainly have used "vous" rather than "tu".

 > You pretty much ignored my point.  Costs and
 > benefits for washing the dishes or wiping your arse both happen on
 > a similar time scale.  The costs for CO2 emissions don't.  The costs
                                .
                                .
                                .
No, by locking your attention onto pronouns embedded in text you have
ignored my point that if the place is not cleaned up it must be lived
in dirty, yes?

With due respect, some of you people just want to argue on and on and
on about absolutely mind-boggling pettiness with people who plainly
have no fundamental disagreement with you. I really do not give two
bloody hoots if the good ol' US of A with all its spotted owls, Brown
bears, wolves or California Condors turned to compete desert, so long
as it does not affect us here in Australia. That is your problem and
it is up to you to address it.

*ONLY* to the extent that our interests do overlap, then we have some
clearly defined basis for cooperation.
                                .
                                .
 > doesn't necessarily accumulate around you.  Sometimes, it accumulates
 > around the next generation.  Avoiding that requires sacrifices.

Goodness me! Haven't you ever thought of making an *investment* in
real, long term economic development instead of crying for sacrifice
like some high priest howling for blood.

What on earth is the environmental movement over there? Some sort of
religious cult, or what? No wonder everyone here just gets the shits
with it all and start sniping at personalities instead of getting on
with the job.

 > You have written in another thread of Chinese care for the next
 > generation.  If that care is deep enough, then implementing such
 > plans may not even be considered a sacrifice.  If that is true, then I
 > salute the Chinese and think that such an attitude emphasizes just
 > how much many of us can learn from them.

Well yes, I keep posting cross-cultural material here specifically on
this world science forum on the environment, hoping that some valid
comparison can be made with strategies in place in various countries.
At least here you acknowledge that you are capable of learning from
others, thank you.

I do not see any of it in emotional terms as "care", merely pragmatic
common sense which I am certain your "Founding Fathers" had in very
good measure indeed with the thought and planning that went into your
Constitution, offering *you* a fair go in life now, what, eight full
generations later?

I had a tremendous admiration and respect once for the philosophy and
wisdom underwriting the foundation of the US; but now frequently wonder
what has happened to your collective brains since. Maybe too much of
all that strutting the world stage brandishing high technology weapons
has made you all paranoid or something.

Or maybe affluence just makes people decadent and stupid.

Gil

Newsgroups: sci.environment,sci.energy