Posts
EJ:
Have you ever stopped to ask yourself why right wingers are so in favor of pollution?
SR:
Jeff, you pose this question, then give no answer. Instead, you yourself demonstrate how improbable the claim is. Why indeed would right-wingers be in favour of pollution?
Simple, Jeff. They aren’t.
The dispute between right and left on this issue is between proposed solutions. The left believes, as David Suzuki’s talk makes plain, that the solution to pollution is to limit development, to return to the conditions of the past. The right believes the solution to pollution is to accelerate development.
Buckminster Fuller explained it all in a speech I heard him give. The essence of development is improved efficiency. Our MP3 players today, for example, do much more with far less material and far less power than our reel-to-reel tape decks of fifty years ago. The essence of improved efficiency is less waste. Waste is inefficiency. Waste costs money; waste kills profits.
Therefore, if we let development proceed unhindered, we will, over time, have less and less pollution. The market demands it.
If, however, we hinder development, we will increase pollution.
The strategies offered by reactionaries like David Suzuki, therefore, will have the effect, if implemented, of increasing pollution.
They will also, not incidentally, by inhibiting development, freeze social inequalities in place: they will serve to keep the rich rich and the poor poor. For the desperately poor, they may mean death.
A big city like London, three hundred years ago, was so polluted a modern would find it unspeakable: black with coal dust, open sewers in the streets, no plumbing, no clean water. We have far less pollution now. Similarly, the developed world—North America, Western Europe, Japan—is vastly less polluted than the underdeveloped world today.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I, in fact gave a detailed answer as to why right wingers are inadvertently supporting pollution. They can't stand the notion of scientists saving the planet, because they think it's God's domain. Meanwhile, God's a no show as always. Many Christians go as far as saying the heating of the planet is part of the apocalypse, nothing to worry about. Moreover, there's an attitude that the environmentis nothing to worry about because God will save the day (did I mention He's a no show?).
My naive friend, your post claims that right wingers are in favor of development and advocate against waste, as if you have this over the left. Give me a break Steve! Suziki goes on an on about how we can be less wasteful to save the planet. Scientific research is all about development (Ms. J on this blog goes as far as saying science is "evil").
What's wrong with doing both? Development, plus manage our waste? There are a multitude of things we can do RIGHT NOW to purify our air. In fact, we are long overdue.
Post a Comment