George Carlin - Saving the Planet

Not sure if you based it on this, but it's a very famous argument made by George Carlin [1] [1] this video

Could not resist mentioning "Save the planet" from Geroge Carlin: The planet isn’t going anywhere. We are! We’re goin’ away. Pack your shit, Folks, we’re goin’ away. We won’t leave much of a trace either, thank god for that. Maybe a little styrofoam, maybe, little styrofoam. Planet’ll be here and we’ll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake, an evolutionary cul de sac. The planet will shake us off like a bad case of fleas, a surface nuisance. You wanna know how the planet’s doin’? Ask those people at Pompeii, who were frozen into position from volcanic ash. How the planet’s doin’. Wanna know if the planet’s alright, ask those people in Mexico City or Armenia, or a hundred other places buried under thousands of tons of earthquake rubble if they feel like a threat to the planet this week. How about those people in Kilauea, Hawaii who built their homes right next to an active volcano and then wonder why they have lava in the living room. The planet will be here for a long, long, long time after we’re gone and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself ’cuz that’s what it does. It’s a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed, and if it’s true that plastic is not degradable well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn’t share our prejudice towards plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as jus

By that metric, what is the environment and why is it important to protect it? On an abstract enough scale, we and our plastic are simply evolutionary products and the fact that we are wiping out species and cataclysmically heating the planet is just a geological event that might be called The Great Human Extinction by some distant inteligent race. As George Carlin used to say, the planet is just fine. It's the people who are f*ed: this video

This is getting absolutely rediculous ... Epoxy resins may very well have created the Diabetes epidemic, with genetic data backing it. link And the chemical used to make Teflon was dumped into the Mississippi river valley for years, leading to a spate of birth defects and other more common medical problems. Dupont paid hundreds of millions : link Carlin had it right .... this video

George Carlin: "And if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn’t share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn’t know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, “Why are we here?” Plastic… asshole.” Full text: link Video: this video

Now have time for a longer reply. There are a few different phenomena. First is that "fear" and "anxiety" are indeed used by the news media or politicians to get more attention. There I agree. It is cheap, unsustainable and harmful. But there's more to glaciers than news fearmongering. The second concept is "the planet doesn't care". George Carlin has his famous skit. this video Of course life will continue on earth, after relatively large temperature swings or 10 kilometer asteroid hits etc. That doesn't mean we don't need to care about anything. His skit can be seen as a wake up call (which he might or might not have meant). Why would we do anything? Why would you recycle instead of dumping plastic bags in the river? Why would you put the safety on in your gun? The planet will be fine even if you blow your leg off. But you will be affected. It's the people that are f.... That's the punchline. But I also disagree about his "don't meddle with nature, let the species die". If we change something, let's say, dump cyanide or mercury in a river, it's not "natural" for animals to die downstream. It's not "nature doing its thing". It's our responsibility. It's an untenable philosophical position to do something and then act as if the consequences don't have anything to do with the deed. But that's not the core point of the skit. So about caring. If there was an asteroid headed towards earth, I'd care. Yes, it's happened before, and life has survived. But I still care. It would have gr