Greta Thunberg

Saw this on faceache. No idea if there's any truth in but if there is it could be worth a debate.

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/great-pacific-garbage-patch-ocean-cleaning-successful-inventor-boyan-slat-a9138286.html

 

Probably both have a lot of merit. We need to change things in the world. It will need passionate people with a vision to inspire change, as well as clever solutions to implement change.

Rosa Parks wasn't a scientist or an economist but she was an agent for change.

 

Not really.

They just understand the damage that pollution does and that continuing to plunder the Earth's resources, as we do now, is not sustainable.

 

The world will end, in a long long time, granted, it’s pretty much inevitable. Mankind will probably be gone before then though, and no doubt by our own doing. Or, at the doing of the leaders of the world i should say.

 

I don't.

I genuinely cannot understand why you are so dismissive of concerns about the environment and the impact on human life.

How many millions, if not billions, were spent in this country to make changes and clean up after the impacts of heavy industry became clear? Poisoned rivers, thousands dying in London as a result of air pollution in the fifties and even the great floods in the Netherlands and Norfolk when it became clear that irrigation methods were endangering lives as examples close to home.

I've worked in India and seen the impact on people of unregulated activity. Smog where you can hardly breathe. People crawling around in fetid dumps, trying to find something of value to sell because they have nothing.

You could take a look at the work of the photographer Michael Wolf and his investigation of the lives and conditions of people who work in factories producing plastic toys. Stuff that gets thrown away almost immediately, but causes great hardship for those producing it in near, if not absolute, slavery.

Or you can pour scorn on people who want to change this.

 

I don’t think that is what anyone is saying, tbf. I agree, changes need to be made, but as well as ordinary people making some changes, the way environmental concerns are treated at government level needs to change significantly, too. It’s not easy to put consideration for another generation ahead of our own, when you have a life to live. But at some point it is most likely i’ll be gone and it’ll be my kids that will be left. Even putting science aside, do i want them to inherit a world heading in a worse direction? No of course i don’t. To me it makes sense to try and move to cleaner energy and to a time where these things and technologies can be accessed more easily by normal people, not just those well off. Doing nothing is more likely to mean my kids and the children of other people are more likely to inherit a worse environment going forward, so of course i would support the kind of change because it is simply more likely to improve, or slow down at the least, our impact.

 

Project fear, fake news.... there’s hype around every corner. Tbh, i just need to open my own eyes to see mans impact.

It’s alright, the offspring of the ones that started coining ‘ fake news and project fear’ as an excuse to feed the population to rubbish any argument they don't like, will all be off to live on Mars, anyway

 

And what you refer to in London, as I also did in my post above, is what is now standard living for millions if not billions across the world. How can that be right?

I really don't see it as de-industrialisation. It is about how we live in a way that causes the least detrimental impact upon people. That means harnessing new technologies but also challenging the way we live, rather than I'm alright jack and sod everyone else.

 

The biggest problem this world faces is over population. That, if anything, is whats killing it. Too many people to feed yet we allow the population to go up unchallenged.

 

Don't worry about London. Everyone will have been stabbed to death long before the pollution gets them.

 

Those poor knife wielding thugs. They're just misunderstood.

 

Working in education, one of the worst things I see are kids that are 'gone' by the age of eight or nine.

No real structure in their lives outside school and unable to cope with being in school. I don't know what can happen in their lives that will prevent them from drifting into criminal activity.

The stuff I've come across in the past four years working in inner-city Manchester that kids have to try and cope with.

 

There's definitely a broken society in amongst us and i'm not sure how we've got to that point. It certainly wasn't as bad when i was younger. A lot of it is down to parenting and people being role models to their kids. There is a misconception that it is because of poverty yet todays society in this country has little concept as to what poverty really is. My parents were typical of many, brought up to hard working values by their parents who themselves had very little in materialistic wealth. Those values taught us respect for others, to value what little we had because it had been worked hard for.
Todays society is systematic of a 'gimme' society where hard work and respect has been replaced by a culture of why should i work for it and why should i care.
Sad really.

 

You answered your own question