What do you guys think of George Carlins take on the environ

>>2454912
He seems more naive than arrogant. What's his view on invasive species or the current rate of species loss due to climate change and human interference?
Some of his points on the indetity politics aspects are very valid though. The environmetnal movement needs to separate itself from mainstream politics and stop these stupid stereotypes for those who support it.

>>2455346
Well I think that was his whole point-human interference isn't really 'interference'. We haven't been here long enough to be out of the norm of this planet.

>>2455346
I think you completely missed his point. The point is Earth will always exist and the species will never be the same.
An asteroid could wipe out 90% of all species and a million years later you'll never realize it

>>2454912
Fuck George Carlin and his retard ponytailed ass

I don't know how serious he is about this stuff, because obviously he's playing up his opinions for humor.

But if he's actually serious about everything he's saying, then he's seriously misunderstanding the whole argument that environmentalists are making. The earth isn't going to explode because of human actions. Species turn over all the time. But that doesn't mean it's okay to just go around destroying species by being irresponsible and short-sighted. Every time we kill something off, it's gone forever. It will never exist ever again.

If we're doing something that's causing a species to become extinct, then why the hell wouldn't we try to stop it? Just because some environmentalists assholes, it doesn't invalidate the whole cause.

>>2455631
You have good point.

I, however, feel like it's not exactly a big deal if a species dies off.

I understand the argument that it is gone forever, and that is a sad thing indeed, but at the same time, nothing lasts forever. The species will die off eventually no matter what we as humans do to slow or speed it up.

I feel like we shouldn't be so fearful of death, or focus more on enjoying the things we have while we have them. If they die off, it is because they could not adapt, and them dieing off also makes room for other, more adaptable species to come into existence.

>>2454912
Carlin recorded this in 1992, long before global warming was heard of by the public, and well before anyone here was born. Well before the idea that humans were responsible for most modern extinctions had been agreed on by ecologists.

25 years ago when our major concerns were nuclear winter or the hole in the ozone layer (which was mostly gone by then, we fixed it).

He has long since died.

But Carlin was nothing if not a liberal. Even more liberal when you understand that the US was highly conservative at the time. He was a liberal pioneer. And while I didn't keep track of his environmental views later in life, I expect they remained as liberal as all his other views. His opinions very likely changed in light of modern scientific discoveries.

To me the really weird part is we have a whole generation that doesn't understand where US culture was in the late 80's or early 90's, and will never understand Carlin in his rightful context: He was a gadfly in a time when being a gadfly often got people killed. He was a rebel. His ideas were outrageous to both sides of the political spectrum. Now they seem pretty normal.

>>2455752
tl;dr: this is carlin in 92. Probably not what carlin believed in 06. Certainly not what carlin believes now cuz he's been dead for 9 years.

>>2455650
>them dieing off also makes room for other, more adaptable species to come into existence.

Yeah, five million years from now.

There's an argument to be made that supporting biodiversity on Earth benefits humanity in general. For example, one fourth of the modern pharmaceutical cabinet comes from the rainforest. New species are constantly being domesticated. New antivenoms, new healing factors - discovered on a constant basis.

By killing off a species we also kill off any chance of it giving us potential benefit in the future in favor of short sighted and short minded goals now. Conservation efforts not only benefit the species' fitness they also open the species up to scientific observation on a detailed and biochemical level. Thus, the exchange benefits both species in the process and is an example of mutualism. Mankind reaps the ultimate reward when it has catalogued and identified every species of life on Earth down to the last strand of nucleic acid. Would you not want that databank to be as large possibly be in the year 2450, for future generations of all biologists and all medical researchers studying who the fuck knows what is impacting humanity in the year 2450?

I think most have given up already, praying for the bomb.

>>2455777
Alright, alright, that's pretty solid point anon.

>>2455777
>I think most have given up already, praying for the bomb
once you realize conscious life has no inherent purpose, ending it is the logical desire.

religion seeks to provide an external purpose, but unfortunately that external purpose overrides any internal one, so in that paradigm ending life also makes sense (life is just practice for heaven, let's get it over with).

This problem is magnified by the obvious Malthusian catastrophes we're heading for. Humanity won't be around in 400 years, or if it is you wouldn't recognize what it will become. Because what we're doing now is very clearly going to end in less than 100.