Stone Deaf, Blatant Denial

This is another great post of the WarSocialism discussion list, which I am reprinting with permission. It feels really good to find other people like myself, which assures me that most people are stone crazy, and a few people are not. Most people are just going down the river, having a great time, and not realizing, caring, or denying that there is a waterfall just ahead.

Goose

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Do either of you run into opposition that uses logic to argue against doing something to save the planet? Or do they just put their heads in the sand?

Jay

Answer from Scott:

Stone deaf, blatant denial, or they run screaming for their pastor or rabbi. Or they cover their ears and say, "LA LA LA LA LA LA..." Most say its BS, an Al Gore political scam, the oil companies and Arabs trying to jack up the price of oil, or some other standard reply. Same result when I talk about evolution, geology, mass extinction, peak oil, fisheries collapse, population overshoot (or just birth control) or global warming. Does not matter which.

Even the tree huggers are not willing to listen to, 'the end'. They point to the stars, and say that we are going to colonize other worlds. That gets me riled up, as I used to work in the aerospace industry (General Dynamics in San Diego) and the energy required to go to another habitable planet in another star system is well, more energy than is available in the galaxy at least. Never mind the time or technology to cross deep space, or finding a place like Earth. Forget Mars; proof that any Mars colony will fail is right here above the timberline on Mt Hood. Pleanty of sun, water, seasonal warm weather, oxygen, all the rest, and no large plant growth. Reason? No soil microbes survive up there. Now its all rock in summer... all the Cascade peaks are grey and brown in summer now. The 'glaciers' are all melting off in summer now.

Funny (and typical) story: my ex girlfriend (we still get along) and I were in South Carolina with her brother birding at the beach. We stumbled into a rare early type of salamander, and her brother started an interesting lecture about the species. There was a small crowd gathered around after 5 minutes, and the kids and parents were interested, until... he said the "e" word. Parents' hands instantly went over childrens' ears and they were shuffled off. We still are in the cultural and religious stone age.