tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8524070301101240472.post2343571870048533441..comments2023-09-28T08:13:11.489-07:00Comments on Only In It For The Gold: Public Talk (by me): Ethics of CarbonMichael Tobishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08229460438349093944noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8524070301101240472.post-81275304775493691792008-11-03T18:30:00.000-08:002008-11-03T18:30:00.000-08:00> EcoEquityYes.> EcoEquity<BR/><BR/>Yes.Hank Robertshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07521410755553979665noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8524070301101240472.post-61610159839259623222008-10-30T19:14:00.000-07:002008-10-30T19:14:00.000-07:00Yeah. Eli is going on at some length about this so...Yeah. <A HREF="http://rabett.blogspot.com/2008/10/believing-ten-impossible-things-before.html" REL="nofollow">Eli is going on at some length</A> about this sort of thing right now.<BR/><BR/>It occurs to me that there are some people who believe Obama has a Muslim - homosexual agenda as if that made any damned sense.<BR/><BR/>Jane Smiley, despite her sweet name, has some <A HREF="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-smiley/goodbye-cruel-world_b_138755.html" REL="nofollow">terrifying musings</A> about the new incoherence.<BR/><BR/>The upshot is this. She says:<BR/><BR/>"The God of the right wing, and of the Bible, is a pretty arbitrary guy. He lays down the rules, but you can get those boils or those locusts even if you didn't knowingly do anything wrong, in fact, even if you didn't do anything wrong at all. Your personal God could punish you for something someone else did, as in the Bible he frequently punishes the enemies of Israel, men, women, children, dogs, cats, goats, etc., just for being the enemies of Israel. I love how right wing preachers pray away hurricanes, sending them to places like Bermuda. If your God is arbitrary, then of course you are always anxious and depressed -- your adrenaline is always pumping. And you are never motivated to understand how the world works. But locusts and boils and hurricanes have causes -- physical, medical, and ecological. Society can avoid locusts and boils and even mitigate the effects of hurricanes if it understands cause and effect, but if your God is an arbitrary authoritarian, and your father was an arbitrary authoritarian, then you never truly understand cause and effect in the world we live in. As we all know, no religion has ever successfully answered the problems raised by the issue of an omnipotent God. The best they offer is to forbid questioning, and to punish those who do."Michael Tobishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08229460438349093944noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8524070301101240472.post-23472423730610372352008-10-30T14:48:00.000-07:002008-10-30T14:48:00.000-07:00thingsbreak --- Christythingsbreak --- ChristyDavid B. Bensonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02917182411282836875noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8524070301101240472.post-42835319174791597882008-10-30T10:50:00.000-07:002008-10-30T10:50:00.000-07:00Ah, TB, you give it all away.Yes. My thoughts on t...Ah, TB, you give it all away.<BR/><BR/>Yes. My thoughts on the matter are much influenced by <A HREF="http://ecoequity.org" REL="nofollow">EcoEquity</A>. <BR/><BR/>In short, we (by which I mean everybody) don't know how to solve global problems. We'd better figure it out fast.Michael Tobishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08229460438349093944noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8524070301101240472.post-48725030074301991242008-10-30T10:34:00.000-07:002008-10-30T10:34:00.000-07:00I think there's a lot of misunderstanding of what ...<I>I think there's a lot of misunderstanding of what the global warming situation implies for how we will live in the future.</I><BR/><BR/>I won't be able to attend in person, but as mentioned in a previous post, I recently picked up Bill McKibben's Deep Economy. I haven't read much past the introduction, but in it he makes the obvious point that the pursuit of emissions reductions must of course take into account people like a young girl in China, who deserve to have the opportunity to be raised out of poverty.<BR/><BR/>In reading past comments at Dot Earth, or by either Spencer or Christy (I can't remember which), I don't understand where the myth that those who seek to avoid the worst aspects of climate change are callous towards the rights of those in poorer nations comes from.<BR/><BR/>A few years back, the smear was that we wanted to funnel the hard-earned tax dollars of white Christians to the brown third world as part of a massive Red Conspiracy. I'm curious as to when this newer meme started and why it seems to have taken hold despite it's obvious conflict with the older one.<BR/><BR/>In any case, the emissions solution from my perspective is inseparable from social justice given the tool sets that we have. In fact the tool sets for solving both largely overlap, as in the case of education of women and access to reproductive health care. Or rewarding developing countries for the protection of their natural forests rather than incentivizing their exploitation/destruction.<BR/><BR/>Best wishes on your talk. Let us know how it goes.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com