I probably was not paying close enough attention. Mea culpa. I was thinking Mom Nature (Eyra?) ended up choosing sides instead of just being a neutral “scientific” principle underlying everything.
In any case, I loved the movie for its visual display (3D IMAX) and will be returning to feast again. So it must not have annoyed me that much…
Industry can’t really care about environmental issues unless it is profitable to do so - that is. it’s not all that likely to happen, unless one or more of the following:
-the current course of action brings about some inevitable and measurable detriment to future profitability
-consumers have their own environmental concerns that industry must accommodate in order to extract their cash
-an external authority imposes and polices controls
Left alone, what private company would willingly choose to spend money on, say, reducing emissions, if it’s more profitable not to bother?
So to a certain extent, it’s inevitable that environmentally-concerned organisations and individuals take up an adversarial stance against industry. Industry will only do what the customers demand.
You could always start your own thread about that.
To paraphrase: “I don’t know HOW Mr. Nixon got re-elected, Shhharles! I mean, none of MY friends voted for the man…”
I’m happy for you that none of the purported thousands of Greens you’ve met have an anti-technology (we weren’t really discussion SCIENCE here, friend) mind set. My own anecdotal experience has been different than yours, unfortunately.
No, please don’t rephrase the OP. I wasn’t talking about science, or a scientific mind set. I’m talking about ant-TECHNOLOGY…which isn’t exactly the same thing. Many Green’s I know actually ARE very astute at science and know quite a lot about it. This, however, doesn’t seem to preclude them from buying into an anti-tech or even stronger mind frame, nor from buying into the whole Noble Savage meme about how much better off we’d be if only we could go back to the way thing were (insert some time frame thousands of years ago when things were so much 'better).
If you wish to paint with a broad brush about how ‘non-Greens’ (a VERY large group of people) are ignorant of science (or whatever you are on about), then feel free to start your own thread. Thanks, in advance, for your support and cooperation…
-XT
xtisme, have a look at the spoiler in post 17 by Shawn1767. I think you completely missed the plot of the movie.
Avatar was more about science versus dogma.
It’s not supposed to be a spirit of mother nature. It is an actual living being which you connect to through the spirit trees. So when its existence is threatened, of course it will take sides. Probably the native Pandorans thought it never took sides because up until that point in time, every creature on Pandora was essentially an extension of it, so naturally it will not take sides.
In my opinion, there is a good reason for being against technology. We live on a finite planet and modern technology has always been about exploiting the planet to serve humanity’s wants and needs. We forget that we are animals, too, and that we aren’t really all that smart. The fact is, humanity consistently takes actions with unknown consequences and planet Earth will not always be so forgiving.
Cecil’s article on salmon includes great examples of what happens when we abuse our resources. If we don’t quit, things will only get worse. The problem with more moderate environmentalists is that they only advocate actions that will slow the inevitable exhaustion of such resources. Why humanity is so resistant to returning to an eco-centric lifestyle that worked for hundreds of thousands of years is beyond me. Is being able to pee without walking outside the tepee all that important?
Animals (at least primates) use technology too. They’re just not as good as we are at exploiting it. Yes there’s plenty of stuff we do wrong, but technology alone is not the problem.
And also: see my post above.
That’s why I said modern technology. That is to say the technology of industrial civilization.
And the reason farmers find life so hard these days is because they live with a very stupid concept that controls all power and resources in industrialized civilization, that concept is called money.
No, it’s not. Every single class I took in college, including Calculus, involved training on the notion of “the most efficient process is both the least costly and the least environmentally-damaging, as well as usually being the safest.”
Most efficient = least resources for the same result = least energy, least reagents, least solvent, least pretty much everything except final product.
(Chemical Engineer)
Nava, I am not a chemical engineer, but I still know that resources cannot be created from the void. What you’re suggesting is that, at a certain level of efficiency, exploitation is no longer exploitation at all.
Let me know when New York City can sustain itself indefinitely without importing any outside resources and I will concede your point.
I am not a historian or anthropologist, but my layman’s reading has suggested to me the notion that there was pretty much never an eco-centric lifestyle, there were just less people.
Well, the whole having half as long to live or less is a big downer to most folks.
That’s a fair assessment, but it also seems evident to me, excluding Western culture, there was a lot more respect for maintaining a balance with wild nature as opposed to “be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.”
I don’t think you can claim this is fact for adults. The averages we have are skewed by infant mortality and death in childbirth, as well as the fact that most data comes from Western civilization, where large numbers of people lived in close proximity to one another, enabling the spread of disease. Remember, for instance, that the bubonic plague would not have happened if a) people weren’t living in cities and b) those people didn’t dispose of waste in the streets.
Not that I can prove it, but I believe many of the diseases we have today are caused by industrial civilization. Although I have brought this up on the SDMB before, remember that when Europeans colonized the Americas, most natives were killed by “Old World Pathogens;” yet diseases carried by indigenous Americans did just about nil to affect the population of European colonists. Such asymmetric devastation, wrought by a smaller group of people on the more prolific native population, should lead one to wonder if the living conditions of Europe had a hand in creating vastly more deadly diseases.
Also keep in mind that some (if not most) species of wildlife have evolved to prevent overpopulating their habitats. An example is the kakapo parrot, whose mating rituals actually serve to make successful mating unlikely. Creating a balance between population and resource consumption allowed the kakapo to do quite well until humans arrived on New Zealand; many ancient human cultures practiced infanticide for the same reason. As nice as modern medicine may be for individuals, it does disrupt the aforementioned balance.
Somehow more people dying in childhood is a good thing? Tell all those people who died early because of a lack of modern technology that they don’t really count because they didn’t make it to adulthood. I’m pretty sure they’d all disagree with you on the whole eco-centric lifestyle bit. Try selling that crap with ‘Sure ma’am, you’ll lose half your kids in infancy but the ones who make it to adulthood will probably live to 50!’
Here is an article on life expectancy on Wiki. The Pre-Columbian MesoAmerican LE (before all those nasty diseases brought over by the Euro’s) was 25-30. Even with a high infant mortality (and I also am curious why Mr. Krebbs thinks that’s significant) people weren’t living anywhere near as long.
-XT
Sure, it sucks for individuals. However, it probably didn’t suck so much for the planet. ETA: people were also much more prepared (and thus less likely to be devastated) for infant mortality back in the day; again, people intentionally killed their children because they knew they would not be able to support them - not that people don’t also do this today, it is just more likely to be in a “humane” fashion.
Obviously, a lot of zeros greatly brings down the average lifespan of any population. When kidchameleon suggests people lived half as long, higher infant mortality skews the result. A dead infant has no bearing on the lifespan of an adult, therefore someone who lived past infancy might expect to have a reasonable lifespan by today’s standards.
Another factor is the environment one lives in - so central American life expectancy pre-Columbus may not be a good sample of life spans worldwide. After all, the average life expectancy today in Angola is 38 years.
No wonder you don’t get it. Why would any individual choose to go back to that way? They don’t want to be one of the individuals it sucks for. And considering that nearly everyone’s lifespan will be decreased to some degree, it sucks for everyone. And so what if people back then were more prepared for infant death? How does that help the folks you want to resume this life style?
I’m not sure why you don’t think infants that would live with modern technology who die are not living a significantly shorter life. When you die at 0, you live a whole lot less than 68 years. 0 of 68 is less than half.
Because human life is dependent on the life of the planet. Whatever happens in the future, there will eventually be fewer humans than there are now. Whether this happens because humanity changes its way of life or because we exhaust all the resources we have is another story. But guess what: we are on the latter road, and that is the road that will cause the greatest degree of privation to every living thing that comes afterward (including humanity, should we fail to completely extinct ourselves).
It’s obvious that those infants lived a shorter life, but more infant deaths affect an average life expectancy without causing any adult to live half as long. You stated that people lived half as long way back when, implying that no one lived a life of average length by today’s standards before modern technology. Your original assessment is probably not true and that is what I was pointing out.
Do you have any actual data indicating that people lived just as long (or even in the ball park) as they do today, but that infant mortality is skewing the figures that much?
-XT