If I don’t have children why should I care?
Why would you only care if you had children? Do you not think that other peoples’ children are important - that only your children, if you had them, would be worthy of any consideration for the future?
Why should I care about other people’s children?
If I am dead and I have no descendants why should I care about the future of humanity?
You shouldn’t. You should make sure to tell people you don’t care about their children. Especially parents of young children, they’re the most understanding.
If you’re dead you shouldn’t car about the future of anything. Whether or not you have descendants doesn’t matter.
Because up until you die you are experiencing the same future as everyone else. The onset of what environmental pollution is doing is manifesting right now, and will only get worse, all within our lifetimes. You will probably still be alive in 2030, and who knows how bad things will be by then? If we do our part, maybe not as bad as it could be.
give me a sec
I don’t have kid’s, either, nonentity. But I am not selfish enough to think that I am the only human that will ever live. I care about the species, and by extent, will care about other people’s children.
It’s as simple as that, really. Are you so selfish that you only care about your own creature comforts now? Or are you a living, biological being, whose very existence depended on your ancestors?
I only care about how I can extend my life.
You should care about the environment because that’s just part of being alive and respecting other people.
You don’t have to know people to respect them - you should respect everyone and hope they respect you.
Don’t even think about the alternative.
Forget all that Global Warming stuff - it’s just the usual fear and scaremongering, but this time without the religion.
We’ve seen many of them in recent times -
Global Warming about three times in the last 100 years
Global Cooling - similar - about three times in the last 100 years
Over population - many times and still going - Google Paul R. Ehrlich.
Acid Rain - was going to kill us all, but faded away
Y2000 - Many countries did nothing and are still around.
Pandemics - many and continue
Eugenics - Google that to embarrass almost all intellectuals. It was “Settled Science” and solutions enacted by someone called Adolf Hitler. No longer discussed in polite circles.
And so it goes on.
Don’t listen - they just want your money.
Be prepared for a long, lonely, unsatisfying existence.
I feel bad for you, to tell the truth.
If this were a Twilight Zone episode, nonentity would now be cursed with immortality.
As most experts did not claim that you claim they said on all your straw men there, I do not think we should listen to you.
For example, the claim of global cooling being reported three times in the last century is not supported.
As for the OP, I guess he does not have any young relatives whatsoever and does not care at all about the future of the nation and the world.
Why are you bothering with this? What is there to live for, if other people are so irrelevant to you?
Even if you do have children, why should you care?
A typcal human bean has tiers of loyalty/responsibility, with lower tiers engendering less loyalty/responsibility from him. Family typically occupies the highest tier, i.e. you exhibit the highest loyalty to them: you feed and clothe them, let them sleep in your house, pay to put them through college. Friends (your tribe) are in the next lower tier. In even lower tiers we find people from other groups: people from your city, your state/province, your country, and in the lowest tier, everyone else in the world.
Loyalty/responsibility means you will go out of your way to act in the interests of someone else. Where people from two different tiers have conflicting needs or needs that exceed your ability to help, you choose to help the person on the higher tier first: if your friend and your kid were in mortal peril and you could only save one of them, you’d choose your kid before (or instead of) your friend, and no one will fault you for doing so.
Where there is no loyalty conflict, people on lower tiers can still expect you to do less to help them than you would for someone on a higher tier. Example, if your kid is in mortal peril you will charge Hell with a bucket of water in order to save him. A total stranger from half way across the world is probably not going to get the same treatment from you, and no one will fault you.
What you are saying is that people who are not your children do not occupy any tier in your loyalty structure, that you have absolutely no sense of loyalty or responsibility to them. In other words, you do not feel you are a member of humanity. You’re aware that your actions (or inaction) are going to help make future generations miserable, and you feel no sense of responsibility to them.
To feel a sense of responsibility/loyalty to your fellow man is to be a member of the human race and a civilized society, and it’s reciprocal; you give your loyalty, but you expect it from others in return.
So I pose this question: if you don’t have any loyalty toward the rest of humanity, why should we show any loyalty toward you?
Let us assume what you say is true, (god I smell a smell that’s…smelly)
If all you care about is extending your own life and comfort, caring for the environment actually makes sense. Assume you succeed, and live a long, long time. You will still need other healthy people to make things for you, grow crops, harvest animal proteins, etc… You will want to enjoy a varied diet won’t you? Pleasant foods? you need a healthy ecosystem for that. If you want to travel to exotic places and see unique natural wonders we will need to ensure they aren’t ruined by extensive climate change or turned into festering wastes. If you want to have possessions made from beautiful and strange materials you will need to preserve enough environment to produce them. Many of the medicines you will need to ensure your continued existence are produced from plants found only in ecologically sensitive areas. Cancer treatments have been found in the cartilage of sharks which need clean oceans. Etc…etc…
However, if you intend to do nothing more than squat in a home made entirely of plastic, eat nothing but the most basic of processed food over and over, and never, ever become ill, then feel free to cease to care. Congratulations, you are a meat robot.
Welcome to the SDMB, nonentity. We have a whole forum devoted to debates, so let me move this thread there for you.
twickster, MPSIMS moderator
Why are you asking? Is it our job to convince you of what things you should care about?
If you don’t care, you’ll be nothing but a nonentity.
You should care about the environment because pollution damages resources and harms people. Even if that harm doesn’t fall on you or your progeny, you should care about it for the reason you care about human rights in China, mass killings in Iraq, or the homeless freezing to death in a US city. In short, you should care because you should be a decent human being.
You may not be able to do much about any of these (at least on an large scale), but you should at least care.
Also, if you are in the US, there’s a good chance you have benefited from environmentalism that led to cleaning up the air and water.
Why should I care whether you care?
Boy, we can do this all day.