We all know instinctively that we are hastening our own demise: the destruction one by one of life giving forces through human pollution and environmental degradation; the exhaustion of energy sources to power increasingly exotic lives of travel and consumption.
We went to a party over the weekend where practically all in attendance would have agreed with Mr. Montagu. Just about everyone there was a doctrinaire liberal who thought exactly alike on all the same subjects. Problem was, if you raised any factual matter that might call what they thought into question not only did they not know of it, they also didn't want to hear about it. One woman ended a conversation with me by saying simply that we need't continue talking, which I must say was fine by me. The world was here long before we got here, and will be here long after we have left. The idea that we are at once the only species that can destroy the world and the only one that can save it strikes me as a peculiar form of hubris: anthropocentric misanthropy.
A less melodramatic argument on fracking:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/05/natural-gas