I always ask those kids if they think that we should only have 50,000 people on earth living in harmony with nature and then in 1 billion years after we have devolved into animals again and the sun heats up and expands and burn ALL life on earth to a crisp if it really matters about us driving SUVs and polluting the crap out of the earth. What if the only way to SAVE the poor animals and plants of this eventual sun burning fate IS to strip mine 1/2 the planet to develop the industry for massive space colonization even if it leave Earth a lifeless husk?
They just kinda stood there stunned as if they couldn’t comprehend the basic logic behuind such a premise.
My take is that Gaia evolved intelligent human life so we can defend the ecosystem against the next round of dinosaur-killer asteroid strikes.
Which our technology would allow, but nobody is interested in putting the technology into effect. Which I personally think is really stupid.
They can't. They can't even understand the premise of a "premise," much less the chain of logical steps that can lead from a premise to a conclusion.
When one tries to use logic - or even simple facts - they simply stare blankly, and then repeat the irrational, emotivist dogmas that have been drilled into them since they watched their first PBS cartoon.