The State of the planet: It’s better than ever

Washington Times ^ | 04/27/2015 | Stephen Moore

[SeekAndFind]

There is no time in the history of mankind that would be a better time to be alive than today. Nearly every objective measure of the state of the planet and the state of human progress shows vast improvement over time. You can find proof of this in about 30 seconds on your iPhone, a computing powerhouse that places the world at your fingertips.

Why is there so much pessimism about the state of our planet? Last week I watched the Earth Day speeches on the National Mall in Washington, and they were drenched with Chicken Little tales of a coming apocalypse. Here is the way CNN explained what we have to look forward to: “Think super-droughts, rising seas, mass extinctions and acidifying oceans.” Then it warned: “Bye-bye, animals.”

President Obama sounded the alarm about climate change: “This is not a problem for another generation. Not anymore. This is a problem now … . Stronger storms. Deeper droughts. Longer wildfire seasons.” It reminds me of those campy 1970s buttons: “Stop the world, I want to get off.”

Forty-five years ago when the first Earth Day was held, the catastrophe that awaited us was mass starvation, overpopulation, our supplies of oil and gas running on empty, and even a coming second ice age.

Every single one of those predictions was spectacularly wrong. The opposite occurred. But the doomsday machine rolls on. The declinism on the state of our planet and the well-being of our species permeates our schools, our churches, our malls, radio, TV, the Internet and our whole culture.

This is one of the greatest misinformation campaigns in world history. The state of our planet has never been stronger. Nature has never been more bountiful.

[ShadowAce]

SSDD--Same s***, different decade.

Back in the 70's, they were espousing the same crap, due to global cooling.

It's not about climate change, it's about their control over your life.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

“We’re so self-important. Everybody’s going to save something now. “Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails.” And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. Save the planet, we don’t even know how to take care of ourselves yet. I’m tired of this shit. I’m tired of f-ing Earth Day. I’m tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is that there aren’t enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world safe for Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don’t give a shit about the planet. Not in the abstract they don’t. You know what they’re interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They’re worried that some day in the future they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn’t impress me.

The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles … hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages … And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isn’t going anywhere. WE are!

We’re going away. Pack your shit, folks. We’re going away. And we won’t leave much of a trace, either. Maybe a little Styrofoam … The planet’ll be here and we’ll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet’ll shake us off like a bad case of fleas.

The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we’re gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, ’cause that’s what it does. It’s a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed. And if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn’t share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn’t know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, “Why are we here?”

Plastic… @$$hole.”

- - George Carlin

[Personal Responsibility]

“Why is there so much pessimism about the state of our planet?”

In the past life was hard - really hard - for most people. Because of that they did not have time or energy to waste on nonsense. They didn’t need to jog to stay in shape because they were breaking their backs every single day.

Now that life is more convenient, easier, - people jog because they spend too much time sitting - they have time for nonsense and now, nonsense rules.