There’s Always Something (or, Why Are Environmentalists Always Complaining)

Nicholas Gottlieb – 27 juli 2020 – link artikel

You build a hydropower project — but what about the fish? You make batteries for electric vehicles — but what about the exploitative lithium mining in the Global South? You work towards bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration (BECCS) as a double whammy to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and generate energy…but what about the global land use change, loss of biodiversity, and consumption of arable land that’s needed for global food supply? With environmentalists, there’s always something.

It’s an article about why that “something” that environmentalists always have to complain about isn’t just nitpicking and why it’s so important that we keep pushing back. It’s an article about how that nitpicking is actually a critically important signal telling us that the framework with which we’re approaching these problems is faulty.

Fighting climate change and the myriad of other ecological and social crises that threaten the very existence of our global civilization, if not the human species as a whole, requires rethinking the entire paradigm by which we operate.

To change our paradigm, we need to recognize that the current state of human being is a paradigm, it’s not some sort of naturally preordained “way things are.”