Essay

[shanex]

I'm working on this short essay, just for my own use, possibly to put on a page somewhere and link to people when I want to explain my (controversial and highly opinionated) views on modern environmentalism. I'd appreciate any feedback, but more on the writing itself than in rebuttals. Though always happy to listen to alternate points of view, my

Comments

[landley]

I didn't bother to respond when I first read it, because it's clearly not designed to convince anyone of anything, and I hadn't asked his opinion.

My obvious response was "Antropomorphization's a red herring, the real problem is we don't really know how the environment works, or how to fix parts of it we break, from zebra mussels to the way the original fertile crescent's mostly desert now. Our last serious attempt to reproduce it in isolation led to a Pauly Shore movie."

But the article wasn't written to provoke discussion. As far as I can tell it was written to shut people up. Not interesting.

[shanex]

You're right, it wasn't written to provoke discussion. But neither was it written to "shut people up". It's intended to be a statement of belief. It's not designed to convince anyone to change their mind about anything, but rather to codify my opinion and why I hold it.

The end goal of this is for me to put it on a page somewhere and link it when people ask me why I hold my views. So like I say, the idea isn't to convince them my views are right, but instead to explain what my views are, and the thought processes and beliefs that led me to them.

As for "I hadn't asked his opinion" that's not really fair. I didn't force my opinion on you, I just posted on my blog.

Also, "biosphere" was a much better movie than I expected. Still trash, but I usually despise Pauly Shore and found myself chuckling from time to time at that movie. :)

-ATW

[landley]

> The end goal of this is for me to put it on a page somewhere and link it