A Good Argument

The following video, entitled "The Most Terrifying Video You'll Ever See" was created a few years ago by Oregon high school teacher Greg Craven and posted on YouTube, where it's been viewed a couple million times since then. It's also been updated and resulted in a book being written on the same subject, from what I can tell.



I love the argument that Craven makes, as it's something I've thought about many times myself, and even blogged about before. One aspect of the debate that he doesn't touch on, but that seems relevant to me, is the idea that conservation is a positive, compassionate way of life that should be attractive on its own merits. If we think of renewable resources (such as solar or wind power) compared to those which are non-renewable or which have dangerous by-products (such as oil, natural gas, coal, or even nuclear power, to some degree) in terms of whether their use is something that could be sustained for centuries or even millennia, then the folly of the latter group becomes pretty clear. It would be like setting up your family in a house that has some bottled water and a bunch of canned food in it but never doing anything to establish any new sources of sustenance, such as finding fresh water, starting a garden, or even just determining if there's a market nearby that you can get to. Sure, for awhile you'd do just fine by using up what the house came with, but simple common sense would tell you that you and your family can't survive in that way for all that long. It's amazing just how far we, as a species, have roamed from the old farming philosophy that everyone once understood: you need to live and operate in a way that's self-replenishing or else you won't be around for very long.

And of course, the "huge cost" of environmentalism is always trotted out as a reason not to change but it's actually just a transitional cost that's incurred in order to get us onto a sustainable path. Short term pain for long term gain... which is always a good return on investment.