I just finished watching Monumental: David Brower's Fight For Wild America - quite a story. Our (human's) drive to destroy the world is so saddening. Why do we need to fight to stop people from destroying it? If anything it should be the other way around. But we do, and David Brower is a fine example.
In addition to the story, there's lots of interesting old film footage, including climbing.
For some reason it made me want to go back and read some Edward Abbey.
Highly recommended.
The first level answer to your question "why" is pretty simple: There's no money to be made is saying no to something. Therefore, the side that wants to do something stupid hires all sorts of professionals -- probably well meaning people but who need a job -- to push forward their agenda, while the sane, rational, community perspective is defended by a few volunteers who dedicate all their spare time.
ReplyDeleteOf course, there are lots of exceptions to that general rule. However, the long-term evolutionary pressure is towards long-term losses suffered by the majority in the interest of short-term gains for a few.
That's why we need new ways to value economic activity. Carbon taxes, while so far implemented pretty imperfectly, might be one idea that will eventually do a lot of good.