RE: Remembering Pascal - Taking care of our planet
I think that idealism is the only thing that has kept this planet going. All evidence suggests we are screwing up big time when it comes to polluting and accelerating whatever destructive process is taking place. I lived that straw man conversation you made up. It is just like that when politics messes up with science and common sense.
In Venezuela, when you want to argue with a person who supports the government and you ask them for a logical explanation for our economy to be this bad and their inability to stop inflation, human rights violations, etc. etc. and they come up with the whole economic war thing, and the US government not having the moral to criticize any other country because they also violate human rights and their economy is not that good.
So i know exactly what you're saying.
The discussion must be made; we have to insist that we cannot encourage progress and technological development at the expense of the planet (just because if we destroy this one, by then we will be able to just colonize another one).
Oh man... its tough.. I've given up with some people, simply because it becomes so emotional, you can't keep civility.
I understand the claim against the right wing of venezuela, but if its not working.... gosh in the name of pragmatism, a change needs to happen. escape goating is not feeding one single child.
More than that, scapegoating is literally killing people on a daily basis. My wife and mother-in-law have just come from a wake of a young woman who just died of cancer, leaving 3 kids behind, one of them just 3-month old. University professors, who used to have the highest life expectancy, are dropping like flies. And chavistas keep blaming "the empire". As you say, how can we keep civility with these people?
Regarding global warming and the like, the government actually has, as the fifth item in their "plan de la patria", nothing less than "to save the planet" and you have to see the entrance of every town in Venezuela (the infamous rellenos sanitarios). Pollution in the streets is at an all-time high and with the exploitation of gold and other minerals down south, they have destroyed more hectares of land than ever before. Thus, cynicism is probably the only department in which we are a power force!