On Thu, 22 May 1997, David Lloyd-Jones wrote:
> e.wenzel@ens.gu.edu.au <eberhardw@plato.ens.gu.edu.au> asks:
>
> > David,
> >
> > > Sustainability is not a tough-love law of nature -- it's a bunch
> > > of whiners settling for third best.
> > Fine with me, if you look at the topic this way. But what are your
> > children and grand-children think of someone who considered people
> > concerned with ecological and economic crises on a never before seen
> > level as "a bunch of whiners settling for the third best".
> I have no problem with "people concerned with ecological and economic
> crises on a never before seen level", of whom I am one.
> The whiners are the ones who have taken one look at the situation and
> decided it's hopeless.
I don't know what it is, but as a proponent of the position that
dlj characterizes as "whining", when I see dlj unable to maintain a
position for even one exchange, I find it amusing.
I believe that the situation is not hopeless. Why? Because as
someone put it ... now, who was it ... oh yes, it was dlj himself, on Thu,
22 May 1997 09:54:06 -0400
> Infinite ignorance to be explored -- and the more we learn the more
> we build pathways into that unknown.
> Unbounded universe to be travelled -- and we've started sending
> tools outside our local solar system in just the human race's
> first 40,000 years of civilization.
> Limitless innovation to be tried -- and the pig, the horse, the cow,
> cat, dog and domestic orchids by the thousand are indications that
> we're pretty good at it.
On the basis of the above, even though we don't presently know how
to act in a sustainable way, I think it is within our capacities to find
out how to act in a sustainable way.
My reasoning is that, accepting that attainment of the goal is
within our capacity (which is a statement that can be validated only in
retrospect, but I don't see how underestimating our capacities is going to
help anymore than underestimating the problem will) and since achieving
the goal will avoid catastrophe, we ought to pursue the goal.
> Sustainability is not a tough-love law of nature -- it's a bunch of
> whiners settling for third best.
Evidently, there are two types of unsustainable that are to be
preferred to sustainable? I wasn't clear on the sense of this statement,
but the conclusion of this earlier post (at least, it reached my mailbox
earlier) seemed sufficiently vague to avoid contradication. OTOH, the
conclusion of the latter post, quoted above:
> The whiners are the ones who have taken one look at the situation and
> decided it's hopeless.
would not seem applicable to those who are proposing sustainability. We
are the ones who have looked at the situation and found reason to hope.
If we were looking for those who have decided its hopeless, we ought to
look among the opponents of sustainability, for the subgroup who have
concluded, "after me, the flood".
Virtually,
Bruce R. McFarling, Newcastle, NSW
ecbm@cc.newcastle.edu.au