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| - In a few hundred years, people will look back on these events and laugh at our ignorance, just as we laugh at the assumed ignorance of the dark age peasant.
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* Sure, the other species change the environment, its called "living". But what we are unique in is changing the environment both on an unprecedented scale and in an unsustainable manner, so that instead of just taking ourselves out if we screw up too much, like previous species that changed their environment too much for it to be comfortable anymore, we will drag pretty much every other macroscopic organism down with us. Plants may change the soil chemistry around them, but that doesn't prevent them from being able to live there for a hundred years, nor does it sicken things continent away. Furthermore, I don't understand why you say we don't understand these things; the greenhouse effect is very well understood, and there is little to no debate about it at this point. Will people a hundred years from now laugh at us for having believed in evolution? No? How about laughing at us for believing in gravity? No? How about the tendency of acids to react with alkalines to form a salt and a water? Didn't think so. Do your research- this isn't wild speculation, its hard science and if not for people like you pretending it isn't there, we wouldn't have gotten to a point where it started threatening lives (or at least livelihoods) in the first place.
* "Unprecedented scale"? Ever heard of the oxygen catastrophe? The largest extinction event in Earth's history, which we probably couldn't exceed if we tried, was caused by photosynthesis. Think about that next time you're hugging a tree.
* Perhaps. But there is a difference between humans and cyanobacteria, despite your arguements that we are the same. Unlike cyanobacteria, we have brains. We can see what we are doing, and we can change the way we live to minimize our effects while still living full and happy lives. The algae had no idea what they were doing, nor did they have any choice. We can see, and we do have a choice. That is why we are greater than cyanobacteria, and that is a Green Aesop.
* Also, the important bit is speed. We may not be working as fast as the K-T impact, but we've raised the extinction rate so high, it'll pretty much look like we were from the fossil record. The Oxygenation Event took a long time- the period between start-of-production and extinction might have been as long as 900 million years, as opposed to our "less than 200 years between start-of-industrialization-and-population-explosion and extinction skyrocketing". And unlike the K-T impact, we aren't a one-time event that will die away when the dust clears and the brush regrows; we keep pumping out new stuff and cutting down the new brush, as well as more of the old.
* A couple of things bug the hell out of me:
* This trope appearing in science textbooks. Seen It a Million Times and it makes me wonder how dishonest people can be - science textbooks teach science, not morals.
* The implication that having nice things, like a life expectancy beyond 40, the capacity to cure or prevent killer diseases, and a roof to live under is a bad thing because it uses fossil fuels and land.
* The other implication that as soon as you start using renewable technology all those problems will go away.
* The fact that problems like population control and vital things like gold running out are almost never addressed.
* Gold running out? What? It's an element. As such, it will always exist. It's not unstable/radioactive, doesn't rust, and isn't usually converted into other things (other than being put into alloys).
* The other other implication that Mother Nature is a balanced and benevolent system and then us humans mucked it up.
* Most ecosystems are usually in a somewhat balanced state when there aren't humans around destroying habitats, introducing foreign species, polluting them, etc.
* The implication that if you question anything - and I mean anything you are automatically in the oil companies' pay and want to cut down all the rainforests. It's a world-changing revelation, give us a breather and some space to ask questions. (Before anyone accuses me of being in the oil companies' pay and wanting to cut down all the rainforests, my main problem is the unsubtle moral message which raises my hackles because I like facts and interesting plots, not being told I'm a heartless bastard who likes killing cute animals in my selfish quest to have a decent life expectancy and a roof over my head. Other problems include stuff like population control not coming up when it quite logically should.)
* Bringing up population control would make the work far more controversial and would lead to an increase in the number of complaints here. There is no obvious way to enforce population controls without unpleasant things like two-child limits that most people don't want to advocate. Even telling people that it would be a good idea to stop after a few children would offend some people from large families and some Catholics and would invite comparisons to Planned Parenthood, one of the most demonized organizations on the internet.
* The No Pressure video made as a pro environmental argument. They seriously think this is a good way to convince you "Green is good". Do these people really not see just how horrifying this is? This is honestly one of the sickest things I have every seen.
* ... Wow. They seriously can't think that will help their cause, right? I almost want to believe it was made by some people who want to give enviromentalism a bad name, but that's probably not the case.
* Short summary for those who don't want to click: Protect the environment, or I'll FUCKIN' KILL YOU!
* Am I the only one who thinks the people who preach Green Aesops by using a Strawman Political in either their works of fiction or "educational" videos usually paint themselves into a corner by giving said Strawman an actually good argument on why most environmental solutions just aren't practical, or their justifications for using supposedly harmful tactics?
* While I'm not sure what you mean by "supposedly" harmful, I see your point. To most people, the Strawman probably looks like the sane one unless they make him ridiculously evil, Captain Planet style.
* I'm fairly pro-environmental, but is it so hard to write a Green Aesop story without forcing it down the viewers/readers throats? The majority of Green Aesop stories I see or watch, I end up taking as a Don't Shoot the Message thing. Why is it Green Aesop stories are always the Aesop stories that end up the most annoying and poorly written? About half of them make it seem like humans are the devil and the world would be better off without us. Every year in middle school, whenever there was some Earth Day or another, the science teachers would have us watch Ferngully the Last Rainforest. Why couldn't they show us a GOOD pro-environmental film, like Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind? Or, now that we have it, WALL-E?
* See above for why. More focusing on "We need to do something" than actually suggesting something, whitewashing ancient cultures as pure harmonious peace dwellers, black and white thinking, and serious cases of Did Not Do the Research.
* On the other hand, a lot of stories that convey a Green Aesop actually are pretty decent, but because of the double standard regarding this particular sort of message, people are more likely to see them as heavy-handed or unnecessary. Or, as in WALL-E's case, to see a Green Aesop where it's really an aesop about something else entirely. You'll never see a Green Aesop under Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped, or if you do, it'll be with a suitable amount of eye-rolling. Part of it is due to a few particularly ham-fisted and confrontational commercials and cartoons, and the rest of it...hell, I don't even want to touch the implications there.
* Shows like Captain Planet and Fern Gully come across as heavy handed now, but at the time the enivonmental message was quite new. Over the 80s, environmentalism went from being a fringe movement associated with a few crazies on the far left, to something that everyone at least pays lip service to.
* While the Green Aesop does have good intentions, it's troubling how some people combined it with a Family-Unfriendly Aesop. There's an unfortunately large number of people who support conservation of wildlife even though they apparently think it's just going to fail anyway. Uh...what?
* Sooo...does anyone here not have a problem with environmentalism anymore? Not advocating sacrificing all human comforts and living our lives in indentured servitude to our forests here, but the notion that we're part of the natural world and might benefit from being at least slightly mindful of it can't be that outlandish...right?
* I have to agree with this guy. I understand that many of these aesops are done poorly, but a lot of people seem to think that a Green Aesop simply is a bad thing, no matter how well it's written or how well it makes it's point.
* Agreed. Looking at this thread, it seems that poorly done Green Aesops are the problem. I do not feel that enviormentalism is a bad thing at all. I'm tired of wiping species off the map, or feeling bad (as one person here put it, a "tree hugger") for being a little mindful of the fact that we as humans have the biggest impact on the enviorment. And sure, other creatures makes their impact on Earth, but not on our scale (beavers? Really? Can they bore into the Earth and build massive cities?) However, I do not wish for us to immediately sacrifice everything we have. I don't expect us to stop drilling for oil, or to stop using fossil fuels as a whole - that's ridiculous. Just to be a little more mindful. Despite popular beliefs, we aren't amoral bastards who destroys everything.
* Agreed. I really don't understand why Green Aesops always seem have the greatest backlash in any given work of fiction. Why was WALL-E the most controversial of Pixar's films? Because of the Green Aesop. Why is The Lorax one of the most criticized works of Dr. Seuss? Because of the Green Aesop. Now, I get that many Green Aesops seem to tell the same message over and over again, but is that a bad thing? It's an important message, after all.
* Agreed. I don't understand why so many people get upset at the notion of a work having a Green Aesop. I think its something about the idea of suggesting that humans are a part of nature rather than outside of it. Environmentalism is not anti-people (at least in most cases), we need the planet to be intact to live here. I'm not saying we should abandon civilization and live in the woods - just that the other creatures that live in the forest are just as much a part of this planet as we are and we need to leave them some space too. Media will keep making works with Green Aesop until it's no longer really needed. As of now, it's still a message that the general society needs to hear.
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