My perspective gives me a different take on the whole subject.

As you remember I have commented here before and shared praise for your nice blog, though I rarely agree with your conclusions.

You are talking about environmental ’sin’. In Christianity, for example, the sinner is never able to achieve righteousness. The value in trying is to demonstrate the difference between sin and righteousness to others.

In your post you describe people’s attempts and their shortcomings on the environmental front or we could say the environmental faith. I find it interesting and should point out that according to the leaders of the movement, you can never give enough.

As I have made it clear before, I appreciate anyone’s effort to improve their world. I think many of us can make small changes in our lifestyle that will benefit ‘us’ directly and the world around us. It is easy to sell this idea and it has real benefits in a persons own life, not just questionable benefits on a planatary level. Many of the things you advocate here fall nicely into the ‘easy to sell’ catagory. I just think that the Environmental Movement is shooting itself in the foot by advocating so many unrealistic changes that may not have any real benefits at all. Then people like the people here end up wasting a much more precious reasource trying to keep up. Your time!

I don’t think it is that hard to find a way to make a few changes for the improvement of efficiency. To think however, that our entire lifestyle should be turned upside down is at least counter-productive. If that is what it would take, it’s not going to happen. Worst of all, even if we did go that far back in our advanced society, it is our people and the planet that would suffer.

In short, it is prosperity combined with a little common sense that holds the greatest hope for what ails us. Not just environmentaly, but most if not all of the great problems in our society and in the world.

People like yourself that care about our world (I don’t mean the planet) are the vessel through which good is done in many ways. Let’s not get distracted by an ideology that has on its agenda the distruction of prosperity but do good with the prosperity it allows us to have. By the way I speak as one with very little of my own prosperity but am thankful for what little I have.

Keep up the good work

Brutus

Instead of switching to full vegetarianism, there are lots of options. How about only eating meat three or four days a week?

I’m trying that, thanks. A whole bunch of things are converging, one of them being improving my eating. Perhaps I can combine it with improving the planet and I’ll wind up eating more vegetables and less meat either way!