So, you’re the “moral” beer yeast who saw doom coming, who thought, “You know, when the sugar gets scarce and the alcohol level rises to 11%, we’re done! I’m going to stop this right here. No more sugar for me!”At the end of the post, after showing how fossil fuels saved the forests and the whales, he promotes technology to take over for oil - a hopeful future.But all you did was drop out of the “race” and leave your share of the sugar to your cousin, who happily subdivided down unto the generations — while you shriveled up.
This dude wrote a post putting all of humanity on the Titanic and giving us the choice to head the the lifeboats, ASAP, or mosey to the bar because - though we have hit an iceberg - no one has died yet. At the end of the post, he has reduced the population of the US in half and has us living in shanty towns. A less hopeful future.
Imagine, then, that you’re on the proverbial ocean liner at sea, and it’s just hit the proverbial iceberg. Water is rising belowdecks and the deck is beginning to tilt, but nobody has drowned yet. Aware of the danger, you strap on a life preserver and head for the lifeboats. As you leave your stateroom, though, the guy in the stateroom next to yours gives you an incredulous look. "Are you nuts?" he says. "If you leave the ship now, somebody else will just take your cabin, and get all the meals and drinks you’ve paid for!"Any thoughts?
Bill and I have recently been conversing about the morality of energy use. We have pretty disparate thoughts on the issue and are still looking for common ground.
I read a book about "blue zones" where there are high concentrations of centogenarians, and after genetics and diet they seemed to say that people who do not worry about these things live longer. Ironic, I know. This is why I did not comment on the peak oil paper post Bill did back in November (also I was waiting to see if anyone logged off facebook long enough to comment). We are attempting to prepare for the worst and hope for the best, so why worry about peak oil/phosphorous/capitalism/terrorists? The rest of the world could go to hell tomorrow and me and my family are well-poised to survive just fine. What that poor yeast cell was missing was the ability to grow his own food or storage for a stash or a gun. In the end the yeast is just a pawn in our game of trying to escape our impending doom by drinking alcohol, anyways.
ReplyDeleteI'm not particularly worried about Armageddon (now that I have chickens, land, and a big pantry), I'm more interested in the morality of individual use of a finite resource.
ReplyDeleteBill is often forgetful about turning off lights, which is a habit I'd like him to change. In our perpetual discussions about it, I asked him if he thought his use of energy to power lights he wasn't using was making life harder for people in poor countries. If his using the energy took away from their ability to do so. To me, this is a completely logical conclusion... America's use of energy - and the foreign policy that supports this use - creates and supports drastic global inequities. To me, therefore, using this energy (especially wasting it) is supporting the inequality. I am working to be the "moral yeast" that uses less as an individual, thus decreasing total use.
To Bill, my conclusion is illogical. He believes, like the author of the beer post, that if he doesn't use the resource someone else (the moral yeast's cousin) will. In essence, my conservation doesn't do anything to stop the rising alcohol level.
To which I reply that that doesn't matter because I can't control what other people do, I can only act according to my own morals. (Apparently, so I can shrivel and die with all the other fools.)
This is what interests me. Does my sacrifice matter? If so, to whom does it matter? Is there any point in being the moral yeast?