George Carlin - Saving the Planet | Hacker News Reader

George Carlin - Saving the Planet

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35 pointsvijaydev13 comments

Sounds like he's ranting on a linguistic or rhetorical peeve rather than combatting actual environmentalism. When someone says we should "save the earth", they quite obviously don't think that, for example, pollution is going to make the planet explode, or something like that. Environmentalism is not about saving the planet itself - Earth will keep on spinning for several trillion years regardless of what we do.

Environmentalism is about saving ourselves. It's about preserving the environmental status quo insofar as we are able, in order to preserve its habitability for ourselves.

I like Carlin, but in this case he's being disingenuous for the sake of an easy joke.

I disagree.

Carlin's philosophy, particularly toward the end, was that humanity as a whole is doomed. The thesis is "The planet isn't going anywhere; we are" Note that he didn't say "will" or "may"; he said are.

To him, trying to save even ourselves was only slightly less arrogant and ill-founded than trying to save any other endangered specie and just as doomed an effort.

His certainly wasn't a hopeful philosophy, but he was consistent within it.

Yes, but those who are against environmentalism for ideological/tribal reasons are generally in favor of any support wherever they can find it, even if George Carlin is on the record ripping their political party every time he's had the chance.

I think a large part of conservation/endangered species protection is not that we just want to prevent everything from going extinct, but to prevent ourselves from being the unnecessary cause of that extinction. If whale oil had never been fuel, whales would be doing better right now. If weasels/rats/etc. hadn't been introduced in many places, a lot of native species would be having less trouble (particularly in New Zealand).

Also, saving endangered species, from a utility perspective, makes sense. People like animals. Therefore we want to keep them around. The cute ones like whales and kiwis anyway. I bet this page doesn't get a lot of visits: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endangered_spiders ...and now I'm ranting.

I've never said 'this doesn't belong on HN' because we all decide what belongs on HN, but on this one I'm scratching my head.

Nothing against GC of course. Watched this just the other day.

I hear (or read?) you, but it is this complete break from the usual that shows up and makes my day. I just don't want too much of it on the front page ;)

George Carlin is a clear thinker and very funny, definitely one of my favorite comedians. I like heady comedy. He simplifies things though, and this is a good example. Humanity is causing geological-scale effects on the planet and we need to address that.

It's not as if the planet were being damaged already and we just came along and tried to stop it, we're the ones causing the damage. He's correct to say that '90%' of species that have existed have already gone extinct(actually, I believe it's much, much higher than that, I think 99.9%). However, if Bill Bryson is to be believed, the rate of extinction has risen dramatically due to humanity, I believe Bryson said that it is 5 times greater than what it would be sans-humanity. There are times in the earth's past where there has been a much higher rate of extinction for a short time, the most recent event like this took out the dinosaurs. I believe the first one occurred when the atmosphere was 'poisoned' with oxygen from the first plant-like bacteria. As thinking entities, it's our responsibility to not allow our effects on the planet to have such a catastrophic outcome.

Once upon a time, obsession with bodily purity was a right-wing complex. In recent years, that obsession has been taken over by the left.

Almost all fascist/totalitarian movements have a strong element of health/environmental purity in their dogma. One thing people miss about past totalitarian movements is that they truly believed they were making the world a better place.

> One thing people miss about past totalitarian movements is that they truly believed they were making the world a better place.

Of course they do - "making the world a better place" is one of the most powerful motivators.

Yet, many folks think that money is the motivator to worry about. People who are bought can be re-bought and wander off if not paid. True believers keep at it.

I care about the "environment" because I care about maintaining my quality of life. I like "bike paths" because I think it's retarded to send billions of dollars to dangerous theocrats who want me dead, in exchange for air pollution. I care about endangered species because it would be nice to eat a blue crab, or maybe some tuna, in a decade. Environmentalists are just like everyone else; we look out for our interests. That's not arrogance.

Earth Day was 5 days ago :-)

George Carlin is always deserving of an upvote.

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