• Question: Do you believe that humans are "evil" to cause global warming and endanger the wildlife on our planet just for their own luxury?

    Asked by anon-129382 to Megan, Mzamo, Ola, Olivia, Weiyi on 4 Nov 2016.
    • Photo: Megan Seymour

      Megan Seymour answered on 4 Nov 2016:

      Good question, this is something that I feel very strongly about.
      For a long time, people didn’t understand the damage we were doing to the planet, but now that we do I think that everybody has got a responsibility to do what they can to help. I think that people who understand the problems associated with global warming, but continue to use more energy than they need are irresponsible, but not evil.

    • Photo: Olivia Ashton

      Olivia Ashton answered on 7 Nov 2016:

      I don’t think it is a case of being evil, but more inconsiderate. For years as countries have developed and revolutionised, nature and wildlife have been on the back foot, and changing perspectives on that is hard. Now that global warming is a big issue and widely publicised along with endangered wildlife, I think there is scope for change in people’s attitudes – it’ll just take a long time as there are so many of us!

    • Photo: Mzamo Shozi

      Mzamo Shozi answered on 7 Nov 2016:

      No they are not evil, but global warming is well known now and how it can be avoided. Those that are still causing it is because they are being inconsiderate.

    • Photo: Ola Michalec

      Ola Michalec answered on 7 Nov 2016:

      Hello, this is a really good question and a great starting point for a long (potentially heated) discussions..!

      The discovery of fossil fuels enabled us an incredible progress in the last few centuries (think about Industrial revolution, cars, lightbulbs, plastic, internet!!). until the end of 20th century we didn’t really realise the scale of the damage.

      Now the situation is a bit more tricky as the world is not very uniform, e.g. we have:
      – places and people who benefited from centuries of fossil fuels abundance (think people in the UK with nice homes and cars)
      – places and people who live in poverty (e.g. no access to fresh water, in war torn countries, but also to some extent people in countries like UK who live in poverty- tricky, right?

      – people who believe we can continue living as we did as soon as we find a form of technology saving us, e.g. nuclear fusion, colonisisng Mars etc
      – people who think we need to change fundamentally the way we live – produce and consume less “stuff”, stop wasting, living more humbly

      – people who are affected by climate change in a harsh way now – e.g. flooding in SE Asia
      – people who aren’t really that much affected – think about many cities in the UK…

      The irony is that global warming hits in the first place people who are already vulnerable, whether we talk in terms of poverty or the climate they live in.
      In contrast, people who live in what you call “luxury”, often can’t get their heads around the issue – it looks like something distant in space and time. They think they won’t make a difference with cycling/going veggie if other countries/big companies keep digging for oil. You might say they subconsciously “deny” the issue exists, even if they admit it’s a problem at dinner parties…. I think it is precisely because of how complex the issue is – it requires radical and urgent effort at every scale- from personal to global.

      So in short, no, I don’t think we’re evil, but I think as species we’re quite faulty and on one hand have great capacity to progress and come up with inventions but on the other we struggle to come up with a practical actions to seemingly straighforward questions like “what is right/ what is evil?”. Argh at least I do !

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