Green Aesop/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

*** Please note the important words off-grid. Solar panels are good for niche applications. However, I bet you couldn't have continuous air conditioning, or much more than a refrigerator running. The problem is that they are a tiny fraction of unreliable electricity for extremely high prices.

* [[Eddie Van Helsing|This troper]] finds Green Aesops annoying because they always imply that selfish individuals are killing the planet because they don't want to waste time waiting for a bus or a train, don't want to be uncomfortable, and basically want their lives to be as pleasant as they can afford to make them.

** No, but everybody shouldn't have to live like it's the Stone Age. One article I read suggested we ''get our cars repossessed'' to save the environment. Now, I'm no expert on economics, but won't that damage your credit score? Said article also highlighted everything we do that impacts the environment, including using cars, using a computer, having electronics and ''breathing''. I don't want to sacrifice my life for the environment, thank you very much.

**** Sorry but the Emperor will not stand for this Heresy!

** Historically, much wrong has been done in the name of attaining comfort. Slavery, for example. Stealing. The most unjust forms of extreme economic inequality.

* The thing I hate about most green aesops is that they're usually preachy and make humans look like heartless bastards. This troper especially hates it when the green aesop involves some higher being of some sort punishing the human race bying threatening to destroy them or something. It usually comes off as hypocritical.

** Especially when that higher being is the spirit of the earth itself. I find it very hard to believe that the earth really gives a damn, since humanity and the current ecosystem has lasted only a few seconds in regards to its own massive lifespan. If everything dies off, so what, it'll just chill as being a lifeless planet again for a little bit and then life will come back on its own. Not to mention that life on earth is infinitely more threatened by super-volcanoes than anything humanity can cook up.

**** That's a false choice, though. Humanity can't survive without the Earth to support us, and we rely on many ecosystem services that we don't have the resources to adequately perform ourselves. Maybe in a thousand years we'll have the technology and resources to survive without the Earth, but until then, saving humanity at the cost of the rest of life on Earth dooms humanity to die within a matter of months.

** Stories that teach morals by having a higher being threaten to punish people for the harm they do are [[Older Than Dirt]]. It is also worth noting that from the perspective of many animals, humans are in some sense a higher being inflicting destruction on them.

** Well if we kept up the 1994 population growth rate for 2,000 years the mass of the entire human race would equal the mass of the planet, and if we kept it up for 10,000 years the human race would outmass the visible universe. [[Humans Are the Real Monsters|This troper]] really doesn't have a problem with that. Zerg Rush, Zerg Rush, Zerg Rush, Om nom nom nom.

*** Stop the logical fallacies. All evidence is that the growth rate is slowing and that we will never have many more than 10 billion people here. Idiotic extrapolations are some of the worst problems with green Aesops.

* What happened to the old days when advanced technology was portrayed as going hand-in-hand with being environmentally friendly? Like, ''[[Star Trek]]'' and... uh... seriously though, I'm not sure where I got it but I always believed that the closer we get to [[Crystal Spires and Togas]], we should be able to run our flying cars and robots on environmentally friendly fuel sources. Instead, we have advanced societies being run by bleeding the planet dry and leaving the waste out of sight, out of mind. Dammit, I need to watch more ''[[Star Trek]]''.

** Because the closer you get to realizing that future, the more you realize how hard and how nigh-impossible it is. Kind of like when you dream of being an astronaut when you're a kid, until you realize in highschool how good at maths and physics you'd need to be to actually become one. Reality sucks that way.

** Fast Breeder Reactors=silver bullet solution to future energy demands. I am dead serious.

**** We already have enough nukes to kill everyone, more are a drop in the bucket at this point.

*** There is no such thing as a silver bullet- everything has a price. The sooner we understand that, and begin weighing what we value as a society, rather than looking for a free out, the sooner we can stop bouncing from crisis to crisis, each crisis caused by the mistakes made in trying to fix the last one for free

* The bad name this trope has gotten these days bugs the hell out of me. People get all bent out of shape if you so much as hint we need to change the way things are being done. As if ignoring the problem will make it go away.

** The main issue is overexposure, combined with too much "we should do something" and not enough "here is what we should do". Plus, people ''really'' don't get most of the fundamental concepts, and misunderstandings ensue, and people view things as not being as much of a problem as they are- case in point, mistaking climate change for "I get to wear short sleeves more often". [[F Inally]], people get defensive when asked or insinuated to need to change their habits, and get resentful of those high-and-mighty people who dare ask them to, in their eyes, reduce their standard of living (a misconception, by and large, but again, misunderstandings abound- and there is ''some'' basis) for the Great Good.

** Also, the mass over-simplifying of the issue. Climate change, energy, pollution and human population are all very complex subjects with multiple needs to consider if you propose changes. Unfortunately many green aesops totally ignore this and just present a simple solution that blatantly ignores all of that complexity. (Like those 'No Jobs On A Dead Planet' bumper stickers.) This troper would appreciate green aesops a lot more if they actually treated it with a bit of respect.

** It bugs me that ''any'' concern for the impact of human civilization on the environment has somehow become tantamount to declaring yourself a hippie. Or a "sissy." Or any number of other things that carry [[Unfortunate Implications]]. It's an equal and opposite overreaction. Irritating.

** What gives us the right? A big portion of environmentalism is the concept that things besides us have an inherent right to exist, that's the basis of the endangered species act. Sure, we have the right to do what we need to survive and propagate our own species, so eating meat and the like can be justified if its done right, but what gives us the right to go all [[Omnicidal Maniac]] on everything that we cannot control?

** If you want to be completely objective and ammoral; nothing has a right to exist, not even us. But it is in each human's own interest that humanity continues to exist and [[Humans Are the Real Monsters|does whatever it takes to maintain and increase our power as a species]]. If it's better to protect a species or ecosystem so it can service us, do it. If exterimating a species will lead to a physical improvment for us, do it. [[Knight Templar|Of course, that's just me.]]

*** In the environmental field, this is called the Precautionary Principle, the general idea that we're better off safe than sorry, because the benefit of the gamble is almost always significantly lower than the cost of losing the gamble, and we don't know the odds when we make the bet, so even if the odds ''seem'' in our favor, they might not actually be because we might be overlooking something.

*** All very good, the Precautionary Principle was sort of assumed in the first post, but was not specifically stated. I'd like to point out that simply sitting on our hands for eternity because we are too concerned with the Precautionary Priciple is not really an option either. At some point you just have to try something on a small scale and deal with the consequences. The whole "completely replace the biosphere thing" is a long term goal. It will probably take serval hundred years for us to destroy the biosphere and replace it at any rate so we have plenty of time to assess the value individual organisms. That said if enough people really want their flowers and birds then we'll probably keep them, efficiency be damned.

**** You could release sterilized male mosquitoes that produce invalid eggs in female mosquitos. This actually works pretty well and is used in the southern USA. But why use just one solution? Use everything to force the species to extinction and you will have a quicker and more complete extermination with overlapping coverage.

**** I read about a plan for exterminating mosquitos by genetically engineering male mosquitos to only have sons. Being twice as efficient at producing sons as unmodified male mosquitos, they would out compete them and drive them, the females, and shortly thereafter themselves, to extinction. There's a similar mutation in mice – the only reason that that species of mouse isn't extinct in the wild is that they tend to live in separate communities, and the "infected" populations die out from lack of females. Once we figure out how to produce a similar effect in mosquitos, we just need to spread it around enough.

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.

** 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.

* [http://www.theblaze.com/stories/no-pressure-new-environmental-campaign-glorifies-eco-fascism/ 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.

* 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 [[Straw Man Has a Point|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 Real Monsters|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?

** 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?

** 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 Aesop]]s 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 Aesop]]s seem to tell the same message over and over again, but is that a bad thing? It's an important message, after all.

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[[Category:Tropes/Headscratchers]]

[[Category:Headscratchers]]

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