Bill Maher hits the nail on the head–again:
Last week I asked: If it solved global warming, would you give up the TV remote and go back to carting your fat ass over to the television set every time you wanted to change the channel. If that was the case in America, I think Americans would watch one channel forever. If it comes down to the cell phone vs. the bee, will we choose to literally blather ourselves to death? Will we continue to tell ourselves that we don’t have to solve environmental problems — we can just adapt: build sea walls instead of stopping the ice caps from melting
Maybe you don’t need to talk on your cell phone all the time. Maybe you don’t’ need a bag when you buy a keychain. Americans throw out 100 billion plastic bags a year, and they all take a thousand years to decompose. Your children’s children’s children’s children will never know you but they’ll know you once bought batteries at the 99 cent store because the bag will still be caught in the tree. Except there won’t be trees.
I wonder if this is the same rationale behind those who want to abolish MLK day.
I'd like to bring attention to Maher's mention of adaptation. Unfortunately, we don't just have the choice of change our ways v. adapt. We currently see the environmental brunt of industrialization, over a hundred years ago. Already, we see a noticeable change in the way we must live- more extreme temperatures, more environmental disasters. This means that our current poor environmental action will come back to bite us in a century or so, even if we halted the growth of emissions immediately.
Thus, we need to adapt and change our ways- we have to prepare to deal with the damage our species has already done, while simultaneously preventing further harm. That might mean we will need the "sea walls" Maher speaks of, even if we do begin to behave responsibly.