“I think we should rediscover a view of humans as resourceful, creative, productive. Too much of environmentalism views humans simply as consumers and users, as drainers and ‘footprints.’ This is very one-sided. Even where people are ‘just consumers,’ say in the less developed parts of the world, it is because of a failure on the part of society to provide the infrastructure in which people can produce and create and work.”
Brendan O’Neill wrote that, in an email exchange with Andy Revkin about population and population control.
Also noteworthy, in my opinion, is Revkin’s justification for engaging O’Neill, who seems as interested in stirring proverbial pots as he is in educating his publication’s readers:
My goal here, as is hopefully clear, is to try to move from stridency and name calling to rational discussions of reasonable approaches to smoothing the human journey. This is perhaps a fool’s errand, but I think it’s worth trying.
Maybe what society really needs to provide is the infrastructure in which fools like Andy can run errands to their hearts’ content.
