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melanielust

Should be a pretty timely debate given the recent Paris Accord, in which many countries agreed to appropriate extreme amounts of funding for environmental causes such as combatting climate change.

agsr

Protecting environment should be a priority, but balanced with cost.  It is really an investment decision.  Many argue that Trump is making a big mistake by pulling out from the Paris agreement and I am not necessarly defending him.  I am saying though that actions that impact environment should be weighted against known probability of being true and the cost of addressing.
for example, it would be unreasonable to say that we should pay a million dollars to remediate one plastic bottle from the environment.  So it is an ROI question.

love2debate

Climate change is just a theory that Al Gore and others push as a marketing machine to cause fear. There are not much scientific evidence that climate change is caused by us and proposing extraordinary costs without prove is financially irresponsible 

islander507

Don't get me wrong, I recycle and stuff. There are certain best practices that we should all do.  However, we should avoid spending material resources to prevent something that is not proven

Fredsnephew

The trouble is.
Demands on the natural environment will increase exponentially.
Unless mankind is prepared to take serious action to drastically reduced human population growth.

Unfortunately the human species does seem to be instinctively selfish and greedy.
So the chances of any decisive action being taken, looks pretty slim to me.

agsr

@Fredsnephew, are you suggesting that cost shouldnt be taken into equation at all?

WhyTrump

@agsr, costs of course are always an issue, but decisive actions are needed instead of trying to convince everyone that climate change is not something we should be concerned with

Fredsnephew

agsr said:

@Fredsnephew, are you suggesting that cist shouldnt be taken into equation at all?

I'm assuming you meant cost and that cist isn't an acronym.
I'm also assuming you are referring to financial cost.

What is financial cost?
Financial cost is merely a social concept.
Whereas environmental damage is a reality.
Of course money and inherent human selfishness go hand in hand. So environmental problems will inevitably, always take second place.
Nonetheless, exponential population growth is a problem which could be easily addressed. At little or no financial cost.
All that is required is a common sense agreement between nations.
Trouble is, common sense seems to be a quality that is sadly lacking in today's society.

 

melanielust

@Fredsnephew
I mostly agree. However, financial damage can be just as much of a reality for many people. I do think that the long-term damage caused by negligence of the environment is more pertinent and that simply leaving it to the market won't work, because as you said, people are more likely to want to financially protect themselves than the environment.

agsr

@Fredsnephew, thank you for pointing out my typo. I did mean cost (I just edited).  
If we take your argument that we should protect environment at all cost then as @melanielust pointed out we will be making financially devastating decisions. 
Everything is based on financial considerations.  It is just a question of return on investment.  If we can improve our ozone layer by 1%, would you pay 100 trillion dollars, essentially causing another Great Depression?  

Fredsnephew

What I try to do when debating, is argue on the side of reality and try and point out the difference between reality and conceptuality.
Of course conceptuality is the essence of the human condition, so referring to oneself as a realist can easily be regarded as contradictory and hypocritical.
Nonetheless. What is damage to the environment? What is a 100 trillion dollars?
I would argue that damage to the environment is real. Whereas 100 trillion dollars is only conceptual.
Tap another nought on to a computer screen and instead of 10 trillion dollars you have 100 trillion dollars.
Allow the human population to increase by another billion and the demand for resources and impact on the environment becomes ever greater. 

Money is in fact irrelevant.
Our environment is totally relevant.