Denial wears many faces.

[LouisvilleDem]

5. Wow

I've been lurking around this board for several months now, and I've read a fair number of your posts, but I had no idea you were such a pessimist. You are entitled to think what you want of course, but I am glad that most environmentalists don't think like you do. I'm glad that most of us can see the good things that we have accomplished over the years. Granted, most of the successes have been in the developed world, and it definitely looks like China and India are going to repeat the same mistakes Europe and the US made along the road to economic prosperity, but to say we've "done nothing" is simply not true. In the US and Europe the air and water are cleaner now than they were 50 years ago. We've cleaned up toxic waste dumps and banned and/or regulated the really harmful stuff like DDT. We've placed millions of acres of forest under government protection and brought several species back from the brink of extinction. These are not trivial accomplishments. They took years of hard work and I think its shameful that you trivialize the efforts of those that made them happen.

Finally, and I know this is a bit of heresy, I think you have to admit that the environmentalist community has a habit of exaggerating many problems in order to spur political and social action. I don't blame the people that engage in that sort of rhetoric, because the bottom line is that it works. However, don't believe everything our side has to say. I mean, if you just look at our track record of predicting horrible things that never happen it's a bit mixed. Hello, The Population Bomb anyone?