Does current environmental pollution problems reflect a shift in human values?

Question

Does current environmental pollution problems reflect a shift in human values?

Answer 1

Of course, human-caused environmental pollution problems reflect human values. Now, how much the values have shifted over what period of time, that is tricky.

Answer 2

Yes, but not in the way that you're thinking.  The problems stem partly from population increase, but mostly from our growing use of technology and our insistence on a consumptive lifestyle.  The shift in human values is that we are willing to sacrifice a little bit by cooperating to solve the problems.  We are willing to pass laws to force ourselves and others to pay the price of solving the pollution problems.  We want China to pay attention to their environment.  We can do that by insisting they stop putting lead into their paint.  We do that with market pressure.  We can't pass laws to make them clean up their air and water.  But we can hold Olympic games in Beijing, putting intense pressure on them to make at least that one city a safe and pleasant place to be.  The Chinese people see that, and as they become less isolated and more involved in the rest of the world, they see the value of care for the environment, and begin to demand it at home.  Unfortunately, they also see our opulent lifestyles and want that also.  That's why they're building coal-fired power plants so quickly, and buying up oil and gas supplies all over the globe.

We've proved we can cooperate on the large scale needed to solve these problems.  I hope we don't waste that cooperation by jumping to inappriate 'solutions' to global warming.  But we need to start shifting our values away from extreme consumption if we want to keep our environmentally sensitive world and still have fossil fuels and plastics for more than another couple of centuries.

Answer 3

i belive it does because our moral has dropped we worry to much and also this stupid nation needs to stop wasting so many resources because we are the largest consumer of them in the world when it should really be a country that has a much higher population than ours like china