What if there was an...

Question

...environmental terrorist organization that went after polluters? Like kill them off, in order to save the planet. Kind of like the tagline for that assassination movie with Angelina Jolie.

Would you report it if you knew it existed? The only targets would be people who support/deny the existence of global warming/pollution.

[Inspired by an episode of "Spooks"]

Answer 1

We would use dogs to hunt them down. Then put them in cages and make fun of them.

Answer 2

Who gets to decide who the "polluters" are?  

Is a polluter someone who threw away an aluminum can instead of reycling it?



Or is a polluter a company that spews toxins into a river in a third world country?

Are the people who work at the factory trying to earn enough to feed their family concidered polluters?

Or the teenager in the first world country who actually purchased the product, but doesn't have a clue how things are actually manufactured?

What about people/companies who buy carbon credits to offset their enviromental damage? (I think they are hypocrits)

Is the grandma who goes to WalMart, to purchase synthetic yarn made in China, and transported at great cost, to make a baby blanket to donate to a drug addicted baby in the hospital a polluter?

Or is the drug addicted baby who is sucking up valuable resources, and too brain damaged to amount to anything the polluter?

Who gets to decide?

~Garnet

Permaculture homesteading/farming over 20 years  

Answer 3

I guess most people would be targets for elimination, as we almost all, directly or indirectly pollute the invironment in some way.

I am a small organic farmer, and try my best not to pollute the environment, and to contribute to the good of the planet... but even I use items that are manufactured, shovels, rakes, I buy seeds that come in paper packages, I wear clothes, shoes, read books made of paper, use the internet, buy goods that are transported from somewhere else and so on. So I still contribute to pollution of the planet, a lot less maybe, than average, but still, if I am honest, I have to admit to my share of pollution.

The tendency is to finger point out there at "others" as if "they" are the problem (who ever "they" are)... funny thing about finger pointing is that in pointing a finger at the nebulous "they", we have three fingers pointing back at our own selves.

Witch hunting for "polluters" is an activity engaged in by people who are unaware of the shape and scope of their own carbon footprint. We can not change others, we CAN change ourselves, and when we do we influence others to change themselves. In this way the whole is raised to a new level of awareness. Real and effective change happens this way... just as we slowly became a culture of "consumers" we can (and I predict "will") slowly become a culture of "conservers". Why? because we must.

The problem and the solution to human pollution are contained within the way we each live our daily lives. We need to examine our own lives and make changes there, and then examine our lives again and make more changes. It is you and I who need to change our attitudes, our habits, our tastes, in fact... you and I need to change the very fabric of our life styles to effect real change in our culture.

This does not happen in a flash or a day, or a month, it is not happen like some big descision we make, we can't say "I am a vegan" "I am a recycler" and think that this is the way it happens. Real change in a culture happens moment to moment, collectively the people make one small choice at a time. Cloth napkins or paper... plastic bottles or glass, fast food dinner or home cooked, organicly grown or not, locally produced in season food or imported...turn down my thermostat or not? The "consumer" oriented choices we collectively make on a daily basis, constitute our consumer culture, those choces are what the gross manufacturers count on to keep their bottom lines fat. If we change our consumer way of living, which is artificial, to one of conserving, then the trends in manufacturing and production will change. We vote every day with our money. If we truely want change, then ee need to change the way we vote with our money, change what we support. We need to choose to educate ourselves... shake ourselves out of the consumerisum dream, we need to ask ourselves the right questions: when we throw something "away"...ask :"where is "away"? And ask many more questions like that...if we wish to make a difference. Living in  comfortable consumer complacency, the other choice, is ignorance, and not a sustainable reality, under any circumstance.