Of course, and I'm happy that he's having fun. My point is peripheral. But it's interesting to me that he so decisively states that he doesn't care at all for the environment except in consequence to human life. Is this a common view?
Enjoyment is one of those consequences. One might still feel that something has been lost or wasted when a species becomes extinct, if only because humans can no longer interact with them. This is aside from any more practical concerns of ecological health and unintended consequences.
So, while I largely share this viewpoint, I'm disappointed that there aren't at least a few dinosaurs around to observe. OTOH, what would we have given up if our ancestors were competing with even a few dinosaurs?
Notice, I'm not taking the position that nothing is lost when we change the environment. But, I do think that we should use the environment to further human goals, including the lesser goal of retaining some truly wild space for us to enjoy.
In part this is a reaction to the casually anti-human stance of some people who say things like "the environment would be better off without humans." We're part of the environment. We wouldn't be better off without humans.
Call me a "speciest", but for now, I see no reason why we shouldn't dominate other species (remaining aware of a sliding scale of intelligence and suffering), as long as it's not likely to be suicidal.
It's not something most people would be willing to admit to in public, but I do think that it's pretty common. The vast majority of people only care about things that either directly affect them, or fit into the tribe/team/us-not-them slot. The only way to have a mass movement is to directly appeal to self-interest, or to hijack the team slot.
Since environmental disaster due to global warming or species extinction is at least decades off, environmentalists who want environmentalist goals to be achieved have, as I see it, three choices:
They can say that disaster is nearly upon us in the next 3-10 years. This is likely to backfire in 3-10 years, of course.
They can try to hijack the team association by making environmentalism into a pseudo-religion. This has more potential, but more downside, since if it goes too far it could result in a cultural mood that discourages solutions civilization needs, like higher-density energy and high-yield agriculture.
Lastly, they can just try to build things that people would rather use, and which are better for the environment, such as the subject of this thread, the Tesla.
It seems to me that productive people who are worried about the environment would be best served by doing that last, since it has more leverage potential, and since there are already a lot of people working on the first two.
I think it's fairly common... most people don't care that dinosaurs were extinct. Most people also don't care if some currently existing species were to become extinct, unless it's a species that affects human life (food, or necessary predator). Of course the environment is really complicated and nobody really can predict how one species could affect another, but clearly the extinction of dinosaurs had no ill affect on human life.
