Enviromental triage?

Question

This is for those enviromentalists that have accepted climate change as a fact, so bicker somewhere else if you disagree with the idea.
Isn't it time to redirect most efforts to climate change and lessening the effects, rather than focussing on the preserving a small number of endangered species whose specific habitats are threatened? The not in my backyard efforts to halt projects like the one against Cape Cod wind farms, for save the manatee sea lanes, or even assorted ski slopes and housing developments would seem to just destroy a lot of enviromentalism's credibility and divert resources and attention away from the real species killer, climate change.

Isn't it time to start practicing triage?

Answer 1

Firstly - Triage is a management technique stemming from emergency medical care basically it is a way of concentrating all efforts on the 'worst' problem were they are most effective. So in the hospital setting this would be the highest dependency cases where it is life or death immediate action.

The problem as I see it with the negative effects of GW is that they have incredibly unpopular solutions. By solutions I mean ways of minimizing or lessing impact on HUMANS. The earth itself will readjust and continue without us.

So lets look at three key areas which are large contributors to the problem:
Firstly the West's agricultural practices ie Intensive Farming practice, Meat and dairy including deforestation.
Secondly Overpopulation: We are quickly populating. People do not understand this, the reason? Because we have finite resources. The more people there are, particularly in Western countries the more we consume. Our rate of over consumption, our rate of overdeveloping the land and for housing, the rate of our outputs - waste, pollution of air, soil, water all means that we are over using finite resources.
Third Overconsumption: linked to overpopulation we are exploiting the environment and other people by our greed.

So which of those three above will we direct all of our attention on. None are popular choices. So will people minimize some of the problems by becoming Vegans? Eating less Meat? Reducing the Size of their own family?
Or change their Consumeristic lifestyles so they stop overconsuming everything?

Yes it is time to start practicing triage, but HOW? We have capitalistic, financially driven economies, HOW?

Answer 2

If we are to achieve broad public support for the substantial changes we will be asking of people(see permaculture) we need to bring them along with the little things. If you remember the events leading up to the ban on DDT,a very important pesticide then, it was the bald eagle that sold the people even though the effects were bad for many species including humans. We need those symbols for motivation. The polar bear and the penguin are to be the sign that we have done too much damage and must give up things we now can't seem to live without.

The wind farm is a good example of what we should be doing but my favorite is to go back to a less than 2000sq ft house for every family.

Answer 3

Land managers are way ahead of you. They are already addressing the impacts of climate change in their decisions, using projections to guide them. You give a number of examples, but unfortunately lump together the acts of environmental activists and scientists and government agencies in a way that isn't realistic.

The triage has been going on for a century now. But as more solid information is produced regarding the impacts of climate change on our environment, land managers will be better equipped to incorporate future impacts into the decisions they make. Sometimes decisions are based on science, sometimes an emotional public, sometimes money, sometimes all of the above. But to walk away from efforts to preserve "a small number" of species is a step in the wrong direction, which not only won't help but could hinder efforts to address the problem of climate change.

Answer 4

You mean something like this? (see link)

I also think that your "To heck with the women and children, every man for himself!" approach to a solution is naive and selfish. Every plant and animal in an ecosystem, even the ones you don't see, serve a specific purpose. If you favor one over the other every dependent species in the food chain will be affected.

Answer 5

Yes you trully know what your talking about.