A riddle by Dennis Prager got me thinking …
Posted By RichC on June 4, 2022
Q: What do you call a religious person who claims that the end is near?
Answer: A fanatic.
Q: What do you call a secular person who claims that the end is near?
Answer: An environmentalist.
When my podcasts on my weekend playlist are finished and I’m still in the mood for some audio content, I occasionally tune into a Dennis Prager episode. Last weekend it was his Fireside Chat #231 on “Inflation is a Thief.” One of his riddles (above) had me smiling; there is so much truth to it – see Human-Induced Climate Change – Take it with a grain of salt.
I can recall from my short 60+ year history that someone is always worked up about something … one crisis after another. From smog and pollution in the 1960s, to global cooling in the 1970s, peak oil and global warming in the 1980s-2000s … changed to climate change by 2010 and a climate crisis by 2020. Each time, the most radical of the environmentalists would claim that unless we did something to drastically address it … “the world will end in ___ number of years” and that damage will be irreversible. Like the “boy who cried wolf,” it gets old and even when there is merit, starts us shrugging our shoulders like in Seinfeld.
As a conservative and environment lover, I’m all about taking care of our planet and managing our resources … the key word is “managing” our resources. Take a moment to do your part, but perhaps avoid the hysteria that is likely to harm our economy, our personal financial wellbeing and physical health. If we end up struggling just to survive or cause famine and war, we’ll likely forego any concern for the environment.
Loved this photo below and remembered my early mornings working on a commercial fishing boat on Lake Erie near where I grew up (see PDF) … obviously we were not fishing quite like this, but we did use seines (like the 1966 B&W photo from Sandusky Bay).
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