What Would it Mean for the "Inconvenient Truth" to be a Lie?

    After watching the movie, "The Inconvenient Truth," a questions came to my mind. What would it mean if Al Gore had some facts wrong, or facts were disproven. What would it mean if the graphs that Gore showed in the movie and his lecture series were not completely accurate?
     After coming up with this question, I googled, "The Inconvenient Truth" and read on article that disproves 35 "truths" in the movie.

(article found on http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/goreerrors.html)

     Knowing this brings up the question what does this mean for the state of our environment, and is it possible that we have more time to fix the issues happening within global climate change? Even though no one wants to think that something they've hold true is a lie, is it a good thing that we have more time for action? Or does it just mean we were given a little more rope to choke ourselves with?

Is it Possible to Add an Incentive to Going Green?

   So, I've been thinking about a lot since my last post, Are We Bleeding Out our Environment, and I feel that one way we could reduce the damage, and start to end the bleeding out is a way add an incentive into going green. But in order to sway people to do something, and to give them a reward for doing that, one must first decide what they are actually going to do. Would it make sense to make a new trend featuring green technology for my generation? Should the government create a monetary reward to people who start using more environment friendly appliances, and travel? I don't think that a large group of people will go green simply because they want to, and it's the right thing to do. I think people will go green, when and if, it is trending, and there can be a more groupthink around it as to individual thinking about it. Facts are great, but incentives are better. What are some possible ideas as to what can be done to incentivize going green?

Are We Bleeding out our Environment?

     In class this week, we discussed a lot of big things. One thing we discussed made me think about whether or not are we bleeding out our environment. George Washington was an amazing battle leader, and didn't want a lavish life. He wanted to live a basic life. One of the methods of treatments back in Washington's time when someone was sick was to remove the "bad blood," by bleeding them out. The cause of George Washington's death was being bled out, due to a fever he had. Is the Doctor who bled Washington out at fault, or was the cause of his death really the fever?

       This lead me to ask myself the question, Are we bleeding the environment out. Are we over using resources to the point that the environment will no longer have enough of an immune system to prevent sicknesses form destroying it? If a sickness managed to destroy the environment, whose fault is it, ours or the sickness?

Is Government Structure Preventing True Protection of the Environment?

   During class, we had a discuss where the quote the was brought up when talking about the government is that, "you can't have a judge without a sheriff," and it was later talked about how the government, especially the American government is flimsy and weak, and based off of the whims and wants of the people, as opposed to what may necessarily be best for the state all together. This brought up the question, does the way our government is structured not allow real change take place? Furthermore, if the government doesn't have a way to enforce it's laws if the people are against it, does it mean that the government is then not able to do it's job.

   Thinking this then causes the question of the environments true protection coming up. The government can create laws to protect the environment, but unless there is some type of authority who can back up the law, even if the general mass of people are against it, then it cannot be upheld. I think this is a problem of sorts in most places. I love and support democracy, but I think that a lot of people in power forgot that they are not in power to please the people, but to do what's best for the people and the surrounding lands. Is there any way we can remind people of this? Is there any way that the democratic system could be changed someway where the judge wouldn't lose the support of the sheriff the instant the masses questioned a judge's ruling?

Land Ethics and Animals

    Upon reading the assigned readings, I came across something that didn't necessarily fit for me. in "Egocentric Ethics: The Land Ethic," Aldo Leopold said, "The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land" (223). Upon saying this Leopold was talking about a third, unrecognized ethic, which would be that of land ethics. In that statement, he was defining all that land ethics would include, which is basically an "enlargement of the community ethic. My issue with that statement is that although there isn't necessarily a type of ethical viewpoint which lists was is ethically right or wrong in relation to the land, animals should not have been included in that statement. Animals are intrinsically a part of nature, but there is already a set of ethics which dictate what people can or cannot do in relations to animals. I think that Leopold should take the animal aspect out of what should be defined in land nature. If he doesn't want to do that, I think that he should specify animals, like are humans a part of that definition. What would be a good definition for what land ethics should entail? What should it include?

During the assigned readings, in essay 20, A sentence that really caught my attention and made me think was a statement found on page 189, "We don't know how many species we are eliminating, because we don't know how many species there are." This really stuck out to me because it's crazy to think that we don't know how many species there are, and that through all our destruction of the world and different environments, we can be killing off numerous species and not even realizing it. That's horrible. I would rather reduce the things we destroy in the environment than have a surplus of things that I don't really need.  Is that possible though? Can we really control our numbers in a way that causes less destruction of the environment?

Direct Duties & Indirect Obligations

I think that most people would agree in societies day and time, we all have certain duties that we are expected to uphold, a direct duty. For instance, if we see a man hit a woman, although some would ignore the situation, one's direct duty is to defend the woman from the man and report the man to higher authorities. That is because it is each person's independent duty to defend another sentient being. But why then, should I report someone who kicks my dog, who is not a sentient being. I love my dog, but he doesn't have the same complex emotions or thought processes as a human, yet I am bound by an indirect obligation to my dog to defend him. That is because, although my dog is not a sentient being, it would reflect on me, and show others that if I don't defend a non-sentient being, that I have the capacity to allow the same injustice to happen to a sentient being. Well, that's the argument according to Kant. Is he right though? Do I need to fulfill indirect obligations to prove whether or not I have the capacity to fulfill my direct duties, should I need too?