Should You Save the Planet? – Philosophy Tube

I am very late to this party, but I have noticed in a lot of your videos you talk about whether something is morally good or bad, and whether we have a moral obligation to do or not do something, and there appears to be an implication that if we conclude that we do have a moral obligation to do something, then we should do it. I would be interested to hear your discussion of morality when we step back a bit.

So for example, for each moral question, like "Should we take individual actions to save the planet?", "Should we avoid watching pornography?", "Should we avoid eating meat?" etc, within the scope of that question we may come to a very clear view of what the more moral action is. However, when you step back and consider how to live your life in the most moral way, you will find that most individuals do not have enough time, money, and energy to take the moral course for every action. At this point you have to weigh up which issues are more important. (You talked about something similar in the "Which charity should you choose?" episode.)

Now it could be said that this is a different question – how to live a moral life, rather than what is the moral decision to make in a particular circumstance. On the other hand, no moral decision is made in a vacuum, so does it not then form part of the morality of the decision to consider how to weigh your moral priorities? (Echoing the old ought implies can here.) So considering for instance the decision about individual actions to save the planet, some might take the view that if you have the choice between spending time rallying mass action, or spend the same time sourcing bamboo straws, the former is comparatively better morally because it might make a more effective impact, and therefore the right choice. Others may instead say that the latter makes a more direct impact and therefore better. We have to consider as part of this that the moral decision for a billionaire, for example, might be very different from the moral decision for someone struggling to make ends meet.

So I would be interested in seeing this discussion sometime. 😊

i remember finding an old ranger rick magazine from when i was little. it went on about saving the environment by using reuseable water bottles and lunch boxes and such. in elementary school we had to "research" and write a few paragraphs about how we personally can save the environment. i do everything i can today to reduce disposables, just to keep a clean conscience. but it pisses me off that the blame was put on me as a 7yo child.

philosophy tube… firstly help united nations stop america military wars and selling weapons around the world… that solve one half of global dilemma on earth… only one action… stop america military aggressions in venezuela iran and syria… that one half of the earth saved at oje go…

Lil O

Whatever duty there is, it's an imperfect one. Everyone ought to do what they reasonably can to reduce their environmental impact, but that obligation is defeatable by others, including obligations we have to ourselves for self-care. It's like how it would be environmentally better if everyone were to switch immediately to electric cars instead of gas ones, but a poor person who could barely afford their fume-belching old beater with cracked heads, and won't be able to get to work without it, isn't flatly obligated to stop driving it immediately. A rich asshole who decides to purposely spend money modding their truck to roll coal, on the other hand, can go fuck themselves.

This video misses the greater point. Which is that we do have a responsibility, but that responsibility is to hold the handful of corporations responsible for 80% of pollution accountable. Those same corporations have lobbied for over 50 years to stress our responsibility to recycle and pick up our trash, exactly because they want to avoid being held accountable. If we all became vegetarians over night and all stopped using plastic, and all started driving electric, well actually things would probably get worse. As we would all buy new cars, the production of which is really bad for the environment, electricity is still generated mainly with stuff like coal and oil, Paper and cardboard bags and packagings cost about 50 times the co2 to make as their plastic counterparts, and well, becoming vergitarians is the only win there. But even if that wasn't the case, if we each brought our own carbon footprint to zero, all 7 billion of us (which most of us can't begin to afford) then well over 80% of pollution would still be happening.

So I guess… Seize the means of production?

I don't believe that individual actions can fix anything anymore. It's naive foolery on a collective point of view to advise "we can save the earth if each and everyone of us do its best". Only the government, law-applications with enforcement and economic versatility could make a real change, unfortunately that's not going to happen unless we take action as a whole.

there seems to be an underlying assumption in the video: we need to be environmentally responsible for future generations (since we will not benefit from the harm avoided in the current time). if however we for eg do not have children, then does that mean we dont have to care or be interested? besides the way the env is isnt just caused by whats happening now. previous generations burnt coal and carried out all sorts of env destruction. so why is it this generation's responsibility to clean up their (and our own) mess? besides, it is a little malthusian to assume that science and progress in general will not come up with new ways to overcome all the harm.

Maybe the Earth would be much better off without us, or without most of us. Too bad all the ways to destroy ourselves mostly include killing animal and plant life, too.

Another interesting question would be, should you kill (or attempt sucid) to save resurces to save the Planet?

I always find the accusation of SJW and White Knighting to be idiotic. Social Justice is a good thing. And "white knighting" as it pertains to a male respecting and arguing for female rights is also a good thing. Its a lame insult meant to turn a positive quality into a negative one.

If one person thinks their contribution to be too small or insignificant to have any real affect at all, then the hole group of people that thought that way have a collectively greater impact. Morally, it would be doing the right thing to want to help the earth and the people in it by making your small and insignificant attempts at saving the world, and if everyone believed that no matter what the outcome is, it's better to be of some helpo than none at all, then the outcome would be positive because so many peoples small contributions would ultimately result in something larger.  

Seeing the world as I grew older, I watched my peers do bad things, act in negative ways toward each other in a heard mentality. My mother smoked cigarettes from age 21-65 and has had emphazima for the rest of her life. I watched her cough up 'lung cookies' and have difficulty breathing for many years. I learned from her mistakes and never picked up smoking. I learned from my brother's mistakes of drug use and drinking to excess and I never did drugs or drink to excess. I learned from my father's mistakes in not taking care of mom to get her help when she needed it and from his mistakes on not stopping the abuse she put toward me. I then learned right away to not be abusive towards others. I also learned from my peers. I learned from the bad teachers in my schools, which then later I continue my education freely. I learned from observing my surroundings. I calculated what works for me to make my life simpler and better that would later help others as they came into my life. A chain reaction of good actions….Now, with 7billion humans on this planet, still making a basic impact on it's environment negatively due to culture processes of learned actions (monkey see, monkey do), it will take maybe two generations to realize what our elders had caused is something we don't need to repeat in the sake of tradition. However, there's a bigger issue which humanity has no control over what so ever….Human kind is so argent of itself that it has the audacity to think that it has any impact at all. This blue/green ball in which we are spinning around on in a galaxy is a biosphere of life. The Planet is a living, breathing, moving and feeling being. Well, in which connects to its whims and actions to better or worsen life, has consequences of its own actions through destruction into creation. No matter what we do in supposedly messing up this spherical home planet we have, Earth and the forces of nature itself, will in time shake us off like fleas. When nature does this, there is NOTHING we can do about it and to think we can is what can cause us to experience the worst consequence of all existence – poor actions towards each other cause our demise.

Of course we DON'T have to save the planet! It's like when an old lady falls and we are there, but we don't help her, I mean, she can stand up by herself, RIGHT? I believe selfishness is one of the reasons. Although some may say it's not our responsibility to save the planet, "I'm not littering like my neighbour does, and he's lazy even to take the trash out!". It is also because some may put other "responsibilities" before taking care of the enviroment, like, having work done and I don't care if I drink 2 plastic bottles in the meantime. And then there are the ignorants, not the ones that don't care, the ones that REALLY don't know they are damaging the enviroment by doing certain things. MUST we save the enviroment? Yes, it would be the best course of action, but then it comes the weakness of will theory, it's the best thing to do? Yes, do we do it mandatorily? you have to set your mind on it and/or maybe make a habit of it. Consideration is the key.

For me it's like a duty that is tacitly given to you by existence and evolution. They are telling you "ok, we're going to give you a big brain so you subsist, evolve or maybe do like a robot that surpasses your intelligence and keeps evolving for you, but don't kill yourselves then you would reverse all the evolution stuff and that would be bad." Speaking in this way, then yes, you should have the individual duty to not be an a hole with the rest of the human race. Even if you are hurting them a little it's still your responsibility.

After this video I have to say.
This isn't a serious philosophy channel.

You should do a video on the problem of future generations

Wondering if you could maybe do a video on Wittgenstein or put that as an option that people could vote for? Could generate some pretty good discussion :).

Hey Olly, interesting topic you brought up there.
It makes me think about a topic I think could be very interesting to cover.
It is a friend of mine that support the idea of "The Voluntary Human Extinction", the idea of this movement is not having kids (or adopt orphans).

In this way mankind would just die out (not suicide) and earth could then recover (since we are the species causing the most harm), the fauna and flora could then live "better".
I don't support this idea at ALL. But it could be interesting if you could say what you think about that idea?

Thanks a lot!

P.S: What I told here is just brief explanation, you might want to check it out on the internet. 

do you have a csolostomy bag tho?

0:42 the greatest example against the argument from futility I can think of would be garrun laggen, where they don't give a damn about the odds.

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