Young Greens website makes waves
Just a brief post to congratulate the Young Greens on the huge amount of attention being paid to their edgy new website. The GPC youth wing’s website has been the subject of attacks from some Conservative bloggers and the news aggregator Bourque.com, which indicates to me they must be doing something right!
The controversy seems to focus on the main page slogan, “your parents f*cked up the planet. it’s time to do something about it. live green. vote green”. Although some have claimed to take offence to the profanity, the irony is that many comments left on the site by objectors contain profanity themselves. But that’s beside the point. What really matters is that it’s impossible to argue against the fact that past generations have, to be polite, screwed up our planet to the point where we have already passed many, many points of no return. For instance, it’s impossible to bring back the thousands of species that have gone extinct due to habitat destruction, toxic waste, and so on. And what about global warming? Even if we stopped emitting greenhouse gasses today, the atmosphere would take hundreds of years (or is it thousands?) to return to normal. The enormous gap between the rich and the poor is massive, and is becoming more extreme by the day, year and decade. Rates of preventable diseases, like many cancers, diabetes, heart disease, to name a few, are unprecedented. There’s a hole in the ozone layer. Deforestation has reached epic proportions. World hunger kills millions. Nuclear arms races threaten all life on this planet
I could go on, but I won’t. The point is, we are in a bad situation and there is nothing wrong with pointing out that the current state of the world is a result of the actions of our parents and grandparents. To be fair, there’s no doubt that some share more responsibility than others — that’s obvious. But sometimes an honest evaluation of the situation is refreshing and necessary. The reality in the present situation is that our planet is f*cked up beyond belief. There’s no point in couching this evaluation in flowery language so as not to cause offence. Sometimes a provocative campaign can have the effect of truly making people think.
The good news is, as the Young Greens point out, that we can do something about the bad situation in which we find ourselves. We can live and vote Green. So thank you to the Young Greens for this buzz-generating new website. (They also have literature for campus clubs, buttons and so on, in the same catchy theme.) For a further analysis of the controversy, check out Green blogger Dave Bagler’s hilarious post on this topic.
UPDATE: Green Party Political Campaign Director Catharine Johannson has blogged about this as well — out her post here.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Camille Labchuk, jimbobbysez. jimbobbysez said: RT @CamilleLabchuk: New blog: Young Greens website make waves: http://bit.ly/ZaJzs #gpc #cdnpoli #elxn41 [...]
Some questions for you. Since you seem to have convinced yourself that the planet is in such terrible shape, and that it is because of the human race (that would be the parents and grandparents), is it not then true that we should then just exterminate human life to save the planet?
When are you going to actually start and do something about it? And why not just start with yourself? or is your life more precious than other life? Why should your life be more precious than the environment?
You don’t have to answer to me, just thought you might you be able to answer some of thoses questions yourself, before you write statements like you did above.
So why isn’t Lizzy May taking media calls?
Here’s one of the things I remember learning when I was a younger person.
The Fifth Commandment reads:
Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. (Exodus 20:12)
I will without hesitation accept my portion of any blame for any complaints young people may have. I only ask that they also give similar credit for the benefits they enjoy.
Whooee! Richard asks: …is it not then true that we should then just exterminate human life to save the planet?
The planet will probably be here longer than humans will be. There are some short term problems with exterminating human life, though. By short term, I mean 100,000 years, or so. There’s an interesting book that came out recently, The World Without Us. Author Alan Weisman starts with the premise of human life disappearing overnight and goes on to describe what would happen to the planet. There’s a good graphic at http://www.worldwithoutus.com/did_you_know.html.
After just 7 days without humans, the diesel generators that cool nuclear power plants will start to run out of fuel and a series of Chernobyl-like meltdowns will occur. Things look sorta grim for ol’ Mother Earth for a few thousand years but she eventually recovers only to later die along with the Sun in about 5 billion years.
Also, regarding: …is it not then true that we should then just exterminate human life to save the planet?
Who is the “we” in your question? The non-humans? Suicidal humans? The master race?
JB
It ’s good to see a new face trying to get the Green party ,s foot in the door looking forward to the leadership meeting in toronto