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AbstractMirror t1_jedoook wrote

Hey I've seen this before. We just need to call the lorax

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BigMemeKing t1_jeeof2b wrote

There are several movies about this very thing, several songs as well. It's an old concept as we continue to rip and cut our way through every tree we can to build housing materials, furniture, entertainment sources like skate boards, snow boards, surf boards and so that giant corporations can profit.

It has been and won't stop happening until we're left with very little natural habitats. We've long been cutting through our rainforests, and selling rights to national parks to certain companies so they can clear space for their machines.

But one hiker scribbles on some rocks with paint and the whole world loses its mind. Crazy right? Then we start to feel such disgust because "those are our national parks!" "We need to preserve them!" "We can't be slapping graffiti on the rocks there! Conserve their natural beauty!" While 100 ft to the left is a cleared out patch of earth with an oil pump just sipping on that crude, lining some oil barons pockets.

It's silly. Life is silly. Our priorities are silly. We have pipelines running for thousands of miles, causing oil spills at a disastrous level, and the courts just have these companies pay some millions of dollars and it's "ok". And we look and see a price tag of 30 million and think "Oh wow! That's a lot of money, so it's fair right? But to a multi billion dollar oil company that makes 500 million every year... 30 million is a small price to pay for progress right? Especially when it's just a one time payment for a disaster that has impacts for years to come.

Call it an oopsie tax.

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kindle139 t1_jef4e5d wrote

Yeah man, humanity can really be quite.. human. Our capacity for greatness is matched only by our capacity for folly.

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