this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023
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It is important to note here how well-indoctrinated the US and Europe are to "point the finger" and absolve responsibility...
We don't refer to stuff as "deforestation," we call it "urban planning" or "development."
We don't talk about "poaching," we just accept that farmers and the agriculture industry finds natural predators inconvenient, so we allow them to kill off coyotes, foxes, mountain lions, etc.
We have just as many people doing similar, but for some reason we're only taught to lose our minds over conservation elsewhere, in the places where the US intentionally destabilizes (with Europe) to keep prices low for us. After all, it's what our economies are built upon: ruin everywhere, so we can call ourselves the heroes for killing off indigenous folks to areas just for the crime of living and wanting things to feel fair.
Check yourself. This isn't "the way"
Well, that's naive and misinformed. And also irrelevant; endangered species are too important to the environment for poor people to justify killing them off to buy food. Poor people have agency and therefore responsibility for their actions too. Your stance is both anti-environment and anti-working class.
We can and should help the poor in ways that don't involve absolving them of responsibility for driving endangered species extinct.
Well articulated. We can't absolve people of responsibility just because they are poor, unless we absolve them of all responsibity and treat them like children, and put the ones who have no caregivers in a foster care system. I'm fairly certain nobody wants that.
Yes, I am aware poverty is not something you can just wish away, but they know what they're doing. Same as the people illegally cutting down forests in Eastern Europe. They're also poor but they're also assholes. They also have a penchant for shooting people who try to stop them. Pretty sure them rhino poachers would do bad stuff to anybody getting in their way as well.
white good other bad
That's exactly it: we're taught "white good; everyone/everything else bad" and it seeps into our conservation and environmentalism efforts, getting spun into a tizzy about what happens in the Amazon or Africa, but, telling-ly, not really having the same depth and strength of emotions for wildlife conservation at home.