Yeah, I watched the George Carlin clip of him talking about this on youtube, and I agree - the planet will exist just fine without us in whatever balance it achieves at any given time. The observable universe very clearly shows that planets really don’t need life at all. And I agree that everything we do damages nature, but that’s not the point. The point is whether we damage nature in such a way or to such a degree more than it balances itself back out, with or without our help, such that our conditions remain viable for our continued existence in the way that we are choosing to exist. Sustainability.
I’m fine damaging nature, as long as it rebuilds itself with or without our help, such that we can continue in the long term as well as the short. Be active, use energy - preferably renewable energy, in consistency with what I’ve just described. From what I can tell from what has been turned into this big mess of relative misinformation, we are throwing things out of balance and maybe unsustainably so. I wish it was easier to find out for sure and to communicate the results in a way that isn’t so supposedly disputable. Whilst I support skepticism, I think it’s possible to apply it without good reason, and I believe this is what’s being done towards data that suggests we’re fucking things up. I also believe there are people out there who overstate the degree to which we are fucking things up. Ought we all be obliged to be scientists who are able to conduct such tests ourselves independently? Is that what it’s going to take? I think there are forces out there that have gone out of their way to successfully discredit good science, and that’s a huge shame - and a potentially hugely damaging one at that. Not one we can reasonably afford.
I say push things hard, but only if it can be shown that there are natural forces that will push back to keep such pushing sustainable. I’m not a materialist. At all. I want less things, if anything, and much of my problem in disposing what I do have is that I have no faith that my method of disposal will be compatible with the kind of sustainability that I’ve just been talking about. I would be in favour of forcing companies to only produce things in such a way that they could dismantle them in a sustainable way - whether or not for them to reuse in future production. Ideally there would be an inbuilt reason for them to want to do this themselves without the need for force, but I don’t think such a mechanism exists to anywhere near enough of an extent.
In many ways I would be saying the same things as you, but I am overly careful in how I present them and to what extent I show support - simply because of who there is to convince, and what there really is to justify it.