Why do some people hate the environment so much?

[FDRfan1985]

?

[Antonio the Sixth]

No one "hates" the environment (well, I guess there might be a few sociopaths who do, but that's not really relevant). Some people just care more than others.

[SATW]

No one "hates" the environment (well, I guess there might be a few sociopaths who do, but that's not really relevant). Some people just care more than others.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

what has the environment ever done for me?

[(Still) muted by Kalwejt until March 31]

what has the environment ever done for me?

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Selfishness.

[The Dowager Mod]

They don't "hate" the environment, They just love profits more.

[TJ in Oregon]

I think they tend to hate the people who REALLY REALLY LOVE THE ENVIRONMENT AND CAN'T WAIT TO TELL YOU HOW MUCH more than anything else.

America hates true believers regardless of the cause. It's probably part of why we're so angry these days.

[Mr. Smith]

I think they tend to hate the people who REALLY REALLY LOVE THE ENVIRONMENT AND CAN'T WAIT TO TELL YOU HOW MUCH more than anything else.

America hates true believers regardless of the cause. It's probably part of why we're so angry these days.

This begets more true believers ironically.

[Storebought]

Outside of the real disdain for environmentalists, and those who really do profit from environmental degradation (petroleum extraction and refining is a dirty business, and everyone involved in it knows it), I really think that the basis for this -- if not hostility, then deep indifference -- of most people to environmental causes is that the natural environments that surround them just aren't especially valuable and aren't worth the cost of cleanup or rehabilitation or vigilant maintenance.

The exceptions are the Pacific Coast and the northeast. These are the most highly urbanized parts of the US (West 90%, Northeast 85%), where land is scarce and valuable, and maintaining clean watersheds for city/suburban use is recognized as a necessity.

That is not the case anywhere else in the US. Locales, urban or rural, that are severely polluted can be abandoned at little cost except to those who are too poor to move away. Many are hidden in isolated places that escape public scrutiny anyhow, or can be circumvented along the highway.

And I take little stock in those who argue that people living in exurbs or isolated homesteads care more about nature than those holed-up in cities. No, far from it: these are merely the early investors for the sites of future suburban expansion.

I also have a notion that the settler mentality still exists in this country, where people think that all plants native to North America that don't look pretty in a backyard are "weeds" (an outrageous conceit in a country that has more diverse plant species than any other except China) and all animals that don't look good stuffed and mounted as a trophy are vermin, but it's not developed yet.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I think Storebought's diagnosis of the indifference is pretty accurate. I'd add that the indifference becomes hostility--and, in this particular case, conspiratorial denialism--due to people adopting and then doubling down on positions that the élite of Their Side, which in conservatives' case includes the extraction industry people, have assigned to them.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

They're probably crazy rapturists who want everything to go to sh**t for the end times.

[Kingpoleon]

Why do some people adore a right-wing fascist progressive*?

*passive aggression against FDRfan