Suppose there's some kind of disaster, like a huge traffic accident, and several dozens of injured people are being brought into a hospital. Because the hospital might not have the necessary personnel to immediately attend to every single one of those people, they get prioritized according to the severity of their injuries. For example, a person who has three bone fractures and copious bleeding, requiring extremely urgent intervention, would be taken care of first, over someone who has simply a sprained ankle.
Or suppose there is a series of fires at some residential area. The amount of fires is so extensive that there is no enough firefighting personnel and equipment to deal with all of them at the same time. Thus it only makes sense to prioritize: Take care of the biggest and most dangerous fires first, and move from there to the smaller less dangerous ones. And if there's a cat stuck on a tree branch, that might be taken care of once everything else is fine.
Prioritizing is practical and only makes sense: First fix the biggest dangers, the things that are causing the most amount and the most serious damage, and move from there progressively to the lesser and lesser dangers, working your way from the biggest to the smallest. This way the amount of total damage and life loss is minimized.
Now, assume that some doctor where to get his priorities completely skewed, and treated the patient with the sprained ankle first, ignoring the other more seriously injured patients. Not only that, but this doctor starts publicly virtue-signaling about how great of a doctor he is because he treated this one patient with the sprained ankle, and how he is the savior of all people with sprained ankles. Or suppose that a firefighting squad were to ignore all the fires going on around, and go and save the cat from the tree, and started publicly virtue-signaling about how great their work is, and how they are the saviors of all cats around.
I think anybody would agree that these people would be either insane, incredibly and pathologically narcissistic, or just outright assholes. Certainly not someone to admire and exalt.
But this is exactly what's happening with climate activism today: The least polluting western countries in the world are trying their hardest to virtue-signal about how they are cutting a small fraction of their already-small amount of emissions... while at the same time completely and willfully ignoring the biggest polluters in the world, such as China and India.
Not only are these actions having very little effect on the total amount of emissions in the world, but in fact, and quite ironically (and tragically), these actions may in fact have the exact opposite effect of the intended: In the long run, these acts of virtue-signaling may actually increase overall pollution, rather than decrease it.
(How? Hurting the economy of a country by putting strict restrictions in place is not going to decrease the demand for the products and services that are manufactured and offered in that country. Instead, what's going to happen is that the production and services will just move to another country. Probably one that's significantly less strict about emissions. Such as China and India. Thus, overall, "cutting emissions" by strict restrictions is only going to cause more emissions overall, not less.)
How about we start with the most injured people, the biggest fires, and the biggest polluters, and once those have been fixed, move from the top downwards? And how about we stop virtue-signaling about our own actions, and start doing things that actually have an effect. Practical things. Things that actually work. Like pressuring China and India to reduce their pollution. Is that such a silly idea?
Or suppose there is a series of fires at some residential area. The amount of fires is so extensive that there is no enough firefighting personnel and equipment to deal with all of them at the same time. Thus it only makes sense to prioritize: Take care of the biggest and most dangerous fires first, and move from there to the smaller less dangerous ones. And if there's a cat stuck on a tree branch, that might be taken care of once everything else is fine.
Prioritizing is practical and only makes sense: First fix the biggest dangers, the things that are causing the most amount and the most serious damage, and move from there progressively to the lesser and lesser dangers, working your way from the biggest to the smallest. This way the amount of total damage and life loss is minimized.
Now, assume that some doctor where to get his priorities completely skewed, and treated the patient with the sprained ankle first, ignoring the other more seriously injured patients. Not only that, but this doctor starts publicly virtue-signaling about how great of a doctor he is because he treated this one patient with the sprained ankle, and how he is the savior of all people with sprained ankles. Or suppose that a firefighting squad were to ignore all the fires going on around, and go and save the cat from the tree, and started publicly virtue-signaling about how great their work is, and how they are the saviors of all cats around.
I think anybody would agree that these people would be either insane, incredibly and pathologically narcissistic, or just outright assholes. Certainly not someone to admire and exalt.
But this is exactly what's happening with climate activism today: The least polluting western countries in the world are trying their hardest to virtue-signal about how they are cutting a small fraction of their already-small amount of emissions... while at the same time completely and willfully ignoring the biggest polluters in the world, such as China and India.
Not only are these actions having very little effect on the total amount of emissions in the world, but in fact, and quite ironically (and tragically), these actions may in fact have the exact opposite effect of the intended: In the long run, these acts of virtue-signaling may actually increase overall pollution, rather than decrease it.
(How? Hurting the economy of a country by putting strict restrictions in place is not going to decrease the demand for the products and services that are manufactured and offered in that country. Instead, what's going to happen is that the production and services will just move to another country. Probably one that's significantly less strict about emissions. Such as China and India. Thus, overall, "cutting emissions" by strict restrictions is only going to cause more emissions overall, not less.)
How about we start with the most injured people, the biggest fires, and the biggest polluters, and once those have been fixed, move from the top downwards? And how about we stop virtue-signaling about our own actions, and start doing things that actually have an effect. Practical things. Things that actually work. Like pressuring China and India to reduce their pollution. Is that such a silly idea?
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