| | Ted, I like the way you put that. I saw that part of the issue while I was composing the commentary, but I didn't want to make it too long. Tom Clark wants to give away the baby now so that future generations will have the bathwater. His logic makes no sense. He uses arguments from gibberish, such as this: "There’s nothing wrong with determinism, given that it’s a necessary working assumption for explanatory projects at the macro level of terrestrial affairs (although perhaps not at the sub-atomic level, according to some interpretations of quantum mechanics)." And that was from the same article about temporal altruism!
As for his concern about economic equality, he says, "To the extent that access to education and economic security are increased, so too will concern for the environment." This statement will become true only if any education includes the goofy, unsubstantiated ideas that 1) altruistically cutting our own economic throats will lower the earth's temperature; 2) that the earth's climate problems (if they exist at all) can be solved while China, India and other nations are raising their carbon footprints; and 3) that the mandates by the Obama administration on states, businesses, and individuals to lower their footprints are Constitutional.
But just because the statement comes true doesn't make the science, or the politics, anything less than what Tom Clark calls it: altruism.
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