It's an issue for all and an issue that has million of factors and billions of competing interests. I do think that we as population of a planet are causing a lot of damage, damage in the form of climate change or a whole host of other environmental destruction in one way or another. Some of it has to do with industrialization and other has to do with lifestyles and a general lack of care. People who deny or don't think that a population growth of 300-400% in the last 100 years doesn't have any sort of meaningful effect on the environment in one way or another are out to lunch.
How do we deal with this issue on a global scale is where the battle lies and I don't know if we will ever get to where we may or need to be. People in rich countries like Canada and the USA can talk and spew all the BS they want about plastic straws, electric cars, turning off the lights at earth hour once a year and recycling their stuff via the blue bin, a huge chunk of which ends up in poor countries as straight up garbage.
It's a fair assumption that nobody on this forum who's from North America has a carbon, environmental or energy use footprint that can come anywhere near where billions, I repeat, billions of people already are. It's not hard to see why that would be, a lot of these people earn very little to no money by our standards and they generally speaking
Don't really own anything or a lot of anything
Don't really travel or go anywhere of significance in distances, probably never been on a flight, almost for sure don't own a car.
Don't really consume a lot of consumer luxuries, especially things we spend trillions on.
Don't eat anywhere near,what, when, where, how often and what quality of food.
Don't have adequate housing, plumbing, shower facilitates etc
Take all of the above and just imagine these people trying to achieve a fraction of even 5% what we in North America consider a middle class lifestyle. They should be able to at least attempt to achieve that level by using abundant, affordable fossil fuels and energy. Why should Canada and the US have 152 & 243 years of sky rocketing economic expansion and industrialization and than have us tell some poor nation, they can't use coal? Them drilling for oil, gas and mining minerals is bad for the environment? How many of these countries are just trying to get stable electricity, have tiny bit of meat in their diet regularly, have a proper toilet to sh** in and have a hot shower?
People always talk about fairness, equality, the "rich" helping the poor. Well I can assure you that if the world got really fair, really equal and the "rich" really started to help the poor, than the entire world would be turned upside down in ways a LOT of people don't want.
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