Environmental Pessimists and Environmental Optimists

Environmental Pessimists and Environmental Optimists
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Environmental Pessimists and Environmental Optimists
Environmental pessimists consisting of a vocal group of doomsayers, and environmental optimists mainly comprising economists and politicians, are two groups that have been in an intense debate for a long time over the state of the world. According to environmental pessimists, the death of birth is occurring right now. Conversely, environmental optimists argue that we are on the way to sustainable development. These two divergent viewpoints of looking at the environment are gaining more and more prominence in the society. This paper outlines the respective arguments and describes my standing on this debate.
Environmental Pessimism
Pessimism has taken root in the environmental movement, creating an aura of apocalyptic panic. According to pessimists, climate change would lead to the extinction of humankind. Others even propose that instead of continuing to damage the environment, everyone should commit species suicide (Follett, 2014). The pessimists’ assessment of the environment is that everything is getting frighteningly worse. Environmental pessimists therefore assert that we are witnessing the death of birth. They give emphasis to destructiveness of the environment (Ehrlich, 2013).
Environmental pessimists are by and large doomsayers who overstate the declining purity of soil, water and air; over-population; global warming owing to human interference; and mass extinction of species. The future of mankind is bleak, according to these doomsayers, unless far-reaching and radical changes are made. In fact, some of them hold the view that humankind is already doomed in a few decades to come (Dutton, 2015). The pessimists also maintain that human beings have already experienced the ending of nature.
Furthermore, environmental pessimism, as Follett (2014) pointed out, has little relation to scientific facts. Scientific problems and environmental problems go together: interest groups overstate the scale of a problem for the purpose of pushing their own agenda, and the media attempt to make the most of the issue by adopting the rhetoric of a disaster in progress. On the whole, environmental pessimists point to the significant amount of damage that has already been done to the environment, and the damage that is actually still being done (Ehrlich, 2013). According to their view, the world at the moment is in a much worse state than as depicted by the media.
McKibben (2013) is one of the leading environmental pessimists who asserted that through their actions, human beings have touched all parts of planet earth, including the atmosphere, the oceans, and the poles, and that the actions of humans have influenced patterns of weather and therefore destroyed nature’s independence. Man has altered not just the weather, but also the air for breathing. These damages are the result of people’s altered perspective of nature. Nowadays, humans view nature, not as an entity that deserves respect, but rather as a hobby (McKibben, 2013). Human beings do not need nature any more with the exception of when they want to satisfy their superficial wants.
McKibb...