bogleech:

I think the natural world is intrinsically precious and obviously wildlife means an awful lot to me but I wish all the environmental propaganda I heard growing up had actually touched on all that actual human suffering.

I heard so much about all those poor cute little rainforest animals who need our help because they are so defenseless and innocent yet I was never taught about the indigenous human beings who live in the same fucking rainforest and are afforded no more rights than those same apes and birds getting plastered on posters around my elementary school.

Yes it’s sad that climate change threatens the polar bears but why have I heard so much more about the polar bears than the fact that over 20,000 people have had to flee the Marshall islands due to rising sea levels? Oh, hey, most of them fled to the United States, too, so who knows how many now risk deportation while their original homes are UNDER THE FUCKIN OCEAN.

Why did even environmental groups tell me more about what pesticides do to fish than what they do to human embryonic development? What about people starving to death because poaching and overfishing and banana crops and shit have destroyed their resources?

I hear a little more about these things NOW, I guess, but all I heard growing up was just “SAVE THE PRETTY BIRDS AND DOLPHINS” and it’s just no fucking wonder people as a whole stopped caring about the ecosystem. Captain Planet and Fern Gully and all those endless ad campaigns and grade-school programs somehow expected human beings to get on board with preserving nature while simultaneously treating human beings as exclusively monsters and outsiders to nature.