7 Reasons why you should NOT care about the environment

With all this "greenery" going around, climate change and global warming, environmental protection, biodiversity and so on and so on I have made a list of why we should NOT care about the environment.

<sarcasm>

1. Research towards the environment takes money away from other good research. Why should we invest into forests, cleaning water and clean technology? Research in these areas is just taking money away from reasonable research such as faster automobiles and stronger air-conditioners. When global warming comes I don't want to spend too much time in the over-heated car and I don't want to be sweating at home.
   
   
2. It looks ugly to have clean energy. Windparks are just so ugly with their white blades and their turning. And who wants a solar-cells covered roof? Roofs are the first thing you see when you fly over a country with an airplane. It just ruins the first impression for tourists.
   
   
3. Humans should rule earth, not insects. There are about a million known insect species, 3 times more than all other species together. If humans really want to be king of the earth, we should eliminate as many other species possible. The good thing with insects is we don't know many of them and how they function, so it's safe to kill them.
   
   
4. A rise in the number of graduating biologists. We would have a rise in the number of biologists, including marine biologists if we eradicate many types of animals and plants, because then there won't be so many different genus and species to remember. And we can always use more academics. To be more efficient, we should eradicate a whole family or even class of animals, that gets rid of a whole branch in the biological nomenclature that students have to remember.
   
   
5. Non-natural objects like buildings don't "heal" themselves like trees, therefore they need more maintenance, creating more jobs! I hope you don't oppose against this air-tight reason for creating more concrete roads and high-rise buildings. If you are against this reason, you are not very sympathetic towards the working people.
   
   
6. We would save a lot of time! We can cut the small talk short because we don't need to talk about global warming anymore or Al Gore's latest book. In meetings we can focus on money and financial growth instead of being occupied with natural resources.
   
   
7. Less worrying and no need to change lifestyles! It IS a huge hassle to get into an electric car or a hybrid instead of a normal fuel-based SUV (it just feels weird when the car makes no noise!!). And there's no need to look on a different shelf to get an energy-efficient lamp instead of the normal light bulb. I'd rather pay 4 times more for electricity than looking on another shelf! Nobody tells me where to look when I'm shopping!

Maybe you have some more ideas on how we can further ignore the environment and create a better economy? Let me know!

</sarcasm>

Just to make sure: I hope everyone understood the sarcasm behind this post :-). I wrote this to make a bit clearer how ridiculous it is to not care about the environment. There's no real reason why we can't protect our environment and create a more sustainable planet. And it might take some getting used to, but it won't hurt the quality of life - the opposite is true. Being more friendly towards the environment makes us more conscious about our surroundings.

If you want a good read on how civilisations went under because of neglecting or mis-using the environment, pick up a copy of Jared Diamond's Collapse.

Want to know more about how well-being and environmental sustainability can be used to create a happy planet? Read more about it in the Happy Planet Index.