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Your views: KFC, dolls, climate change
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Kai Ryssdal: Free gets our letters segment going today. Free chicken, specifically. A couple of weeks ago I sat down with our senior editor Paddy Hirsch to talk about the value in food giveaways. A chicken dinner from KFC, in Paddy's case. He confessed he doesn't mind waiting around for his discounts. But many of you, like David Spaulding of Durham, N.C., said it's just not worth it.
DAVID SPAULDING: The reality is that a free food giveaway like this attracts a lot of people. Many of them the kind of rabble that I don't want to be in line with and jostling for my complimentary morsel.
He is many things, but Paddy Hirsch is definitely not rabble, I must say.
In that same show Sally Herships told us about a new doll in the incredibly popular American Girl line. Her name is Gwen. And she's homeless. The company says they hope she raises awareness of kids without a home. Did I mention the price tag is $95? We also learned in out letter segment this week that there is nothing like a high-priced toy to get you all to write in.
Most of you felt like Patricia Johnston of Walpole, Mass.
If middle and upper-class children need to become aware of homelessness, she wrote, parents can take them to volunteer in a soup kitchen or a homeless shelter.
Last week we talked poverty with University of Michigan professor Sheldon Danzinger. About how the official poverty line of the future might be measured. David Burns from Needham, Mass., especially enjoyed the good professor.
DAVID BURNS: His B.Q. or his bloviation quotient is zero in this piece. I hope to hear more from him.
BQ, by the way, is now an official Marketplace criteria for how we book all of our guests. We kicked off The Climate Race last week, a series on global warming. Lots of letters on that one.
Cathy Schwemm is an environmental scientist from Ventura, Calif.
CATHY SCHWEMM: Discussions about where to get energy, coal, wind, nuclear, etc., only look at one side of the equation. What we need to be concentrating on is the demand side of the supply equals demand balance. If we could really learn to use less energy we wouldn't have to worry so much about production.
Murr Rhame from Charlotte, N.C., offered this perspective about the earth's rising temperature.
MURR RHAME: Assuming global warming was caused by human activity, in what way would that be unnatural? Humans are as much a part of this planet's natural environment as any other critter. If people have changed the climate, the climate is still in a natural state having not been adulterated by any unnatural influence.
One last thought about covering climate change before we move on. This isn't one of those stories where you can make everybody happy. Or include every point of view. About all you can hope to do, no matter how much time you spend on it, is make people think. So, if we did that, or if we just made you mad, let us know.
About the author
Kai Ryssdal is the host and senior editor of Marketplace, public radio’s program on business and the economy. Follow Kai on Twitter @kairyssdal.
I agree with the semantic distinction Murr refuses to make between humanity and nature. I agree also with his refusal to equate "natural" with "good." The aesthetics of strip mining, clear-cutting, cancer and the damage done by pine beetles to pine trees are topics for related, but seperate, discussions.
All I said is that homo sapiens are a natural part of the Earth's environment and therefore anything people do is as natural as the action of any other organism. I didn't say anything about human activity being good or bad.
I'll now add that using the word "natural" as a synonym for "good" is pretty silly. Cyanide, tsunamis and melanoma are all natural but not too good.
Micheil, David and John, other than what I have written, you don't know what I think. Your straw-man arguments are weak. Criticize what I actually said if you want to. Criticizing what you wish I had said, as you did in your replies, is pointless.
- murr -
Yes, Jonathan Lovelace, I couldn't agree more. Polar bears and other creatures of questionable utility, in their insufferable appeals to "Nature", have been short-circuiting this argument for too long! Let 'em go the way of the polar ice cap and low-lying coastal and island nations - it's the new "natural"!
I think Mr. Murr's point--which all of the comments I see (except the commendable grammatical pedant) overlook--is that we shouldn't be considering what is "natural"; we should be considering what's beneficial to us, instead of letting appeals to "Nature" short-circuit the argument.
Mr Rhame will doubtless consider his food contaminated with lead and mercury and thus stunting his children's development to be natural because the lead and mercury pollution was the natural result of man's environmental irresponsibility. And the polluted water from his well, or his well going dry, to be natural because of mining or drilling or agriculture practices other men do. And if you live in a region where your scenic views of forested mountains are replaced by forest fires and barren ground as a result of human caused warming that allows the pine beetle to kill the pines coupled with the dry winds to fan the dying forests into soil consuming infernos to be natural as well.
And if plundering and raping the environment is natural, so is doing the same to men, women, and children. Thankfully, most people consider these natural acts to be criminal.
Sure, Murr, if we "naturally" raise the global climate 20 degrees through our misuse of planet earth, wipe out most of the life that begins the food chain, decimate our environment, and have to live off-world in cramped tin cans losing our bones and abandoning a rich, global culture, and never achieving the kind of civilization that we had the potential for, it's perfectly all right by your reasoning. NOT mine.
In response to Murr Rhame's comment. The issue isn't whether climate change is natural or unnatural, but by that line of reasoning, human's can then do anything they want since everything human is natural - even nuclear war, genocide, toxic waste dumping - it's all caused "naturally" by humans.
