People are odd.
Let's consider some concepts. You have a group of people, they have the basic needs of any human, yet some of them want more than they need and will deny others in dire need access to the things that they hoard.
They follow a religion that says that it is wrong to do such things. They believe they're devout because they can recite from their book and they atone for their sins at least once a year.
Most of the holy books humans have say that how you live your life and treat your fellow humans impacts your after life (those that say there is one, if they believe in reincarnation it's a whole different kettle of fish and you should maybe try being nicer, but I digress).
People will use ideas to shield their egos from the effects of their desires on others it seems and use sophistry to make it socially acceptable it seems.
Even odder still people will kill others for disagreeing on the definition of something in their holy book.
Let's consider the entertainment industry and things like disease, poverty and starvation.
A block buster movie can take in millions or even billions of dollars world wide. It will have cost millions to make that movie.
How much of that money goes toward any of the pressing social issues the nations of the world face?
The current demand world wide for resources in fuel, food, building materials and other resources continues to grow, but the world we live on hasn't. Population levels continue to climb but the amount of arable land doesn't and the oceans will only supply so much before the stocks there collapse. But we keep on pushing forward.
Fossil fuels are finite and expected be exhausted sometime in the next 50 years or so, and yet energy producers only pay lip service to finding alternatives that would allow society to continue move at it's current pace.
And then there's climate change. Wow. Ok.. fun facts, the earth has periodic warming and cooling cycles, and certain build ups of certain molecules in the atmosphere help cause the climate to shift.
Basic information, geophysicists have known that for a while, they studied the planet, examine ice cores, they even have a rough understanding of the periodicity of the cycles.
Along come Man the tool user, the builder. The species begin to burn fuels, when there are only a few million of them it's not that big an impact to a system like the earth's. But if on every continent people begin to burn fuels they increase the output of the molecules that help shift the climate... it's a no-brainer as people say.
But wait, say a bunch of people really don't want to lose their tidy income and this information might make the rest of the humans tell them they need to find a better way.. which would mean actually making less money for them.. what would they do? Hire people to 'prove' that it's not humans at all? Why not, it worked for the tobacco industry for a while when people started to wonder if there was a link to the product and cancer.
Something I wonder about those people. I'll lay out a scenario that illustrates my view of them. Let's say you go to a doctor because you're not feeling good, and they tell you you have an ailment that can be cured, but it's going to cast you one quarter of your savings, (we'll pretend you have millions of dollars if you live in the U.S.), and you'll have to give up certain favorite foods. You think well, it can't cost that much and so you go to another doctor for a second opinion and they say the same thing. You go to ten different doctors, and they all agree with the initial finding.
And then you find the one that just squeaked by and got certified. He's more interested in money he can get up front than he is his patients and he says exactly what you want to hear. "It's nothing, you'll be fine just take these pills". You die six months later.
Most sane, (ok, maybe slightly neurotic), people on hearing the second or third opinion would think, 'Hey, I'd better deal with this!".
The saying 'an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure' comes to mind., or 'better safe than sorry'. The naysayers don't seem to know those.. though they often claim to be conservative.
Those sayings are as conservative as you can get.
