This is for the Ron Paul supporters...

... and for those of you who think that taking steps to alleviate the current environmental crisis would have a negative effect on the economy. Economists and people who are strict capitalists will NEVER tell you about the sorts of things that nature does for us ABSOLUTELY FREE of charge, such as pollination, the numerous benefits of trees/forests (i.e. CO2 sequestering, oxygen production, etc.), and countless others.

As David Suzuki remarks: "It's possible to do a crude estimate of what it would cost us to replace nature... [it has been] estimated [that] it would cost us $35 trillion a year to do what nature is doing for us -- for nothing. Now, to put that in perspective, if you added up all the annual economies of all the countries in the world... [it would be about] $18 trillion. So, nature was doing twice as much service for us as the economies of the world, and in the madness of conventional economics, this isn't in the equation" (quoted from the film "The 11th Hour).

How does that fit into your pie chart, you narrow-minded asshole?

Leaving individuals the responsibility of fixing this, our most all-encompassing issue, would require a whole new set of individuals who haven't been brainwashed since birth by consumerism, marketing, advertising, and the passive acceptance of corporate domination. That is what capitalism in its strictest sense really means, and in this changing world, your ideas on economics are, quite simply, obsolete. And the fact that you have no plan at all for the environment makes you completely and utterly worthless.

You'd never guess it, but he's from Texas.

(Originally posted Saturday, May 18, 2008)

Amendments:
#1 (originally posted May 27, 2008):
Here's more evidence on how ridiculous it is to think that ignoring global warming will be economically preferable in the long term (from a Dallas newspaper, of all places): http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/healthscience/stories/052308fealivclimate.2205395.html

#2 (originally posted June 1, 2008):
and another... does it really make sense to vote for "fiscal conservatives" who don't give a shit for the environment? Caring for the environment is very fiscally responsible!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080529/sc_afp/environmentbiodiversityunclimateeconomy

#3 (originally posted June 11, 2008):
... and yet another... according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, it's a huge money drain to ignore the effects of global warming.

The gist: "Four global warming impacts alone -- hurricane damage, real estate losses, energy costs, and water costs -- will come with a price tag of 1.8 percent of U.S. GDP, or almost $1.9 trillion annually (in today's dollars) by 2100."

Here's the link: http://www.nrdc.org/globalwarming/cost/contents.asp

#4 (posted Jul 5, 2008):
It also looks like the environmental movement is a good way to protect American jobs. At a time when unemployment is at 5.5% and Americans are slated to lose around 850,000 jobs just this year, protecting 14.3 million jobs sounds pretty darn good, doesn't it? That's the report coming from the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI). Their data is based on a supply and demand model of all the industries that would benefit from changing the entire American infrastructure to a green one. Here is their full report (the 14.3 million figure is on p. 13).