Imagine a $700 Billion Bailout for the Environment
The economic crisis currently facing the nation has caused a flurry of political action. From McCain “suspending” his campaign to massive bailouts, the response has been immediate and serious. Even though the $700 billion bailout for Wall Street was rejected by the House of Representatives, which would have been the largest US government financial market intervention in history, I can’t help but wonder what a $700 billion bailout would do for the environment. What if the US government had responded to the twenty years of dire warnings by James Hansen in the same manner as the current economic crisis? Such an aggressive response may have stopped climate change and saved our economy through green jobs and technology.
>> See also: Why Van Jones should be Obama’s Secretary of Prosperity
Government scientists, like James Hansen, have been muzzled for warning us that the Earth “is nearing… a tipping point beyond which it will be impossible to avoid climate change with far-ranging undesirable consequences.” Sounds like the sky is falling to me, but when Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson says it, the government takes note. As Bruce Marks, founder and CEO of the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA) explains:
Paulson says the sky is falling, we have to bail out Bear Stearns, $30 billion; the sky is falling, we have to bail out Fannie and Freddie, $200 billion; the sky is falling, we have to bail out AIG, $85 billion.
I can’t fathom $700,000,000,000. Jon Stewart told us $700 billion is equal to around 2,000 McDonald’s apple pies per individual American. The investment could turn our economy green on a larger scale rather than fatten us up on apple pies. As Van Jones explains:
It’s time to stop borrowing and start building. America’s No. 1 resource is not oil or mortgages. Our No. 1 resource is our people. Let’s put people back to work — retrofitting and repowering America. … You can’t base a national economy on credit cards. But you can base it on solar panels, wind turbines, smart biofuels and a massive program to weatherize every building and home in America.
Former presidential candidate John Edwards and the NRDC proposed the April 2008 $100 billion stimulus package be spent on green infrastructure investments, such as “retrofitting buildings to improve energy efficiency, expanding mass transit and freight rail, constructing ’smart’ electrical grid transmission systems, wind power, solar power, and next-generation biofuels.” The program was even proposed to be paid for by auctions of carbon permits and would have created two million jobs!
What could 700 billion do for the environment if invested in a green economy? The economic crisis is real, and I don’t know the solution, but climate change is also real. I just wonder when the environment will get its bailout.
Image: My Hero
You have no idea what you are talking about. If you have ever read one financial chart in your life or you had any idea about how banking and credit functions you would shut your mouth. And I would urge you to do so.
All the talk about kilowatts and kilowatt/hours is apparently confusing many of you.
For you non-engineering types.
Bottom line for solar and wind equipment is a payback in the 6-12% range, depending on a host of factors.
Maths aside(!)…what a brilliant point, well put.
Irregardless of the math issues, the sentiment in this article makes it worth reading. It comes down to personal responsibility to be a good steward of our earth, and many people just don’t care, or believe that environmental issues are someone else’s problem.
I wish that people of this world (it’s not only Americans who have created this problem) would feel more responsible for taking care of our planet, and stop thinking that it will just “get better”. It won’t.
It won’t matter about whoever gets elected in November if we as individuals don’t start doing our part to help this wounded planet. While it may not happen tomorrow, it WILL happen unless we stop our wasteful ways today.
@Tsila: there might be terrorists out there, but not behind every door. With less military and more investment into civil projects there would at least be fewer US terrorists.
You’re missing a zero in that census figure. According to your link, there were 105,000,000 households. That cuts the benefit rather sharply.
A good point of view on where 700 billion dollars REALLY could be used.
CHECK YOU FACTS
In the article you say 10 million households.
In the link to that quote it says 103 million households.
[...] been telling people that Obama should hit back. “$700B? Why not borrow a trillion and solve our energy dependence, and fix health care to boot?” Of course, that was before the bailout bill failed in the [...]
If we are forced to bail out Wall Street, we should at least make sure to prevent the next – ecological – subprime crisis from happening. The same banks which pushed imprudent mortgages also finance coalmine, deforestation and dam projects which rapidly draw down the planet’s capital. And once they have depleted our ecological capital with their dodgy deal, no other planet will bail us out. See http://www.internationalrivers.org/en/node/3369/ for a comment on bailing out environmental subprime lenders.