There is a biting paradox at the heart of two of President Obama’s urgent problems: the economic crisis and the state of the climate, which, as many people believe, is about to erase human existence on the planet.
The United States has a consumer-driven economy. In other words, the present unemployment of 10% (but in reality about 17%) can only be decreased by increased consumption of consumer goods. A “green economy” is beyond our present technological capabilities, so the unavoidable consequence of increased consumption is a rise in the “carbon footprint” of the American citizen.
At present, nobody knows how to drastically reduce our carbonfoot print while at the same time drastically increasing the consumption and production of goods and services. The transformation from a fossil fuel burning society to a green society will take many decades. There are still many states that produce electricity by burning coal. Other states like California burn a lot of natural gas in electricity production. This is cleaner, but still, natural gas is a fossil fuel which releases CO2, nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, and reactive hydrocarbons. Clean fossil fuels don’t exist.
What about “alternative” energy?
A report in Holland about the use of modern windmills, released last week, concludes that “building windmills adds to a higher use of fossil fuels and a higher release of the greenhouse gas CO2.” The construction and maintenance of windmills demand high volumes of energy, and when a lack of winds forces the mills to inactivity, ineffective gas turbines (other types of turbines cannot be fired up on short notice) have to fulfill the demand of electricity.
When one is convinced that climate change is a threat to life on earth, one solution remains. Under federal guidelines, we must maintain or increase unemployment and redistribute available labor. Part-time jobs will be the trend of the near future. Until real clean energy sources like cold fusion are available, accumulation of wealth by definition increases the release of CO2 — but cold fusion is still science fiction. So if climate change needs to be stopped, it is of the utmost importance to give up the essence of capitalism: the ambition to grow and make a profit. An economic crisis and high unemployment are nothing but a blessing in disguise.
Following his own conviction, by making real or imagined money available to companies and consumers and increasing the production of CO2, the president is endangering the future of the planet. He is convinced man-made CO2 releases are a threat to the planet. Still, he claims he wants to stimulate the economy. What does he really want?
If the president really believes that man-made climate change is threatening the planet, he has to make clear that saving the planet is more important than saving the American economy. Based upon the present state of energy technology, these two things — saving the planet and saving the American economy — exclude each other.
According to reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and many climate scientists, it is almost too late for reversing the man-made warming trend of the earth’s climate. If that is the case, trying to hot-wire the American economy is nothing but a crime against humanity.
If President Obama really believes that global warming is caused by burning fossil fuels, it is his duty to slow down the American economy as much as possible and accept high unemployment numbers. According to his philosophy, this should be considered an act of sanity in view of the threats of massive consumption, massive production, and massive movements of people and goods — since all these things are dooming the very existence of life on earth, as the White House and other environmentalists believe.
You can’t save the world by injecting hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy. On the contrary, these billions will destroy the world.
President Obama can’t have it both ways. He needs to choose: save the earth’s climate or save the America’s economy. But how to save the American economy without destroying the earth’s climate?
When you believe that man-made climate change is for real, it’s a tough job being the American president.
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