Point One
You say that "No one read it". That is false. It may be that no one person read all of it, but we don't need even one person to read all of it. No one person has read all of the schematics for the space shuttle, either, but it flies.
However, lots of people have read the bill and have responsibilities for different parts of it. They also collaborate with people who are responsible for other parts of the bill. On complicated issues like this, there is no way that one person could understand all of the issues involved. It's simply too complex. But when we put our heads together, we can do marvelous things -- like build the most complex device in the world, the space shuttle.
This idea that every congressman should read all of every bill is unrealistic, unproductive, a waste of time, and and unnecessary red herring.
Point Two
Yes, we'll have to spend money to clean up the environment. And lots of businesses will be formed and will hire employees to build the devices that we'll use to clean up the mess that we've created. In addition, we'll be creating new jobs and businesses in green energy production industries.
The fact that we haven't paid all of the costs of our pollution to date is not a good thing, and it's not fair to measure previous expenses with future expenses. Most of the costs of our brown industries were either pushed off onto the public and onto future generations in the form of diseases and death and lost land area and diminishing species and shrinking human habitat. It's just too bad that future generations will have to pay to clean up the messes that we've created. I just hope they'll have the money, because we've already borrowed not only their inheritance but also their income from them, and we have no intention of paying it back.
Point Three
A government program that has helped us: Roads. Cancer research. Agricultural research. Free health care for poor children. Public utilities of all kinds that always cost less than what private providers charge. Public education.
The private sector cannot and would not provide those services on the scale that is needed. We already know that's true just by looking at the distribution of broadband internet services. There are places where you can't get it because it's not profitable for a private company to provide it even though it's profitable for society as a whole to connect rural areas.
Final Thoughts
Now, if you're one of those climate change deniers, then I've just wasted my time. Such people don't care about facts and will listen to the right wing fringe rather than to mainstream science because they have some sort of mental disorder, or stand to lose lots of money because they're invested in brown industries and are too lazy to invest in green ones.
And if you're a libertarian, then I've similarly wasted my time. Libertarians believe that the insane assumptions they have to make for their economic model actually might be true. The fact that no one in the world has ever made a libertarian economic system work and that no country even trying libertarianism doesn't phase them in the least.
But if you're disappointed that the bill doesn't do enough, then you've got my sympathies. It doesn't. But the northern ice cap will be largely gone in 20 years, and we know that we're responsible for these acute changes to our climate. We know that waiting to fix these problems will cost trillions upon trillions of dollars more, when, for instance, we have to build dikes to keep central Florida, among other places, from going under water.
Yes, the bill doesn't do enough. But we've got to start somewhere, and we've got to start now. Our children are counting on us.
by
EveningStarNM on
07/05/2009 02:51:15 AM EST
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