Sustainability Can Offer Us a Smile

I’ve known environmentalist Forbes Black for over a decade, but it was only recently that I noticed his penchant for sarcasm, and damn, he’s good at it.

In response to this piece about L.A.’s transition to sustainability and the comment, “L.A. can become sustainable, but that transition won’t be cheap,” he writes:  Oh! Combating climate change might COST MONEY?! Then BY ALL MEANS we should destroy human civilization instead. It DEFINITELY makes more sense for our government to spend our money on useless weapons systems.

Fabulous stuff.

The truth, of course, is that it is probable that America’s participation in the green economy will create a windfall of additional jobs, along with the accompanying increase to the tax base.  At least, that is the conclusion drawn by Dr. Robert Pollin, an economist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who generously spent a couple of hours in two different phone sessions for my second book “Is Renewable Really Doable?”

Of course, what this actually does to the economy isn’t really the issue, just like lowering the abortion rate really isn’t the issue among Christian conservatives who are trying to ban abortions in the U.S. (see piece at right).  What’s happening here is that Big Money is highly resistive to attempts to make wholesale changes in the economy when those changes represent a threat to wealth and power–even when they’re required to maintain the viability of life on Earth.