The Environmental and Economic Crisis

Many people are saying that we cannot forget the environment during times of economic crisis - I couldn't agree more. On Tuesday, the Federal Reserve Board in the US did something historic - they brought interest rates to nearly zero. Why did they do this? To stimulate the economy, of course. Today, I read an article on the website truthout.org that said that 2/3rds of the economy is driven by consumers. This is a huge amount - no wonder George Bush told people to go shopping after 9/11. Given that the Earth will run out of resources sometime soon, how can we afford to keep consuming? In Japan, people seem to shop like there is no tomorrow. Department stores are always busy and convenience stores sell god knows how many bentos every day. One of my private clients says that the reason this happens on weekends is because people have to work off the stress from their weeks, as it's quite normal for people to work 12 hours a day here. How can we sustain this when the population keeps rising? Of course, in Japan, the population is dropping because couples literally have no time for sex anymore, as reported by the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/28/japan-sexual-health

So, how can we avert both economic and environmental disaster? Easy - we need green jobs. Imagine if the Big 3 turned their factories from car assembly plants to wind turbine and solar panel plants. Imagine if coal workers turned their talents to digging for geothermal power. In many countries, states like California and Michigan and provinces like Ontario around the world, people are paid for putting up wind turbines, solar panels and other renewable energy equipment. The US is a national policy like this - come on Barack! This will aid the US enormously.