Quote:
Originally Posted by Ramona_A_Stone
Specifically, protect the immediate profit potentials of exploitation and abuse of the environment, eschew new research and technologies to keep those profits maximized and properly funneled, accept your fate as a consumer, and let future generations piss up their own rope.
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You say this like it's a bad thing.
I'm not gonna go into a "greed is good" rant here but it's known that economic prosperity and the health of the environment are linked and correlate directly. Industries are less abusive of the environment when their profit potentials are assured because then they can afford to conform to EPA standards. Many corporations even find it useful to spend their revenues in
advertising to boast of their conservation practices (Shell Oil Company comes immediately to mind). To suggest that new green technologies actually threaten profitability is patent nonsense. If Wall Street had been made in this decade rather than the '80s Michael Douglas would have said "green is good, green is right, green works" and over the next few years we're going to see a lot of businesses stake their bottom lines on the public demand for products that make people feel like their doing their part to save the environment. But the truth is that the economic and industrial boom of the latter half of the last century has already saved the environment, at least here in North America. It is in the developing nations that lack the means to protect their environments where the real crisis is occurring.
The greatest threat to the environment is not greed, it is poverty. Solve global poverty, famine, homelessness, etcetera, and the global environment will recover almost immediately.