Why Is It So Easy to Save the Banks – but So Hard to Save the Biosphere?

[KoKo]

Published on Sunday, December 18, 2011 by The Guardian/UK
Why Is It So Easy to Save the Banks – but So Hard to Save the Biosphere?
by George Monbiot

They bailed out the banks in days. But even deciding to bail out the planet is taking decades.

Nicholas Stern estimated that capping climate change would cost around 1% of global GDP, while sitting back and letting it hit us would cost between 5 and 20%. One per cent of GDP is, at the moment, $630bn. By March 2009, Bloomberg has revealed, the US Federal Reserve had committed $7.77 trillion to the banks. That is just one government's contribution: yet it amounts to 12 times the annual global climate change bill. Add the bailouts in other countries, and it rises several more times.

This support was issued on demand: as soon as the banks said they wanted help, they got it. On just one day the Federal Reserve made $1.2tr available – more than the world has committed to tackling climate change in 20 years.

Much of this was done both unconditionally and secretly: it took journalists two years to winkle out the detail. The banks shouted "help" and the government just opened its wallet. This all took place, remember, under George W Bush, whose administration claimed to be fiscally conservative.

But getting the US government to commit to any form of bailout for the planet – even a couple of billion – is like pulling teeth. "Unaffordable!" the Republicans (and many of the Democrats) shriek. It will wreck the economy! We'll go back to living in caves!
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/12/18-3

[frebrd]

1. The Biosphere doesn't.....

make campaign contributions.

[KoKo]

3. Well...you nailed it. We had a bigger voice (or thought we did) under

Bush/Clinton (and that wasn't even huge) than we seem to now.) :-(

I'm speaking about the Environmental Movement. But, I think we will see a much bigger effort in the next year...since we know we are "on the ropes" for the knock out...these days.

[MedleyMisty]

2. Rich white men are more valuable than the planet they live on

Also, I would imagine they think - hey, if any of my stuff gets wiped out by a natural disaster I can afford to buy new stuff, and I'll be dead by the time things get really bad, and it's not like I give a shit about any other living being that ever existed or is existing or will exist, because I am evil incarnate.

[CarmanK]

4. It wasn't so long ago CAP AND TRADE was a gd idea in DC!

Our democracy has been inundated with adverse information by the FOX MEDIA, that the public confusion has prevented a common sense approach to protecting our AIR and fresh water supply. THE TPARTY NATIONALISTS/GOP are not interested in the well being of the american people as demonstrated just today with the House rejecting the extension of payroll tax cuts for workers. We are as a society overwhelmed by the "subterfuge and treasonous acts of the GOP" as led by Grover Norquist, orchestrated by Karl Rove, propagandized by the MURDOGS at FOX and of course paid for with the unending dollars exuding from the KOCHROAch fountain of wealth and greed. But, if the american people reclaim their democracy after this all out assault by CORPORATIONS both foreign and domestic, we will deal with Climate CHANGE> These free marketers don't realize that govt of the people is one of their best allies in creating widespread profits. Because when govt works in a DEMOCRACY, business spends a whole lot of time getting around the NOs in regulations. They get so creative and imaginative that we get all kinds of innovative ideas going.