The Value vs Cost - How Much Is Too Much?
Friday, 29 January 2010 at 20:54

The science is science, even if it doesn't appeal to personal aesthetic sensibilities, you are either in it for the truth or a hidden agenda, and I know many people are seeking the truth with good intent in their heart and mind. Naturally we have to have a balance between the needs of plants and environment and the needs of people and human civilization. By pleasing only one side makes both sides loose. And that's the truth, granted not always pleasant or pretty.

Many people were duped to believe that CO2, the building block of life on Earth, is an enemy of people, nothing could be farther from the truth. I wouldn't put my mouth into the exhaust pipe, not yet at least, since like cars, we too produce CO2, it is the green plant aliens who need the CO2, and in turn they produce the oxygen we breathe, food we eat, and wood/coal to get warm. Fare deal. The complete symbiotic system where the byproduct of one kingdom is nourishment of the other kingdom and vise versa. In green houses the CO2 is pumped to make vegetables grow healthier, faster, bigger, and yield more produce. Without the CO2 we would have no food to eat and no air to breathe, meanwhile we currently have the lowest amount of CO2 in the atmosphere *EVER* in history of the world.

As long as the economy is greed driven and the politicians are obsessed more with the GDP than the well being, the humans will be on the loosing end, since the nature is more robust than human civilization. As the US think-tank WorldWatch has warned recently - "Human civilisation 'will collapse' unless greed culture is stopped, report warns" http://tinyurl.com/y8mgzu7 also a NOW magazine for this week has a good reference about the political addiction to the GDP numbers, on page 55 books section featuring Wayne Roberts review of 'The Value Of Nothing' by Raj Patel, Wayne writes, "My biggest disappointment with Patel’s book is its failure to take a whack at the Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, the most powerful messaging system for misinforming people about the difference between value and price. Commonly taken as the indicator of how the economy is doing, it regularly misleads because it rates in the same way all activities that cause cash registers to go “ka-ching.”

Purchased baby formula that displaces breastfeeding, a farm sold for box-store development, a forest chopped down and sold as lumber, the money paid lawyers to handle difficulties among neighbours – all are examples of actions that make money and cause the GNP to go up while subtracting from real economic and life values. The grip of the GDP on public policy-makers is that they think anything that makes dollars will cause meaningful growth.

By contrast, moms who breastfeed instead of buying formula, or neighbours who compost instead of providing slop to keep the garbageman busy add nothing to the GDP even though they arguably create value for the world." http://tinyurl.com/y8zp2ha... See more

...to say the least. As for the oil/coal/nuclear & pollution, well, we got to find a way to be efficient, practical, not wasteful, sustaining and pragmatic, because humans can only harm their own fragile environment and the environment itself will prevail. But who wants to save anything when the whole civilization is driven off the cliff by a violent greedy stupid few while the rest of the cosmic intelligence and body is mad, sick, and sore from abuse, mistreatment, and misrepresentation, with majority suffering the pain and strife for better existence which reverberates throughout the universe.