347 Days
“You show me a polluter and I’ll show you a subsidy. I’ll show you a fat cat using political clout to escape the discipline of the free market and the load his production costs onto the backs of the public,” RFK Jr.
Why are the elections in the United States important to everyone in the world? Well, I guess there are an innumerable reasons why any change in Washington will reverberate around the world with positive happy feelings. There are numerous countdowns online until President Bush is sent back to his ranch (347 days to be exact). Oh, it will be a day when bunnies will dance in fields, doves will fly through the clouds and peoples around the world will hold hands singing joyous songs.
The mother nature will also sigh an loud sigh of relief. Robert F Kennedy Jr’s book Crimes Against Nature: How George W Bush and His Corporate Pals are Plundering the Country and Hijacking our Democracy is an essential primer for the relation between environment and politics.
He accuses the Bush administration of taking the conserve out of conservatives by allowing corporations to have free reign over the natural resources of the United States. Strip mining, oil drilling in protected areas and the blatant pollution of water supplies across the country.
Many environmentalists are quick to blame the free market economy as being responsible for the devastation of our ecosystems. RFK argues that in a true free market society, corporations would be responsible for cleaning up the lands and waters they contaminate. A true free market economy would not see the most profitable corporations receive tax breaks and subsidies but instead see them pay the true costs of producing a product that leads to environmental devastation. In a free market economy, if an oil company were to say build a new oil refinery, they would be responsible for all the contamination caused by it.
This book is a great read. Scary as hell but a great read for anyone who wants to justify crossing the border and picking up a Clinton or Obama sign and parading up and down the streets until election day in November.
Change in Washington is important quite simply because environmental problems do not adhere to little lines drawn on maps.
347 Days
