carbon credits

It has been interesting to watch the Obama administration come to terms with our current predicament. It is for sure that we are in the worst crisis any of us have ever seen. This is no longer a recession. It is a true depression and a depression of the sort that only comes around every 100 or so years. A 100 year flood.

First the president was more or less realistic. I say more or less because he did paint too rosy a picture. That was before the State of the Union. At the State of the Union, he was extremely optimistic and hopeful and it was probably necessary because the previous tone (which I call the rosy picture) was no doubt too depressing for the general public to bear. 

Then he unveiled a budget with some positive steps. Unfortunately it is still a budget that focuses on the wrong ideas. It does not call for less energy consumption, it calls for alternative energy. It does not call for the abandonment of car traffic, it puts money into rebuilding highways. Obama calls it his "work on the foundations," but it appears the work is of a restorative nature only. It is not about rebuilding the foundations. It is about patching up and shoring up the existing foundations. And that is unfortunate. Because we need to rebuild those foundations.

We are slipping and sliding deeper into depression. From an environmental perspective that is truly good news. The consumer economy that was built on horrendous over-consumption and waste was a real environmental disaster. And I am not talking about the Bush policies per se. I am talking about ordinary citizens driving several large SUVs, building enormous McMansions and vacation homes, roaming around the globe on numerous vacations, buying goodies left and right only to trash them and replace them with newer goodies in a few days.

The Bush policies only did what could be done to support to this idiotic destructive behavior. The very people who despised Bush for his environmental record, were driving SUVs, filling up trash cans, and destroying nature as if there were no tomorrow. But perhaps because they threw some of their trash in the recycling bin, they felt better about themselves? Who knows?

The Bush policies made it possible for the consumer economy to do what everyone wanted it to do. These weren't Bush's ideas either. It all started with a man, many now consider a hero and one of the best presidents we ever had: Ronald Reagan. If there was ever a man who truly believed in environmental rape and destruction it was good old Ronnie. Unfortunately the world will all pay for the excesses of Ronnie's hare-brained ideas for many decades to come. 

Maybe good old Ron did not know any better? Suffering from Alzheimer's and coming from Hollywood make-believe, the cowboy of Santa Barbara may have thought the world was really all about glamour and indulgence. He may have truly believed it was his destiny to turn America into a giant movie-studio where people live the lives of fantasy, unaware of the destructive impacts of their actions. He may have thought prosperity was all about replacing real life with one big movie. A place where everyone can escape from reality.

Unfortunately, the movie is over now. The screen is dark, the nasty room lights are on, and we are kindly ushered back onto the cold and rainy streets. Places where things are tough, where reality bites, where people suffer real hardship and die real deaths, where mortgages have to paid, and where no one can wait for a knight in shining armor to magically fix all problems. No Hollywood endings here.

We are talking about some real work on the foundations. Work needed to put those foundations back into reality and away from Disney make-believe. Work needed to build foundations that can withstand a real flood.