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Imagine keeping the huge defence budget, but using it to plant and irrigate massive forests.
by ctack 9y ago
Imagine keeping the huge defence budget, but using it to plant and irrigate massive forests.
- afarrell 9y agoSounds like the Civilian Conservation Corps, which I believe actually caused massive habitat destruction due to draining wetlands. There are diminishing returns to these sort of projects, especially if you don't want to bulldoze the houses that have been built where forests used to thrive naturally. I have high doubts that you could spend the whole DoD budget productively. Meanwhile, it would also: - Remove spending equivalent to 3.5% of US GDP, causing a recession. - Create a power vacuum that nations would war over as they rushed to fill it.
- pvaldes 9y agoAmericans would enjoy a better life and would have more money for spending in luxuries (Because their air conditioning bill in summer would be much smaller and winter is not so harsh with some extra wood and a chimney). More people buying things and travelling, less danger of recession (and more money for the people that sells hotel rooms, for example).
- cardamomo 9y agoAnd the additional emissions from air conditioning, retail product manufacturing, and travel would raise CO2 levels even higher? We need to develop an ecologically aware definition of quality of living, rather than one that prioritizes extracting value for humans from a supposedly separate source of natural resources.
- pvaldes 9y agoNot necessarily, because more forests equals to less CO2 in the air. Is a well known fact that trees store carbon atoms and water. Army activities on the other hand release also lots of CO2 (and much worst things like deplected Uranium) to the environment.
- rm_-rf_slash 9y agoIronically, it was the defense industry - not Hollywood - that initiated Southern California's ascention to an economic juggernaut.