America’s Military Spending and Clean Energy
June 24th, 2008I wonder how many Cryptogon posts there are on this exact topic… Dozens? Hmm. I’ll have to create a master list of all of them to go along with stories like this.
But, just off the top of my head: Chart: The Cost of the War in Iraq vs. Spending on Solar Energy Research:
Clean energy is expensive? Hmm.
Via: Asia Times:
…America’s decline can be traced to one overriding factor: a military budget that comprises nearly half of the world’s military spending. For decades, as the late Professor Seymour Melman showed in many books (such as After Capitalism) and in numerous articles, the Pentagon has been draining not just money but also the engineering, scientific and business talent that Europe and Japan have been using for civilian production. As Melman often pointed out, the US military budget is a capital fund, and American citizens can use that fund to help finance the construction of the trains, wind and solar power, and other green technologies that will help us to avoid economic and environmental collapse.
That economic collapse, if it comes, will be caused by two major factors: the end of the era of cheap oil, coal and natural gas; and the decline of the manufacturing and machinery base of the economy. Both problems can be addressed simultaneously, as Europe and Japan are showing, by moving the economy from one based on military and fossil fuel production to one based on electric transportation and the generation of renewable electricity.
