Brian Landever, Ethical Markets, Summer 2009.
Emissions taxes- will we pretend to save the earth or actually do it? Does everyone realize what Goldman Sachs and other big investors are up to
in the world’s forests? It’s rather terrifying. They are buying our air. I’m almost being literal.
The scam behind the war against global warming is a fairly typical one in our current world of privatizing everything. The idea that is inching
forward in government is to tax all companies that need or choose to pollute the air. This money would then go to groups that protect and maintain the
world’s forests, rivers, oceans, etc. Any left over money could potentially go to improving public infrastructure. But since everything is privatized
this is all screwed up.
With only a few owners, such as Goldman Sachs (who, coincidentally, has orchestrated all of history’s economic crashes – click here) all the world’s taxes will go into their hands. They will then hire their own lobbying group and environmentalists to take care of nature. As capitalism goes, the trickle down method sucks. It doesn’t work for anyone but the people who are supposed to allow money to trickle down. Thus, the super rich will be concentrating a huge majority of tax dollars into their private pockets. They will then have a nice PR group make wonderful claims that they are saving the world. But how else could this look?
This situation is very similar to our monetary system. Private banks create money and lend it to people as the economy grows. As more debt is created,
banks earn more interest. An alternative to this is allowing the government to create money and spend it into existence, eliminating the debt based
system. As a result, public infrastructure would be bolstered beyond belief. Imagine a responsible central bank recognizing when it’s time for
the economy to grow, and then putting more money into the economy by hiring more teachers and subsidizing the creation of fuel cell recharge stations
along all highways.
If emissions taxes were collected by governments, rather than Goldman Sachs, how many more teachers could be hired? How many fuel cell and electric cars could be put on the roads? If the point of collecting these taxes is to give mother earth a rest and minimize our production of CO2, than it is
crucial that every single dollar collected (and be assured the aggregate amounts will be enormous) be spent on greening our world.
Brian Landever