At every turn, when humanity is asked the question, 'Do you want temporary economic gain or long-term environmental loss, which one do you prefer,' we invariably choose the money.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
If we pollute the air, water and soil that keep us alive and well, and destroy the biodiversity that allows natural systems to function, no amount of money will save us.
A very Faustian choice is upon us: whether to accept our corrosive and risky behavior as the unavoidable price of population and economic growth, or to take stock of ourselves and search for a new environmental ethic.
Environmental spending creates jobs in engineering, manufacturing, construction, materials, operations and maintenance.
Indeed, our particular concept of private property, which deters us from exhausting the positive resources of the earth, favors pollution.
We have to choose between a global market driven only by calculations of short-term profit, and one which has a human face.
Now, the downside to conservation is that so much is done for the public, which almost always mars the environment that one wanted to conserve.
The more we heat up the planet, the more it costs all of us, not just in money, but in colossal famines, displacements, deaths, and species extinctions, as well as in the loss of some of the things that make this planet a blue-green jewel, including its specialized habitats from the melting Arctic to bleaching coral reefs.
The tragedy is that there is so much more incentive - money - to destroy the ecology than there is to preserve it.
My environment is important to me. I'd rather give up other things in my life - I might not take vacations or spend a lot of money on clothes - so that I can live in a home I feel really good about.
People should decide 'are you willing to spend all this money to go to Mars?' I think the average person on the ground would never spend that amount of money - they have to spend it on something that makes sense and this is definitely saving our planet.
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