Fixing the root cause of Iraq war for oil
This entry was posted on 10/31/2007 10:42 PM and is filed under Tax Shifting,OIL,Energy Conservation,Energy dependence,Economy,Leadership,Action.
The costs of the Iraq war:
- coalition soldiers lives (as of today - 4,142 including 3,841
Americans);
- reported Iraqi civilian deaths (depending on your source
either over 600,000 (New York Times article) or over 75,971
(iraqbodycount.net));
- loss of limbs and other wounds (physical and
mental);
- dollars (over $464 billion and climbing).
Fixing the root cause
From a letter from Cheryl Long, editor of Mother Earth News magazine, in April 2007:
Do you know what the estimated total cost of the Iraq war to American taxpayers is? $2.2 trillion "....estimates Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz."
"For those who doubt it is possible to end our addiction to oil and
shift to clean, secure renewable energy, I offer this tidy fact from
the ace researchers at the Earth Policy Institute: If, instead, we had invested that $2.2 trillion
in wind turbines, we would have built enough electrical generating
capacity to provide roughly 150 percent of total U.S. energy needs."
"But the point is that even though renewable technologies are relatively
new and still improving, they already can provide all the energy we
need at a price tag we can afford."
"Let's do everything we can to spread the word: Renewable energy is ready to come to our rescue." (If/when we fix the root cause of the Iraq war -- our addiction to oil -- by phasing-in a federal tax shift from income to non-renewable energy."
P.S. - in large part because of our large and accelerating appetite for oil, "Oil futures soared late Wednesday to a new record above $96 a barrel...."
P.S.S. - by significantly cutting our oil consumption, we'll have much more control over our economy.
