Where Fun Comes to Die

After being accosted by Greenpeace enthusiasts yesterday, I was surprised to hear how they too have joined the bandwagon and caboosed all of their arguments with “and it will be good for the economy,” presumably because researching alternative energy sources will sponge up all of the unemployed physicists that are sapping the resources of the country.   Assuming the Greenpeacers were right about everything, why would they be in favor of such a measure?  The best thing that has happened to the environment in the past decade has arguably been the global recession and accompanying scale back on production and consumerism.   If we create new jobs, one result is that we enable our current national lifestyle to the detriment of the planet.  This would be a trickier issue if it was a choice between us or the planet.  Luckily Americans are not faced with the possibility of starvation and total lack of medical care so much as the possibility of crippling amounts of debt and its accompanying hardships at worst, and at best a reduced work week allowing them to spend more time with their family or pursuing the joys of life in a more environmentally friendly way. The Europeans seem to do it without too much angst.  We’ve already made the switch (almost?) to European-style small cars, let’s adopt the 35 hour week/2 month vacation lifestyle as well.

update: check out this new yorker article along the same lines.