well done propaganda.
climate change is happening.
In the next 30 years, it will be too hot to grow corn in much of the USA that currently grows it, and corn production will move north to Canada.
Billions of trees, including in the tropics, have died this past year alone due to extreme drought and heat.
It’s a shame that he thinks that for America to succeed, the environment must fail. It’s not America versus nature.
And its a shame you believe that those of us who are concerned about the economic impacts of environmental legislation are out to kill the earth. You’re illustrating the point made in the video… that you’re taking the issue to its extreme and abandoning all rational thought in the process.
Curious that we can’t predict the weather next eek yet you’re so sure that the climate will have changed so radically in such a short time span, geologically speaking. Where is the indisputable proof that man has 100% control over climate? I mean, if you’re willing to bet put economy on it, you should be 100% sure, right?
the sentence is ambiguous: you can see environmental concerns as ecomonic opportunities. Now , for sure, wrong interpretations of environment management could lead to unintended consequences and also to romantic delusions (these could happen in two directions : to those who rely on wrong “ecological” choices and to those who think that global warming is just an illusion)
And there we have the dilemma:
As soons as someone say “we have to protect the enviroment” someone says “we have to protect the economy”, because those enviroment protectors sure want to kill the economy.
As soon as someone say "“we have to protect the economy” someone says “we have to protect the enviroment”, because those economy protectors sure want to kill the enviroment.
Well, i believe that you still can have economical growth and enviromental protection at the same time when you start using alternativ energy or save energy comsumption at all.
AND, even if all those exhaust gases from our cars don’t lead to global warming wouldn’t it be nice to be able to breath somewhat cleaner air for example?
Greetings
Byc
Of course! There are many companies cashing in on the “green” fad these days… everything from clothing made of recycled materials, to hybrid and electric vehicles.
But what we can’t tolerate is the government steering the free market with a heavy hand… because they do so with our money, and business can be risky. The failure of Solyndra is a good example of what can go wrong when the government plays entrepreneur.
The bottom line is this: let private individuals draw their own conclusions and take their own risks. Don’t encourage our government to take actions that end up hurting us… we’re already so deep in debt.
Seeing how the government is trying to manage the Internet (via PIPA, SOPA, CISPA etc) I fear how it would handle environmental issues if pressed.
You can.
But the crux of the argument is… should the government MANDATE (i.e. putting us at the end of a rifle and telling us to do so) that we follow such practices?
If environmentalists had their way, no one would be able to drive anymore… but that would only solve a portion of the problem. We have even more emissions by power and industrial plants. see: Climate Change | US EPA
this raises an interesting question for libertarians.
I lived in a country where the government issued a temporary ban on indiscriminate use of water. So you were for example fined if you watered your lawn.
Is that a government infringment of liberty?
the theory might be that then water price has got to shot up … except that some needs cannot match the corresponding price… so there are limits to this regulation factor and someone has to do something for a just repartition of the resource. My opinion is that regulating red tape does not mean we should throw the baby with the bath water …
another point: I pointed to illusions on some “environmental” economic ventures (and illusions on some “no problem with environment” ventures too!)
The trouble is though that under capitalist relations not the burden of the risks of pollution are not carried by those making the transactions that produce the pollution - it’s an externality. Economists still wrangle with the problem of pollution as an externality and how to price it into transactions. The current prevailing solution of creating pollution markets such as the EU ETS as a means of putting a price on carbon thereby creating an economic incentive to pollute less is absolutely not working although in the past such models have been succesful such as with the market created to decrease sulphur dioxide in the US.
Capitalist utopians that seem to think we can continue with an economic model based on endless compound growth as resources become ever more rapidly depleted need to go back to their high school maths text books and have a bit of a think about what might put obstacles in the way of continuous growth. Simply pushing for greater efficiency of resource use, or relying on improved technology to increase efficiency under a system requiring constant growth is also not a solution thanks to Jevons’ paradox.
This false dichotomy of market vs state solutions does little to help understand the processes currently ongoing. The two are completely dependent on one another and the solutions to climate change and resource depletion are unlikely to come from either since both depend on ongoing extractive processes in order to reproduce themselves.
When one’s act deprives another of liberty (I’d argue that draining the local water supply equates to deprivation), I wouldn’t argue against some sort of regulation… although others might feel differently.
The video is not arguing for specific solutions to continuing economic growth, as it appears you’re arguing. The video is stating that our economy could well be stunted by overzealous environmental legislation.
So… what exactly are you proposing then? I’m not following you.
Does this kinda crap really get viral?
I haven’t seen it before.
Lies and misinformation spread like wildfire, and damage just the same.–BTM
WHAT! IF water runs across my land, I should be able to sum my garbage, motor oil, and toxic Fracking chemicals into it! you want more regulations!! 
Over MY water??!
Long as your water is Not In My Backyard. 
“If I wanted America to fail.” Why do people always think their leaders want America to fail? Or your own country; I imagine it’s not much different elsewhere. With every president, there are people who honestly seem to believe he’s out to destroy America. I don’t see it. I see bad decisions and good, lucky happenings and bad timing, but I don’t think even George W. Bush wanted to destroy America. Maybe his priorities were a little off, maybe he didn’t take some things very seriously, but I think he cared.
You’re welcome to refute any of the points made in the video. It’s not like you haven’t had a week to copy-paste some responses into this thread… 
I’m trying to get at the assumptions implicit in the idea that taking measures to mitigate resource use or decrease the negative impacts our behaviour has on our environment is harmful to the economy. It’s an attempt to frame the economy as something both other from, and superior to, the planet’s ability to sustain life and produce the resources that, along with the labour people put into them, make up all the commodities we transact to produce this thing we call the economy.
Continued economic expansion cannot continue without a decline in the planet’s resources or ability to sustain life. If I had a solution to this conundrum to propose then I’d be typing this on my perpetual motion powered laptop.
Even judged on its own terms it’s difficult to find a capitalist economy that’s delivering at the minute regardless of their of investment in green technology. I couldn’t presume to know how to fix the shtum we’re currently in but I’m looking around at the problems that most sensible folks think we need to do something about and then looking at the surreal responses that are coming from governments - such moral and economic contortions just to come up with some kind of way to maintain for just a little longer an economy and polity that’s bankrupt on a fair few levels.
The video expects us to be so thick as to think we can continue our disastrously extractive ways AND continue to drink from the cup of economic growth. Limits to growth cannot fail to occur and looking around us it’s becoming more plausible to believe we’ve begun to run into some of these limits and less plausible to believe we can find equitable solutions to these matters from the theories and institutions that got us here.
This video’s nowt but propaganda for defunct and destructive ideas.
Not true.
“Green” economies expand without a decline in the planet’s resources or ability to sustain life.
This is a black and white statement made in a world full of grey. We’re creating money out of thin air these days (see: Instagram’s sale for $1BB). Yes, some resources are used in “thin air” creation: some electricity, a few computers, lots of coffee. But considering the fact that we’re able to build more and more capital while using less and less resources, I am dubious of your claim.
Throw some numbers out and then we can start talking. Yes, there is a limit to everything… but is it 10 years or 1000 years? At what rate? What ceiling will we hit first?
So is capitalism or “green tech” to blame? Keep in mind capitalism has been around a lot longer…
I think you’re projecting a bit onto the video. The video is describing a scheme in which the economy shrinks, not grows.
You may feel this way… but I feel that an overreaching government can be just as destructive as a country full of coal-burning power plants.
Except for energy, which ultimately results in heat escaping into space, the resources used by humans do not get reduced through economic activity. So the real limit to our economic activity is the ability for us to take in the energy of the sun, which is abundant and not even close to being used much right now, and why waste energy on that, when there are plenty of resources available now as a result of previous energy from the sun? Given a free market in energy (which we do not have), energy supply, demand, and prices would change, in a pretty stable manor, based on the supply and the technology to convert it into usable form. Without government (aka. a free market), entrepreneurs would be able to better predict energy needs and our use of resources to make investments into our future energy needs, and the “peak oil” or any other scare in energy would be non-existent.
Historically, governments are more destructive to the environment than everything else, combined. Why trust the regulation of the environmental impact to these very harmful institutions? They exercise the monopoly of saying what others can do to pollute your property and you have no recourse, unlike what you would have in a free market.