The Rainforest: Externalities Abound

EXTERNALITIES - A CONCEPT TO LIVE BY

Ok, so everyone looks at the internalities, which is profit if you are an investor, wages if you are a worker, or price if you are a consumer. Being conscious about externalities, thinking about them, and prioritizing them every eventful minute will change one's perception of the world.

For example, will thinking about the externality that is the needless destruction of the rainforest for the ultimate purpose of raising cattle for the internality of cheaper meat at McDonalds change behavior? Going further, what about the externality of small US ranchers losing their livelihoods because McDonalds now imports cheaper beef to the US? It used to be McDonalds hamburgers were made from 100% US beef. What happened?

What about picturing the externality that is sweatshop/slave labor when stepping into a mainline retail clothing store? What about thinking of all the bad things the big banks have been participated in when going to one of their ATM?

So think think of the world in terms of externalities might produce different behavior, whether you are an investor, worker, or a consumer. By the way, I do not invest in the stock market, whose indexes (Dow, Nasdaq, S&P) I aptly refer to as the Misery Index. The majority of the population does not hold stocks, therefore, corporations are only there to produce profit for a handful of people at the expense of the rest. It is actually in the majority's interest that corporations fail and the Misery Indexes be low. No more easy money made off of bubbles. No more unaccountable access to greed. Being involved in any way with large corporation is dangerous on one's self. Say no to psychopathic control grid that wants total control whose tools include enslavement, impoverishment,

So I ask what is the vehicle of destruction? It is the corporation, which can be used to hide the ultimate benefactor investors and their unsavory business practices such as bribery, government capture, killings, monopoly power, and so forth. It is that psychopathic urge for profits and control that's turning the planet into toilet.

Just look at the BP oil spill or the Fukushima disaster. How many more of these can the planet resist? It seems like the pattern is increasingly larger and larger manmade disaasters. Who ignores the pleas of engineers to make the tsunami wall higher? And did Japan really save money off of nuclear power. The cost is going be $400 billion for cleanup. This does not include the lost income of small farmers and businesses in the area. And it does not include the value of the assets which no longer produce or have value. How much will the Japanese citizens who can no longer produce off their land or businesses lose over the next 30 years? I would have to say the cost is in many trillions of dollars. Now imagine if thos money had been used to produce alternate energy? Just think of all the externalities....

Now, let's follow Brazil's youngest national park director, Ana Rafaela D'Amico, as she patrols the Campos Amazonicos National Park looking for illegal logging, cattle breeding, mines, and a drug route. More info here.

"Our biggest problem here in the park - and all over the Amazon - is that we don't know who the men behind this environmental crime are. We always find the poor man hired to occupy or clear the land. But we seldom find out who is really behind it, who provides the money, or which politicians support and fund these criminal acts." -- Ana Rafaela D'Amico

[Youtube] The Fight for Amazonia - Raids in the Rainforest



Green, an orangutan, whose rainforest home is no more, has been rescued, but can he recover?

[Youtube] Indonesian rainforest as experienced through the eyes of an orangutan