Congressman Sali (Rep. Bill Sali, R-ID), informed us that a solution to the high price of gasoline was to make petroleum from “all those trees in our forests.” … He continued by saying there “could be up to 40 barrels of oil” in a single tree.
Sali made a similar comment in 2006:
“Forty percent of the mass of every tree in the forest is crude oil,” he said. Going after that, he said, “could put Idaho in the oil business for the first time.”
Perhaps in 50 million years. But wait, the Earth isn’t that old. And the rapture will surely happen by then right? Has he been sitting on a State secret of time travel? Will Rep. Sali bring oil back from the future and save our doomed take to waste economy?
Sigh. I guess we will continue to have to endure idiots in office as long as we keep afloat the dream that some how, some way we can maintain the model of the Industrial economy of extract, consume, [externalize] waste, in the form of pollutants/runoff/etc.
I say externalize, because we’ve neatly established an economic system that ignores the dollar value inherent in pollution. There will be a COST.
The only way to achieve the Green Economy, which is 1) sustainable and 2) ultimately more profitable, is to monetize what is ‘invaluable,’ with all duplicity intended: Quality of Life (the social) and clean air/clean water (the environment), you know all those things essential to maintain life and RUN said economy.
I would go to business school, get a PhD in future economics, and win the nobel prize for this shit if it ultimately didn’t bore the F outta me. I’d wear the Nobel medallion around my neck. Every day. And when I slept. And when buying a cup of coffee, I would mistakenly pull it out thinking it was change and say, ‘oh, I’m sorry, I thought my NOBEL PRIZE was a quarter…Silly me.’ Of course, that has as much chance of becoming reality as me actually buying a cup of coffee. ever.
Economics takes and replaces within the environment. Therefore it is a subset of it. And thinking any other way (or being willfully ignorant) is to allow it to consume itself. Much like a cancer cell.
