Archive for category Biological Weapons

The New York Times reports on March 19 that whereas the Bush administration sold the Iraq war to the congress as a $50 billion investment, the actual costs are more like–

1.) ultra-conservative Pentagon estimate: $600 billion and counting

(note: this Honest Abe estimate categorically excludes “extras” such as operations in the war zone, support for troops, repair or replacement of equipment, reservists’ salaries, special combat pay for regular forces and some care for wounded veterans)

2.) Congressional Budget Office: $1 to $2 TRILLION

3.) Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz: over $4 TRILLION

–see Iraq War costs chart

Let’s stay for the moment with the most conservative estimate–that of our Honest Abe Pentagon.

Six hundred billion dollars for a war to protect ourselves from non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

With utmost caution and deference one may venture to ask: MIGHT there have been a wiser way to invest this money?

For the answer, let us turn to the book, Plan B 3.0, by Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute.

Lester Brown is a professional natural resource economist who has spent the past quarter century compiling and skillfully synthesizing massive quantities of data on global social and environmental problems and possible solutions to those problems.

His latest and most important contribution has been a lucid, rational, detailed, comprehensive plan for restoring the living environment of our entire planet, using existing, proven technology to convert, “at wartime speed”, from our wasteful, extremely dangerous and highly unstable dependency upon foreign sources of fossil fuels, to a fully sustainable and prosperous global economy–incidentally rescuing human civilization from dire threat of socioeconomic as well as environmental collapse, in the process. This plan for “mobilizing to save civilization” has been published in the book, “Plan B”, which has now gone through three releases and is becoming THE standard blueprint for a global restoration campaign.

The latest version of this classic work can be downloaded without charge from the Earth Policy Institute web site.

If you find yourself impressed enough to buy multiple copies of the paperback and distribute them to friends, you will be in good company: Ted Turner has purchased 3,600 and is passing them around like candy to heads of state, cabinet members, Fortune 500 CEO’s, the U. S. Congress, and the world’s 672 other billionaries.

So what might we have purchased with the money spent on Iraq?

Well let’s see: by the most conservative estimate Iraq has cost at least $600 billion in five and a half years, or about $109 billion per year according to the Pentagon’s calculations. But if we are to believe our own Congressional Budget Office, the true cost including “extras” has been at least $1 trillion or $181 billion per year–probably well over $200 billion per year.

And let’s note that the cost of Iraq alone is well below half of the annual U.S. taxpayer outlay for military services–$538 billion in 2006.

In that year, U.S. military spending was nearly equal to that of all other countries on earth combined ($675 billion.)

While the world’s poor go hungry and ravaged by disease, while the planet’s forests go up in smoke, while its oceans are sterilized, while supplies of fresh water are exhausted and the very crop land under our feet is dissolving away at a rate of 1,700 to 5,000 tons per square kilometer per year–the world’s preening politicians have felt obliged to spend $1.2 trillion per year on national defense. And they are calling THAT “LIFE insurance”?

That’s over six times the annual cost for restoring the entire planet–for solving the global warming problem, the food production problem, the population explosion problem, the ALREAD DIRE global water shortage problem, the soil erosion problem, the ocean fishery decimation problem, the rangeland-destruction-and-desertification problem–not to mention the poverty and economic-collapse-leading-to-world-wide-revolution, -chaos – and – terrorism – like – you’ve -n ever – even – imagined – it problems.

By the time we finally disengage from Iraq–if in fact we ever do–the cumulative cost of the Iraq war toilet-flush will have been enough to have powered comprehensive environmental, social and economic rehabilitation on a GLOBAL scale–at wartime speed– for an entire decade.

TRY to imagine how much good will our country could have generated if instead of conducting genocide in the name of democracy, it had it chosen to use our taxpayer dollars to preserve and restore forest and farmland, to repopulate fisheries, to replenish acquifers, to protect ecosystems and biodiversity, to end carbon loading and global warming, and to provide the means to feeding and educate of the poor–all across the entire planet.

Here are Lester Brown’s calculations for the annual cost of rescuing the planet and with it, human civilization, from its myriad self-imposed crises:

Table 13-2. Plan B Budget: Additional Annual Expenditures Needed to Meet Social Goals and to Restore the Earth

Goal ———————– Annual Funding (Billion Dollars)
Basic Social Goals
Universal primary education———————–10

Eradication of adult illiteracy————————4

School lunch programs for 44

poorest countries————————————6
Assistance to preschool children and pregnant
women in 44 poorest countries———————- 4
Reproductive health and family planning———– 17
Universal basic health care————————- 33
Closing the condom gap—————————– 3

Total ———————————————–77

Earth Restoration Goals
Planting trees to reduce flooding and conserve
soil ————————————————-6
Planting trees to sequester carbon—————–20
Protecting topsoil on cropland——————— 24
Restoring rangelands——————————- 9
Restoring fisheries——————————— 13
Protecting biological diversity———————- 31
Stabilizing water tables—————————- 10

Total———————————————- 113

Grand Total—————————————190

Source: Compiled by Earth Policy Institute.
This is part of a supporting dataset for Lester R. Brown, from Plan B 3.0, Mobilizing to save Civilization: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008).

For more information and a free download of the book, see Earth Policy Institute on-line at www.earthpolicy.org.

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It’s SUCH a shame that neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton nor any of their staff, for all the tens of millions we have spent on their presidential campaigns, have had either the intelligence, or the courage, to make social and environmental restoration into an ECONOMIC issue.

We need a new political party. And at wartime speed.