What Should I Do with My Money? by Bryan Kuderna

Author:Bryan Kuderna
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McGraw Hill LLC
Published: 2023-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Those Who Can’t Care

The harder group to reach, which likely represents the majority of carbon culprits, are those who cannot care. Due to their life circumstances, or the country’s economic and technological situation, there are priorities that take precedence over recycling or revamping a country’s outdated infrastructure. This is where leaders are investing entirely new sections of government budgets to empower rather than punish.

While the United States may be portrayed by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and her Green Deal entourage as a gas-guzzling country overtaken by monster trucks, the reality is America has made great environmental strides over the past 40 years that had nothing to do with going green. In 1953, one out of every three American workers was employed by manufacturing, and manufacturing accounted for over one quarter of GDP. Since then, the United States moved away from making things to thinking things. In 2021, manufacturing made up only 11 percent of GDP, less than one-sixth of the services industry, and accounted for 11 percent of US jobs.20 Factories gushing pollution into the air have largely been replaced by office parks, and big machines by tiny laptops.

The snag is that these manufacturing plants were not eliminated. Americans still want to drive cars and hold things; they were simply moved. Manufacturing initially migrated to Mexico (and is starting to return there), but now takes place mostly in China. The wealthiest country in the world is left asking other countries to clean up their act, while the world continues to ask for the same goods at the same low price.

According to the WHO, the 10 most polluted countries in the world in order of the worst are Bangladesh, Pakistan, Mongolia, Afghanistan, India, Indonesia, Bahrain, Nepal, Uzbekistan, and Iraq. Bangladesh blames its huge brick-making industry, followed by the rest pointing primarily to vehicle emissions, coal, and factories. One can quickly garner that most of these countries are also poor, needing to make economic decisions before environmental ones.

However, the wealth-to-pollution ratio, even the initiative-to-pollution ratio, is not always consistent. On a more micro level, California is the wealthiest state in America, with by far the highest GDP of over $3 trillion in 2020. It is also recognized as the home of the most liberal green initiatives. Nevertheless, 7 of the 10 most polluted cities in America are in California. Los Angeles remains the city with the worst ozone pollution in the nation, as it has for all but 1 of the 22 years tracked by the American Lung Association’s “State of the Air” report.21

Fortunately, economics has a way of instigating positive change. In China, the trend toward state-run capitalism, perhaps mixed with the impact of recent tariffs,has spurred economic benefits that are beginning to deter manufacturing. China’s ability to evolve past purely manufacturing reinforces the ideal that building the economy must come first, and then going green can become a reality. Once financial security and personal freedom are available, each nation and individual can choose to go green. Intergovernmental tariffs, sanctions, and

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