1/3/10

1/3/10

How awful to read of the University of California cutting its budget by hundreds of millions of dollars! The American Empire is such a bore! What happened to the American Republic of which we were all part? Would we have such useless, dehumanizing wars if we had a universal draft? Instead of public education, a decarbonizing economy and affordable medical care we have gated communities, a “volunteer” army, the merrily partying super-rich, floating above a sea of poverty, drugs, abused prisoners and abused illegal immigrants. Every man for himself! So we have community restrictions on rooftop solar collectors and hanging laundry out to dry. Those drafted kids could be working in hospitals and planting trees. Instead we throw our money away on wars and the “war on drugs.”
Then it occurs to me, what is the carbon footprint of a dollar? If we divide the U.S. GDP of about $14.2 trillion into the carbon dioxide emissions of about 5.8 billion metric tons, we get about .8 pound. (Thanks, Jimmy Wales!) This is a measure of the carbon intensity of the economy. But there are only about $400 billion (bills and coins) in circulation. So the dollar in your pocket weighs about 35 times that, or 28 pounds, about 8 pounds in pure carbon. Or if you take account 200 years of fossil fuel combustion, many tens of times that.
I hope I got the zeros right. It’s hard carrying around 230 pounds in my wallet.